Behind the Panels: Marvel Secret Wars (2015)

Branding and product design for the launch of Marvel: Behind the Panels, a new officially-licensed line of deluxe art books taking fans inside the making of Marvel's biggest stories. The debut volume centers on the landmark 2015 Secret Wars event — a 300-page oversized hardcover of interviews, process, and art — and needed an identity that could sit comfortably next to Marvel's own iconic branding while establishing Behind the Panels as a series with room to grow.

Beyond the core identity, the project extended into a full range of campaign-exclusive collectibles, all designed to support Secret Wars place in the history of comic culture: an artist print portfolio set (including a 3D anaglyph edition), the "Bite Sized Covers" miniature comic-cover collections, custom branded miniature short boxes, a 1000-piece 3D cover puzzle, and a premium sticker pack. Each product carried the line's visual language consistently across wildly different formats and price points.

Creating the Bite Sized Covers Product: when tasked with creating products for this line of art books, we were told we could not make trading cards because of licensing issues. When the suggestion came down to do a line of collectible mini covers, I set to work on the research and production logistics. I found other 'mini comics' and covers already existed but every one of them printed on a standard poker sized card (which is 3.5" x 2.5") but they got it all wrong! At that dimension, every cover recreation at card size needed an awkward frame or severe cropping of the art. Then I realized something incredible: bridge size cards (3.25" x 2.5") are the exact same proportional size as a comic book! This let us create a premium product at a fraction of the cost because printing on bridge cards are a manufacturing 'off-the-shelf' solution. From there, everything fell into place. And yes, we also created a mini comic box to go with this product line.