Go Chiefs Go!

It’s time for another look back at books I’ve illustrated. This is perhaps the book I’m best known for and certainly the most popular— Go Chiefs Go! written by Chris Meggs and published by Ascend Books.

When the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020, I was hired to illustrate a picture book about it. It was the highest profile project I’d ever had. The book had an incredibly fast turn around— the files were sent to the printer mid-April— which meant that I had less than 2 months to illustrate the book.

And there were other challenges. The author covered the entire season, not just the Super Bowl. The publisher wanted my illustrations to reflect the actual game plays, which meant that I’d be working from photos more than I usually do. Somewhere along the lines it was decided to include a scoreboard for every game. To top it all off, I was informed that I couldn’t show any of the other teams’ trademarks or logos. So I had to be very creative in how I depicted things and how to fit everything on the page.

I decided that this made the book more of a graphic design challenge than a traditional story. I decided on a bombastic style with lots of diagonal lines and bend day dots in the background.

I think the whole thing turned pretty good, considering the time crunch and all the various requirements. Here are a few pages from the book:

If you want a copy, you can still find it at pretty much any bookstore or on Amazon.