Hoch 2020: America’s Emcee

The Challenge:

Develop a “presidential” portrait to support Andrew Hochradel’s pursuit to become America’s Emcee for all creative Conferences in 2020. The art needed to be created with Adobe Fresco, showcase the app during an Adobe Live session.

The Solution:

After coordinating with Andrew and seeing the assets and looks he had developed on a previous stream, (watch here), we set to work developing a gritty and texture laden presidential illustration.

In the early fall of 2019, Andrew and I were having a conversation. Hoch mentioned he wanted to do something outlandish for the 2020 year. Having hosted a handful of creative conferences over the years, he set out to create a campaign to be America’s Emcee. Seeing as 2020 is an election year, it kicked off a fantastic spitball session that left us both smiling ear to ear.

Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but we both embraced it and laughed as we began planning. As Hoch has been campaigning, all of us have ended up attending some conferences and making little gorilla campaign elements to help this gather some momentum.

Hoch’s Campaign Assets

These are the brand colors, design elements and textures Hoch created during an Adobe Live. These were the building blocks and initial starting point for the portrait.

Development

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Sketches & Iterations

Hoch worked directly with Alex Casillas to have some headshots for this campaign. Once Alex was done editing, Hoch and I got access and decided which options would be used as a reference to build the illustration.

The vibe needed to stay “presidential” and live in the Americana world of red, white, and blue. You can’t have a campaign like this without some stars and stripes. We talked about making a far grittier image than the Obama Hope poster but wanted it to play in that sphere.

Color Studies

A few quick color studies to try and fine-tune the marriages of crisp vector lines with gritty raster brushes allowed me to pinpoint some ideas to take further. Hoch, if you haven’t figured this out by now, has a gift for showmanship. Vegas and Broadway are his happy places. I wanted to convey this flamboyant personality while still playing to the “presidential guidelines” we’re familiar with here in the states. Creating a Vegas-style jacket seemed like a sensible way to set off this portrait. The design elements were simple, have the stars stand behind this candidate while he casts a vision to bring life to the stages of a conference in 2020.

Adobe Live

Adobe Fresco is the first drawing and painting app that allows you to work with both vector and raster in the same document. This platform was perfect, knowing Hoch’s work, and how it’s a beautiful blend of vector and raster, would play incredibly well on Fresco.

It was a pleasure to be hosted on Adobe Live to stream the illustration process for this portrait.

Although the world shut down in 2020, COVID didn’t stop Hoch. He caught the eye of Adobe and several other conferences and has been on the circuit since .