Client:
The Dallas Off-Road Bicycling Association (DORBA) has 1200 members and manages 21 off-road trails in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. The club, founded in 1988, sponsors special events and races throughout the year, and acts as an advocate for off-road biking on behalf of its members. It is not called the Dallas Mountain Biking Association because there are no mountain in North Texas. And only a few hills.

Situation:
In August of 2008, the DORBA Board of Directors named Ben Thornton as its new Race Director. Typically, the Race Director is appointed in January to allow adequate planning time for the North Texas XC Series – a set of four XC (cross-country) races that take place annually in the fall. This time, the Race Director, Ben, had just over a month to put the series together – and promote it, too.

Objectives:
To generate increased buzz and a renewed sense of excitement about the XC Series. Ben planned on making the series experience a cut above previous years', and part of his plan was to promote it with posters that could stand with some of the best cycling-based work out there.

Strategies & Tactics:
We sat down with Ben at the Farstar House and began to look at what other clubs were doing in the way of promotional posters. Here are some examples of that work (remember, we did not create these):

After looking through all the other clubs' posters, we decided to focus more on the Hatch Show Print style of concert posters (Hatch started in 1879 in Nashville and is still thriving there today) and started mashing that up with more Texas-flavored themes. We also had the challenge or working in about a dozen sponsor logos without destroying the overall feel of the design.

Results:
A flyer promoting the series was the first piece of work to be seen by club members and was met with great enthusiasm. The design accomplished its mission of sending a message to the club membership that this series was going to be different; that the people behind it had a great passion for cycling and cared enough about what they were doing to package it appropriately.

The first race had over 380 registered racers, which was the largest number in over 10 years. The next race in Ft. Worth had 311 registered. A new venue, Solavaca Ranch, saw 280 riders and the finale at Rowlett Creek Preserve in Garland had 430 registered racers – just short of the record 450 from a decade ago.

Take a look at what we created below. And if it makes you feel like riding, don't forget your padded shorts.

Here's the logo we produced for the XC Series:

Here's a character we created to use in various materials. We call him Pepe:

Here's the now-famous promotional poster:

A desktop wallpaper for the DORBA faithful:

A delightful little banner ad:

The front graphic of the official t-shirt:

The back of the t-shirt – we avoided logomania:

The actual shirt worn by Jon.

The back of the shirt:

We're really excited about how everything turned out. It was a great chance to do some work that was almost purely design-driven, and we look forward to helping DORBA out in the future. As long as they don't make fun of our spindly, non-biker chicken legs.