Inspiration Wall at the L.L. Bean Signature Event

A few weeks ago, I made the trek down from Maine to New York City for the L.L. Bean Signature event. For the last two months, I had been looking through books, magazines, image collections and catalogs for a wide variety of images that captured the complexity of the L.L. Bean brand. For my research I focused on images from spring outdoor activities like fishing, camping and sailing that fit within Bean's sensibility. The end product was 22 feet by 9 feet high

Here are some select images from my search which appeared on the inspiration wall.

This is one of the most amazing images I have seen.

Hands down my favorite L.L. Bean Cover.

Bean has a long heritage of selling outdoor gear like fishing and hunting equipment and I tried to have some product-focused shots in the mix.

I prefer getting out and searching through books and image collections because the end product is far more unique than images you would find online.

I snuck two of my own photos into the collage...whooops :)

I like doing image research because it challenges you to get in the minds of people whose world you are trying to recreate and tell their story through a handful of 2D images. For example, to find camping/hiking images from the 60's of young men and women I looked through hundreds of New England Colleges' outdoor club sections in yearbooks from the late 50's to early 60's. Image research is akin to hunting; in order to find the best stuff, you have to go farther and dig deeper than other hunters.

Thanks Marc Desrosiers of the L.L. Bean Signature team for coming up with the layout and to Alex Carleton for getting me into the project, editing the images and the creative direction.

Here are some more links,
Inspiration Wall at the LL Bean Signature Event (Picasa),
L.L. Bean Signature,
L.L. Bean PR (Twitter).