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Gadget Freak of The Year
Design News readers selected Jerry Baumeister as Gadget Freak extraordinaire for the model rock altimeter he designed
Chuck Mackey, Senior Art Director -- Design News, April 3, 2005
A peek behind the scenes to show you how a Gadget Freak is created
There may be some argument as to whether Gadget Freaks are born or created. But either way, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes here at Design News to produce the Gadget Freak page for every issue.
After selecting a Gadget Freak candidate for an upcoming issue, Chief Editor Karen Field and I get together to discuss the invention and brainstorm ideas. In the case of Jerry Baumeister, we wanted an image that would convey his love of flying and a sense of his invention—a model rocket altimeter. Our ideal was to show Jerry flying through the air.
I then hire a photographer to do a shoot on location.
When the image comes in, I normally have some Photoshop work ahead of me to make the image publication-ready. With Jerry, a few more steps were involved because we couldn't actually photograph him flying through the air. So I had to fake it, as shown in the sequence of images at left.
Finally, Karen writes a headline. Her original copy was "Jerry Inhaled." But after testing that one out on the editorial staff, they convinced her that the reference to Clinton was a tad long-in-the-tooth. Final headline: "Jerry had high ambitions."
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| Original photo of Jerry was taken in digital format. I then ported it to Adobe Photoshop for some illustration work. | I silhouetted Jerry with the clipping path tool. Then I skewed, rotated, and brightened the image to give a sense of daylight. |
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| I then cut Jerry's scarf out from the original image, flipped it up, and blurred the motion. | I chose a stock image of a blue skey with fluffy clouds. Next, I applied a motino blur (12-14 pixels) to give Jerry "flying" motion. |
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| I then composed the final image to complete the Gadget Freak page. |
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