Headstand Media

Cunard Lines came to Randal Birkey in the 1980’s to contract for a set of new deck plans and drawings for use in marketing the newly renovated Queen Elizabeth II cruiseliner.

Randal worked from ship plans and engineering drawings to create a series of new deck plans in Adobe Illustrator, so that they could be used for promotional brochures, advertising and other marketing and communication needs.

These are a series of illustrations that Randal Birkey did in the 1980’s for a brochure entitled, “This is Amsted” - highlighting the various industries that Amsted Industries was involved in. My company contact at that time was Jerry Gura, who I later worked again for after I had started BIRKEY.COM. Through my friend Mark Goeke, BIRKEY.COM was introduced to Amsted Industries, and we redesigned their corporate website.

Later, we engaged with a group of Amsted companies called Amsted Rail to design their website. Jerry had moved over to the marketing department at Griffin Wheel and was part of the team we worked with for that corporate website redesign project. It’s funny how some early relationships keep popping up over the years.

On the Amsted Rail web project we also worked with Lisa Hubbard at Brenco, Brian McCarthy at Griffin Wheel, and Brian Lynch at ASF-Keystone.

The illustrations for “This Is Amsted” included a factory scene, men working on an underground pipe, a transparent view of a rail car “truck”, and a few others.

Randal Birkey started his illustration career in 1980 after 10 years in the architectural and engineering drafting world. One of his first freelance illustration projects was to illustrate a recycling center in such a way as to view the conveyors and separation equipment process, with all the surrounding structure removed. The resulting line illustration was done with Rapid-o-Graph ink pens on cold press smooth illustration board.

Randal Birkey was commissioned through a Denver design firm in the 1980’s to prepare a series of illustrations on “How Gold is Made,” for use by their client, Santa Fe Pacific, then Newmont Gold, in printed brochures, posters and other corporate communication tools. The series was modifed several times over the years to reflect changes in ownership, as well as enhancements to the process.

Randal has prepared the Flash slide show below to enable easy viewing of this series of illustrations as an educational tool.

Randal Birkey illustrated this lock product for Abloy Lock for use in a trade ad. Using references provide by the manufacturer and a sample of the lock itself, Randal constructed this perspective technical illustration using his mechanical and technical drafting and drawing skills.

Randal Birkey was contracted by Boston Edison, a Massachusetts utility company, to complete a series of technical illustrations for a public relations brochure. This image is a nuclear reactor core, with the sides shown cutaway to reveal the rods inside.

The illustration was done using Fractal Painter software on a Macintosh computer, and a Wacom tablet.

Chicago is a very commercial, product-driven town when it comes to advertising and design work. Randal did this product illustration in Adobe Illustrator for an ad featuring a Mita copier. This technical line art style lends itself well to newspaper and magazine advertising reproduction, popular in the 1980’s.

Randal created this mechanical art illustration in Adobe Illustrator. Extensive use of gradient fills were used along with a strong color palette.

Randal created this series of line art drawings for City Furniture, a Chicago furniture retailer, for use in print materials.

Lands’ End contacted Randal Birkey to create an illustration spread for their catalog on “How To Build a Better Sportshirt.” Randal worked from Lands End product references to create a blueprint line drawing, then added the shading and texture with color pencil.