For Sailings biggest event, the Volvo Ocean Challenge Race 2008-09, creative brand agency GBH approached Tapestry to help them implement their vision for the graphics for the Puma Ocean Racing boat. The idea was to create boat livery that would stand out and be noticed. Based on a PUMA training shoe the livery would ensure that the PUMA brand achieved maximum exposure for the sponsor.
Tapestry became involved at a very early stage during the pre race training period when the Puma team began testing the boat. From initial plans from GBH we developed the graphics into fully illustrated digital artwork that would cover the whole hull.
We took the template and began the task of creating a the High Resolution digital illustration that would ultimately be printed and adhered to the boats hull. The fact that the boat was over 21m long and the digital graphic required printing at 300dpi at actual size pushed the digital file size over 12Gig. The complete image was created digitally with maximum detail and texturing. This meant that even at close range the detail in the image could be seen clearly and created a sense of realism that the image was a real leather trainer, although in reality in was a 2d print.
The sister boat for the actual race had a design change to a red and black scheme based on the Puma Il Mostro training shoe. New graphics were remade in the same manner as before, all high resolution digital files. At the very last stage it was decided that the black parts of the hull were going to be painstakingly painted on by a team of artists and only the red formstripe/strapping and logo graphics were printed like before and adhered to the boat’s hull and sail.
For Further links and information please follow the links to Puma Ocean Racing
Client: Puma
Brand Agency: GBH
Printing: Grapefruit Graphics