Getting fans on the No. 88 Chevy for Talladega

CONCORD, N.C. (Oct. 30, 2009) – More than 73,000 names will adorn the No. 88 AMP Energy “Get on the 88”/National Guard Chevrolet this weekend when Dale Earnhardt Jr. lines up for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. Earlier this season, fans signed up on www.AMPEnergy.com to score a spot on Earnhardt’s car. The majority of those names made it, and the rest will appear on the No. 88 team’s pit wall banner. Hendrick Motorsports graphic artist and car designer Matt Dorton recently discussed the project. Q. How long does it normally take to prepare artwork for decaling the cars? A. If the design is provided by an outside company and it’s good computer artwork, it can be done inside a couple hours. Q. How long did this process take? A. From scratch, it probably only took an hour or two just to get the basic paint scheme done. Getting the names on there probably added another eight-to-10 hours. AMP Energy provided us with a Word document with all the names. That document was then copied and transposed into Adobe Illustrator, and Jim Gravlin with Red Eye Designs fitted the names on the decal template. From there, our guys in the Nos. 5/88 shop placed the decals on the car. Q. What is the font and typestyle on Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevy? A. Franklin Gothic Condensed in 13 point. It’s a thinly stroked font that’s legible, and it’s condensed, which means we can get more in there. Q. Was there a favorite name you had? A. Any of the ones where folks are really rooting on Junior with the license plate-style entries like ‘Go88,’ ‘B88 Kicks,’ ‘Freddy Baby 88.’ There are so many of them. Q. This year the car is black-and-green, whereas it was white last year. Why did the colors change? A. That was AMP’s decision. I think it looks really good. It was hard to improve on last year’s, but they did with the colors. I think this year the names are a lot more legible being on the black background. Q. What was it like being involved in this? A. It’s just amazing the amount of effort that goes into something of this nature. There are about 73,000 names on the car so it’s a matter of getting them all on there. A lot of it had to do with sizing it and resizing it to make it fit.