Strategy | Marketing | Design & Illustration

Capturing Automotive and Whiskey Excellence through Custom Digital Illustration.

The Overview: Daryl Stevens was commissioned to create the flagship promotional illustration for the inaugural Wheels & Whiskey event at the historic Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville, TN. As a premier event blending automotive culture with Tennessee heritage, the project required a high-impact visual that could serve as both a marketing tool and a collectible piece of art.

The Challenge

For the inaugural exhibition, the distillery needed an image that communicated “Automotive Excellence” while remaining anchored in the specific brand environment of Uncle Nearest. The centerpiece of the illustration needed to be a precise, stylized representation of the owner’s personal Shelby Edition Mustang, rendered with the technical accuracy that car enthusiasts demand and the artistic flair Daryl Stevens is known for in national publications.

The Strategy: Precision Meets Artistry

Leveraging over 30 years of experience in digital media and advertising, the strategy was to move beyond a simple photograph. By utilizing custom digital illustration, Studio 202 could:

• Highlight the Subject: Every line of the owner’s Shelby Edition Mustang was hand-drawn to emphasize its aerodynamic silhouette and high-performance stance.
• Anchor the Location: The iconic green architecture of the Nearest Green Distillery was illustrated as the background, creating a proprietary scene that cannot be replicated with stock imagery.
• Balance the Palette: A custom color story was developed to bridge the vibrant “Shelby Green” of the vehicle with the atmospheric Tennessee sky, ensuring the poster “cut through the fog” of standard event advertisements.

The Execution

• Custom Digital Illustration: Drawing on a career that includes work for Major League Baseball and Sony PlayStation, Stevens utilized a “Heritage-Modern” vector style. This approach provides the clean, sharp edges required for large-scale poster printing while maintaining a hand-crafted, textured aesthetic.
• Typography & Layout: The poster architecture was designed to be highly scannable, prioritizing the event’s “Wheels & Whiskey” identity while framing the custom illustration as the hero of the composition.
• Technical Mastery: The final artwork was engineered to scale from digital social media assets to full-size collector posters without losing the fine details of the Shelby’s design or the distillery’s architecture.

The Result

The inaugural Wheels & Whiskey poster became the visual face of the event, successfully establishing a “Goal-Driven” identity for the new exhibition. By blending creative artistry with the owner’s specific automotive vision, Daryl Stevens provided a bespoke asset that mirrors the premium quality of the Nearest Green Distillery itself.