Until I moved to NY almost a year ago, I'd always taken owning a car for granted. I could run several errands, visit a few friends, pick up some groceries, all within the span of just a few hours. Needless to say, I didn't bring that car with me. And as I've discovered, although New York's public transportation is incredible (even if it's also frustrating) there is no way I could accomplish all the above tasks in anything less than a whole day. It simply takes too long to get around the city.

And buying furniture? That's a whole other story. How in the world do I get a dresser from mid-town to brooklyn? If I find a cab that can accommodate it (perhaps one of those SUV cabs) I have to deal with the annoyed cab driver when he finds out I live in Brooklyn and am hauling this large piece of furniture that barely squeezes into the back seat.
Well, here at 15 minutes media, we've recently acquired a new client who can at least alleviate that last frustration. Kevin's Van Service is literally a guy with a van. He'll pick up your things and drive them where they need to go. And you don't even need to be there! He provides one of those New York necessities, when buying and/or transporting large items can be such a pain. It's the little things that count. And trust me, we've used his services ourselves. How do you think we got these fancy new chairs in the office?

His primary mode of advertisement (until he found us...or did we find him?) was craigslist.org. He is now venturing into the world of websites. And I was approached to do some sort of graphic for him, featuring a van. (He wanted clip-art...that's almost always a no-no. But I won't go into that here. There'll be time for that later.)

Below I've included images from first sketch to final graphic.

Here's the sketch on paper:

Image gets cleaned up a bit in photoshop:

Image gets smoother and colorful in Illustrator:

I wanted to work with a fun background to add interest and depth.

However, I felt the black was a bit too intense (and not quite so friendly) We all know that when you hire a guy to drive your stuff around in a van...you want to be able to trust him. The black just screamed "dark alley" to me. It had to go. So, I decided on blue, added a quirky font and fun tag-line (to further enhance the trust level).

And...voila:

Look for Kevin's Van Service new website soon at www.kevinsvanservice.com