Raygun Cigs
Raygun Cigs was a collaboration between sculptor Chris Bathgate and myself. In early 2013, I was working with a New York based intellectual property development start-up, working on a new type of dosage regulator for ecigarettes. Unfortunately someone beat us to the patent office, but as I had been researching, dissecting, and sketching ecigarettes in Illustrator for the past several months I needed to do something with the idea before I could move on.
At the time, the market was being flooded with cheap and/or disposable "pen type" ecigs, which were generally mocked by smokers for being stupid looking. It occurred to me that maybe what was needed were accessories; what if we brought back the cigarette holder? I explained my idea to Chris and within a week he had four different designs and had prototyped each in four different material combinations.
My half of the project was building an online store and creating a marketing campaign. I produced all of the product photography, then created a logo and website graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator. I used Wix to do the website, as it has a very similar interface to EraGallery's Canvas site builder, and I didn't see the point of hand-coding a site from scratch for such a brief project. Finally I created a print and online ad campaign, consisting of a post card mail out, online banner ads, an Etsy page, and a link exchange/social media campaign.
The project has concluded but you can see the site archived here:
http://rayguncigs.wix.com/rayguncigs
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Getting Loose at the Sweet Lounge
The website features a series of editorial images I shot to begin establishing a brand identity for Raygun Cigs. As our ecigarette holders evoke the mid-century raygun gothic style, I decided to set the series in a traditional 1950's lounge. Beautiful people, blended whiskey, wood paneling, and a very confused bunny rabbit create a world where our product naturally exists.
I shot this series with a Nikon D300 and a portable Dynalite strobe set. The space was cramped, there wasn't much room to maneuver the lights, resulting in lighting a bit more stark then I would normally prefer. I believe it works here, mimicking the raw fluorescent lighting found in drop ceiling lounges from the era.