95. *PEDESTRIAN DESIGN
“I needed a self-promo that would showcase a range of skills—illustration, animation, and design—but I also wanted it to be fun, like a trinket,” Chris Crandall says of his miniature flipbook. But creating this tiny masterpiece presented unique challenges. After sketching his concepts and scanning them into Photoshop, he inked the sketches in Illustrator. He then had to identify the average number of pages flipped in a second, which apparently varies from person to person, and he also experimented with papers to find one with optimal flip-ability. “Printing a small, thick book is quite technically challenging,” Crandall admits.

He kept the overall design simple because he wanted the call-to- action to be prominent, not overbearing. “I like the simplicity of black and white, and it’s cheap to print,” he notes. “I enjoy working in it because it provides me with an escape from the vibrant colors that are generally associated with my clients’ brands—not that I have anything against color, but this allows me to focus on an image’s design without having to worry about whether or not green and red look too ‘Christmas-y’ together.”

When asked whether the book was successful in promoting him, Crandall merely states, “Reports indicate that a good number of them have secured prominent positions among my clients’ and prospects’ tchotchke collections.” Marcy Slane