This auction catalog for Sylvester Stallone was the most challenging of the creative projects I did for Heritage Auctions. I was not the lead graphic designer in the beginning; Mr. Stallone was not happy with the initial catalog design, so at the last minute, Heritage's production manager asked me to come up with some new creative. The only direction I received was that Mr. Stallone wanted a design that was strong, masculine and screamed Hollywood. The first thing I thought of was to use metallic inks for the backgrounds. The second was to make each page look like a movie poster, with heavy all-caps sans serif headlines and a clapboard-like box to contain text and other lot information. The third major issue was what to do with the numerous supporting images that showed each auction lot in the context of movie stills and photos; it dawned on me that a stylized "film strip" with multiple frames would do the trick. The following weekend, the production manager flew to LA with comps of the initial design and my alternate creative, and they presented both versions to Mr. Stallone. He was pleased with the new ideas and marked up my comp personally with his notes and suggestions. The final product was monstrous, weighing in at 500 pages with six foldouts, 4-color process plus three metallic spot colors, and a lenticular cover. The live and online auction contained 772 lots and realized more than $3 million in sales.
