While working on Power Rangers Collectors business I was given a big problem to solve.
“How can we make Hasbro’s Zord Ascension Project (ZAP) Megazord Action Figures stand out from the much loved Bandai Soul of Chogokin collectors figures?”
Read on to find out how my team and I did it!
Role: Art Direction, Concept, Design, Typography
Partners: Sam Einhorn: Writer, Jordan Liv Product Design, Jon Firestone Marketing
Illustrators: Tracie Ching, Subjekt Zero, Oliver Barrett, Anthony Petrie, Derek Ring
Typeface: Hydro74
We broke it down into concrete goals.
Sell the story by building on Power Rangers lore through the lens of Megazords.
Utilize a fresh style that works across all touch-points and set ourselves up for the future.
Take fans behind the scenes and put them in the cockpit.
Build an experience that doesn’t stop with the product and printed materials.
Provide more value for the spend by creating opportuinities to leverage artwork created in new venues; such as CP, Social Media and events.
Sell the story.
What is the ZORD ASCENSION PROJECT?
The Zord Ascension Project is an interdimensional hardlight archive & shipyard that the Morphin Masters use to catalog and maintain any and all Zords that have, do or will exist in the Power Rangers Universe.
Inside this archive we find all available information relating to Zords, their pilots, their powers, weapons, biggest enemies, and other things.
Create a fresh style.
How did we make ZAP stand out?
We knew that this couldn’t just be another toy line. We needed to look at collectibles, high end products, luxury items and other things outside the toy aisle.
We also needed to partner with some of the best artists around.
Above: Some of our mood boards for ZAP
We worked with amazing artists
Including: Subject Zero, Oliver Barrett, Anthony Petrie, Derek Ring, Hydro74, and as seen above Tracie Ching to create a unique style and story that pulled from every era of Power Rangers History.
Creating images that referenced classic fights and populated our world.
Hydro74:
Made some killer fonts.
Oliver Barrett:
Worked on our special edition.
Derek Ring:
Recreated all the control panels
Subjekt Zero:
Drew some epic battles.
Tracie Ching:
Drew all the headshots.
Put them in the cockpit.
Put it all together.
So we’ve got a story, we’ve got fantastic art and we’ve got a beautifully designed product. Our first touch-point is the package, so now it’s time to put it all together.
Our packing became a physical representation of our hardlight archive & shipyard story. We designed it with an outer sleeve so when you pull the box out it’s mimicking the shipyard coming open, and as a bonus, we got a chance to showcase Tracie’s Fantastic Art.
Put them in the cockpit.
Value add.
To round out the project we created a value added website, showcasing the Zords and their history. A trimmed down version of the site still exists as of March 10,2025 on Hasbro https://zords.hasbro.com/en-us even though the project is over!