Kicking Cancer With the Rowdies

March 18, 2017August 30, 2022pcharbonneau Leave a comment

Do you remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the marketplace crowd disperses and a large, imposing swordsman does a series of flashy moves before a weary and having-none-of-it Indiana Jones pulls out his pistol and shoots him? Ok, stay with me on this…

In my role as graphic designer for Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, I’m fortunate to work for an organization with a mission that’s kind of tough not to get behind – the care and treatment of children and support for their families.

While my primary role is in graphic design, our department allows us the freedom to explore and utilize our other talents. It was such freedom that allowed me and our videographer Juan to brainstorm an idea to create a partnership video with the Tampa Bay Rowdies for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Juan is super-talented and had a basic framework in place. I came in with Indiana Jones. My idea was to utilize the spirit of that scene with our patient Vance facing off against one of the Rowdies’ players, which turned out to be Juan Guerra. Our department was on board and allowed us total creative freedom. The only catch? We had to concept, storyboard, write the script, film and edit in two weeks. Easy peasy.

As you can see in the video above, our team came through. This was shown at a late summer Rowdies match and led to a nice chunk of money donated to the hospital. I was thrilled to work with Juan on this project and thankful for the help of our marketing team and the clinical staff at the hospital for volunteering their time. Of course, the video doesn’t work without the Rowdies’ players, Guerra, Georgi Hristov and Keith Savage.

While I don’t necessarily recommend pitching a video idea about kids with cancer with Indiana Jones blowing away a bad guy, having a pop culture mindset does come in handy every now and then. It goes nowhere without a lot of other people on board lending their talents and it made me excited and proud to be a part of Kicking Cancer with the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

GFWC Clubwoman Magazine

April 17, 2013September 5, 2015pcharbonneau Leave a comment

One of the primary responsibilities in my current position is the production of our organization’s bi-monthly magazine. We have a small, but dedicated staff that contribute content for each issue, while I am in charge of budgeting space, managing advertising and ultimately layout and design. I also handle editing and occasional writing duties. Ah, such is life at a small non-profit organization!

The positive side of it is, the staff gets a good idea of what it takes to put together a publication such as this, and each department works closely to produce what usually amounts to a 28 to 36-page magazine. Of course, producing a magazine, even a bi-monthly magazine, takes a lot of time and effort. As the sole designer of all things GFWC, I don’t get the luxury of spending a lot of time crafting layouts and ideas. It tends to be pretty down and dirty as I have many other responsibilities in my role as communications director. I do, of course, enjoy the creative aspect of it, and given our tight time frames, I do my best to help produce the best publication we can. I also do have one person on my staff that I get to teach (inflict?) some basic design ideas on that helps alleviate some of my design workload.

Red Hot Hockey Event Materials

April 14, 2013pcharbonneau Leave a comment

Red Hot Hockey is an event that pits two perennial college hockey powers, Boston University and Cornell University, on the grand stage of Madison Square Garden in New York City.

I’ve had the privilege of working on the marketing materials for the Red Hot Hockey events which took place in 2007, 2009, and 2011, and will do so again in 2013. Not only was the initial Red Hot Hockey game the first collegiate hockey game to ever sell out the renowned 18,200-seat arena, but the 2009 and 2011 editions also managed to fill the building to capacity. We even had the Stanley Cup on hand in 2011 as an added experience for the fans.

Red Hot Hockey is easily the highlight of my career as far as involvement in a project because it combines my love for creativity with my love for hockey. I get to be involved in a lot of aspects of the event, including marketing and managing the event’s social media presence. (Shameless plug: @redhothockey on Twitter). The Madison Square Garden staff are great to work with and the entire event couldn’t happen without the tireless work of Becky Collet, my former boss at BU, who I still collaborate with as part of Collet Communications.

I’ve waxed philosophical on the redesign of the RHH logo before, but seeing your work up on the scoreboard in an arena with 18,200 people clad in red is a sight that just won’t ever get old. You can see some more of my RHH work by checking out my full portfolio. Cheers.

Got Balls? Logo

April 14, 2013October 31, 2021pcharbonneau Leave a comment

I added this one for fun. I designed this for our beer league bowling team a few years back. We were a mediocre bowling team, but we were pretty stellar flip cup players at the post-bowling bar socials.

And yes, that is B-movie icon Bruce Campbell’s likeness lording over a pair of very large (bowling) balls.

If you’re not already following him on Twitter, @GroovyBruce is the way to go. Hail to the King, baby.

GFWC 2012 Convention Logo

April 14, 2013October 31, 2021pcharbonneau Leave a comment

This was the logo I created for the 2012 GFWC Annual Convention in Charlotte, N.C. The butterfly concept was also about the seventh one I created that finally got the green light. I think it mirrors the ‘Transforming’ aspect of the tagline really well though, so all ended well. As our international president kept telling me when I presented her with a new concept, “This isn’t it, but I’ll know which one is when I see it.”

Gotta love the detailed feedback. 🙂

Peter Charbonneau Design

a diverse creative professional

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