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This site is a collective of all my Case Studies and Projects. All work has been designed, photographed, coded and written by and is property of, Manas Chimpidi (Me), unless stated otherwise. If you would like to use, download, or commission me for a project, contact me at the mentioned outlets below.

The Man Who Handcuffed Lightning

Class project capturing the famous taunt of champion boxer, Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay)

One of history's greatest boxers was also one of the most clever trash-talkers. This simple graphic design project was meant to capture Ali's greatest moments before his fight with equally-renowned Sonny Liston, through a movie poster.

As for the title, I decided there is nothing more befitting a title than "The Man Who Handcuffed Lightning" for a boxer who was known be fast and agile in a sport where boxers were training to be the strongest. The title was based one of Ali's many prematch rhymings taunts:

"I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I'm so mean I make medicine sick."

To showcase the ferocious attitude that exists in the culture boxing, I used a moment from Ali's fight with Doug Jones. I then cropped Ali out of the picture and outlined him and upped the contrast in Photoshop to enhance the intensity of the moment.

Project Information
Published:
Monday, January 9, 2017
8:53:13 PM
Tags:
Folio
Project
Class Project
Graphic Design
Poster
Final Renders
Click on image to open gallery view
Color Palette

The color scheme seemed pretty straight forward. I chose to stick with two colors aside from black and white. The bright red represents blood, something in the sport that both the winners and losers share. And the parchment color gives the entire poster a vintage look, mimicking old-time pre-match hype posters.

Alizarin Crimson
#ED1E25
Neon Carrot
#F99F3F
Black
#000000
White
#FFFFFF
Other Iteration

The design, for the most part, changed very little. In the preceding iterations, the title was at the bottom with the iconic quote at the top. This lead to some confusion for the viewers since the eye did not have a clear path to follow. To solve this, the title was moved to the top and extra defined darker blocks were added with the edges cleanly leading from the title, to the air-date, to Cassius’s head, and following his punching arm through/to the quote.

Click on image to open gallery view