News

Hauntings of Hermitage
It's the time of the year for Halloween themed posters, and this year we were fortunate to have the opportunity to make one. Our project began when The Hermitage asked us to redesign their logo to reflect their new direction. They wanted to rebrand the site as as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage and make our nation's seventh president more prominent in the name and logo. Located in Middle Tennessee, Andrew Jackson's Hermitage gives tours that tell the story of how 1000 acres changed from frontier forest to Andrew Jackson’s prosperous farm,... Read more...
J.M. Thomason Spices
It's been a good season for packaging at ADG, pun intended. This particular project we cooked from the ground up starting with the logo. Designers Ligia Teodosiu and Edward Patton came up will several good options.   Ligia finished out the final logo design. The client ended up using two; one main logo that spelled out the full name, and an abbreviated button for use on the front of the packaging.  The packaging ended up being a team effort. Ligia developed the look of the package and the first three... Read more...
Pressers Playing Cards
Last year we were approached by Ellusionist, a company that makes playing cards and instructional videos for magicians. Wanting to branch out with the look of their cards they looked to us to create a vintage deck of cards based in 60s advertising. They were inspired by the hit TV series Madmen and we wanted to give them something that felt at home in that era of design. Illustrator Aaron Johnson always has an ace up his sleeve. His first set of sketches left the client speechless. The card backs... Read more...
Syracuse University: Orange Central
Syracuse University contacted us earlier this year to see if we would be interested in doing a poster series for their Orange Central Event happening in October. Syracuse is a university with a lot of history, and we all agreed that the vintage travel poster was the right vibe to celebrate their campus at the annual event. The series focused on four aspects of their school that they wanted to play up: the campus buildings, school spirit, making connections on campus, and last but not least–athletics.  Each poster started with a... Read more...
Our Office and Studio Store Renovation
Call us crazy, but back in July, we decided to renovate our entire building—inside and out—while we kept working in the middle of the chaos. The goal was to transform our crusty old 70s-era office building into a hip multi-use hot spot of design and local culture. So we did a total makeover to create a warm and inviting retail space on the ground floor and a stylish design studio space on the 2nd floor.  For the last 10 years, our place looked like an ordinary office building. The structure... Read more...
Vince Gill and Paul Franklin: Bakersfield
Sometimes opportunity comes knocking. Sometimes it comes charging at you in a bull horned convertible. When asked to do a Vince Gill Album cover out of the blue, how could we refuse? The only catch: we had to get it done in about a week.  The album itself is a collection of cover songs by Vince Gill and Paul Franklin paying tribute to the Bakersfield genre of country music. We already had a rough concept in mind involving a car driving under the iconic Bakersfield Sign in California.   Less... Read more...
The Cicadas Are Coming!
In a few weeks, the East Coast of the USA will experience a natural phenomenon that only occurs once every 17 years—a mass emergence of billions of cicadas whose only purpose will be to tunnel out of the dirt where they have lived for 17 years to indulge in a short-lived “coming out” party. Emerging from their shells en masse, they will unfurl their wings, start making LOTS of noise, find a mate, lay some eggs, and then die. As graphic designers, our job is to observe popular culture and... Read more...
Lane Motor Museum Poster
When we got a call from Lane Motor Museum asking if we could do a Spirit of Nashville poster we jumped at the chance. Being a fan of all things vintage we took a field trip down to the museum, cameras in hand. Established in 2002 by Jeff Lane, the museum started with his personal collection of cars that he had bought and restored. Finding a swag location in the former Sunbeam Bakery at 702 Murfreesboro Pike, Lane Motor Museum unveiled it's collection to the public in 2003. One of... Read more...
New Dr. Pepper Hour Poster
A few months ago we were approached by Baylor University to create a poster to promote their Dr. Pepper Hour; an event that has taken place on campus each academic week for the past 60 years! What started as an informal gathering of students and teachers in 1953 has become a longstanding tradition. Dr. Pepper Hour, formerly known as Coke Hour, is held every Tuesday between 3pm and 4pm. Students, faculty, and staff come together and socialize while enjoying a refreshing Dr. Pepper float. To commemorate the early beginnings of... Read more...
Mère Bulles Art Nouveau Poster Design
This week we added an interesting new illustrative style to our Spirit of Nashville Collection. Mère Bulles(pardon our French) translates to Mother Bubbles—it’s the name of a popular restaurant in Brentwood Tennessee.   So why all the French? Mère Bulles history begins with its muse, Mother Bubbles, who was the granddaughter of the original owner. Born Michele Bouvier around 1840 in Deauville, France, she eventually grew to become the belle of New York and later opened a popular restaurant in Charleston, S.C. One thing that Michele loved was champaign, earning her the nickname "Mother Bubbles," which in... Read more...
Wall Calendars: A Date with Destiny
Have you seen our new 2013 wall calendars? If you ever wondered how Anderson Design Group became so obsessed with poster art and calendars, read on... For many years, we dabbled in creating quirky self-promotional gifts, brochures, mailers, etc. to show off our design and illustration skills. We also fiddled around with making gifts that we could send our clients as tokens of our appreciation for their business. After producing Millennium Bug Survival Kits in 1999 (which included necessities that people would need if the world descended into chaos,) we... Read more...
Cover and Interior Illustrations for the Nashville Scene
The Nashville Scene is a hip, weekly publication that Music City locals read for news and reviews. As a free news magazine, the Scene survives on advertising, eye-catching covers, and interesting content that will make people stop, pick up an issue, and read through the entire publication. Priority #1 is a cover design that will grab passers-by and make them take a magazine off of the rack. Content and flow must then hold the reader’s interest and compel them read the issue cover to cover.  The biggest Nashville Scene issue... Read more...
Painting the Town Red (and Blue)
A few weeks ago, we got an interesting inquiry from the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky. Danville will be host to one of the upcoming Vice-Presidential debates. The Community Arts Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating arts opportunities such as art exhibits, community events, and arts education. Their building has multiple galleries for viewing art displays, a Grand Hall for hosting community events, and multiple rooms for classes in dance, drawing, music, and more. They decided to get involved in the general sprucing-up that has been happening... Read more...
Denny's Tour of America
We have been selling our classic American travel posters in flash sale events on Fab.com since summer of 2011. This national exposure—in addition to selling them on our own site—has caught the attention of art directors from some big national ad agencies. When the agency for Denny’s Restaurants (Erwin Penland) saw our classic American illustration and design work, they asked us if we could help them create a new look for the Denny’s Tour of America menu. Each summer, Denny’s creates new all-American dishes for their menu, and they give... Read more...
2012 Austin City Limits Music Fest Poster
Recently, we were asked by C3 Presents (an event organizer responsible for some the country's biggest concert events) to create the official poster for this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival. We were honored and excited, and staff designer/illustrator Andy Gregg was put on the task. C3's poster needs and parameters were somewhat unique: they wanted to feature an Austin skyline, and they needed three different versions of the poster to sell on their website, sort of a "good, better, and best". Andy worked on this problem for a while.... Read more...
New Coastal Collection
As you can see, we’ve been dreaming of vacation all summer. Now that we have cranked out a bucket full of new designs to create our latest poster series, we probably will do just that! For quite some time now, have had a lot of interest from the buyers at Fab.com (and from decorators & fans) in vintage-looking posters with nautical or coastal themes. So we decided to create the COastal Collection and get it done while it was still summer time! Since we could not get away from our... Read more...
Show Your True Colors This Season!
With election season heating up, we thought it would be fun to poke a little fun at the whole spectacle. By the time November finally gets here, we are all going to be sick of political news coverage and commercials! So to take the edge off of things and celebrate our great democratic system, we set out to create 2 sets of political prints that will allow folks to show their true colors in style. The first set of prints was based on an old horror movie poster look. We... Read more...
Our New Line of Prints: Vintage Ad Follies
The first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem. OK—we admit that we are addicted to vintage advertising art and travel posters. So you’d think that after studying old advertising art for decades, creating over 80 classic poster designs for our Spirit of Nashville Collection, then doing more than 50 designs for our Art & Soul of America Collection, we might have gotten tired of the stuff.   As you’ll see, we have only dug in deeper, cranking out loads of new art that looks like... Read more...
New Classic Chicago Posters
Our Art & Soul Of America Collection of prints and gifts continues to grow. Thanks to Fab.com, Pinterest, and other cool design-oriented sites, folks from all over the world have been checking out our work, buying our prints, and decorating homes and offices in classic Chicago style. Spurred on by the success of our early Chicago concepts, we have expanded our collection of Windy City prints to 9 designs. We will keep adding new art as inspiration and demand dictates! The first few designs were by Andy Gregg and Luke... Read more...
New Poster Series Celebrates 100 Years of Girl Scouting
This coming year marks the 100 year anniversary of the Girl Scouts! To commemorate the event, the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee asked us to create four poster designs, each celebrating a unique tradition of Girl Scouting. We started out with the most important step...gathering research (ahem, Girl Scout Cookies) for "inspiration". Four empty boxes later, we were full of inspiration! As with every poster design project, we started out with sketches. After several sketches, four concepts were submitted and approved.  The challenge was to create four distinct designs, but... Read more...
Our New Metro Parks Series
One of our favorite TV shows is Parks and Recreation. So imagine our glee when we got a call from Metro Parks asking us if we would consider creating a series of prints that would celebrate Nashville’s favorite city parks. We quickly figured out that the Metro Parks folks are nothing like the comic misfits in the TV show. Instead, they actually work for a living, and they have very keen ideas about how to promote and celebrate Music City’s network of fantastic public parks. We sat down, made a... Read more...
New Wine Revolution Posters
It’s fun to create a new brand and watch it develop over time. Last year, we started with a logo design for our client the Wine Shoppe. Next, we helped create the look of their web site and store graphics. Then we designed a few ads and even created 5 wine prints to include in our Spirit of Nashville Collection. As the brand evolved, we made sure to keep a lush, rustic, inviting, European vibe in every piece we created. This year, the owners of the Wine Shoppe wanted to... Read more...
Spirit of Nashville Donates Commemorative Flood Prints to the City
After the 1-year anniversary of the Great Nashville Flood, we met with Nashville Mayor Karl Dean to present him with 3 jumbo canvas prints of our Spirit of Nashville flood relief designs. We wanted to thank him for his leadership during a very challenging time and commemorate the strong character displayed by Music City during and after the flood.   Joel Anderson, founder of Anderson Design Group and the Spirit of Nashville Collection wanted to give the city a set of these prints so the art could be displayed in... Read more...
Limited Edition Great Southern Brood Prints
The Great Southern Brood poster series, part of the Cicada Invasion! product line, was silk screened as a limited edition 18" x 24" collection and was created by staff designer/illustrator Andy Gregg. The three poster series receives its title from the nickname for Brood 19, the specific group of cicadas that emerge every thirteen years in the Mid South by the millions. Each poster design is limited to 30 numbered and signed prints printed by Kangaroo Press. We got to stop by Kangaroo Press's workshop as Ryan Nole, founder and... Read more...