how it all began.
My love affair with the car started before I was even old enough to start school. My earliest memory is that of riding passenger in a homemade go-cart around the yard of a family friend. I wasn’t old enough to reach the pedals, but that didn’t matter. I was hooked.
Growing up, we didn’t have the means to build our own kart, and being way too young to get a licence to drive a car, I did the next best thing, draw them.
Around 9 years old, I was given a calendar which was full of stock cars. I would flip through the months, starting at the pictures. Ranking the “paint jobs” to decide who my new favourite driver would be. Lucky for me it was easy to choose the one that stood above the rest. It was blue and dayglo red, separated by two rainbows, driven by someone you may have heard of, Jeff Gordon.
I was then obsessed, watching every race I could, cutting out every article and picture from the local newspapers.
That is the power of a well designed livery, it creates life long fans of drivers, teams and the brands that sponsor them.
With 25 years of Engineering Design/CAD Drafting experience, I have been turning ideas into 2D drawings and 3D models since 3D modelling was in its infancy. This gives me the unique ability to “think in 3D”. This allows me to understand how a livery needs to flow over the complex curves and surfaces of a car.
There’s a lot more to a good livery design than how it looks on a piece of paper or a flat screen. Understanding how that 2D sketch of a livery idea will translate onto the car is a skill I take great pride in.