I’ve always had a passion for history, probably realized when I went to Washington D.C. in 8th grade (1996!) and was just so fascinated by all the monuments, museums and figures.

Decades later, my father-in-law, Ben Pauley, happened to be a huge collector and distributor of civil war collectibles. He’s been collecting and selling Civil War related dimestore toy soldiers and related content since the mid-90’s.

This Civil War collection is featured in several volumes of books filled with images and information. Buyers and collectors can use these books as collectors items themselves, or to see what Ben has to offer. I’ve seen these books for years, and offered to help Ben with future cover designs.

When the next book rolled around, Civil War Hard Images Volume 4 - Union, Ben reached out to me to help create the cover for this book!

Challenges for this project included proper formatting for the book that mirrored the size of the previous volumes (created by (an)other designer(s)), using photography that may not be the right quality and finding a font that was modern but also echoed history and previous covers.

Ben’s previous volumes had a specific look that I worked to echo in volume 4. When volume 5 rolls around, we’ll be ready to create a new cover that is formatted identical to volume 4.

Soldier Collectibles Featured in Magazine Ad

Soldier Collectibles promotes itself through their website and ads in various magazines and print materials. Ben also reached out to me to create an ad to promote the website. This ad was not married to any specific volume of book, so we included some of his favorite images and used the same fonts from book volume 4.

I like to look at projects from a brand perspective, so the ad and book are branded together through their fonts, layout and image use. In the future, when other volumes come about, or the website updates, I hope this “brand” will be useful.

Discover more about SoldierCollectibles.com, you might find a rare collectible you can’t live without!

- The Media Buff