ROADHOG: Annual Report of Damage

Problem

Contemporary sports culture obsesses over performance metrics and constant progress. Demolition derby actively rejects this logic—it is a slow, unscalable sport designed purely around absorbing damage and structural failure. The challenge was framing this raw destruction through a procedural lens without reducing it to chaotic hype or heroic spectacle.

Solution

ROADHOG, a print publication structured like a cold, observational report. By pairing a rigid grid system and strict color coding with physical spray-painted stencils, the design reveals that what looks like uncontrolled chaos is actually a carefully managed system of rules, waiting, and decay.

My involvement

I conceptualized the overarching editorial direction, engineered the grid systems across multiple spread layouts, established the color taxonomy, and manually spray-painted custom stencil typography to inject authentic mechanical texture into the final digital layout.

Deliverables

Type

Personal Project

Credit

Article:
Austin Cassel, Hangover Ag Society
Photography:
Armando Ferrari, J.C. Hallman, Steve Melling, Brian Kelly, Saffire Becker

Turn the page

Research & Rationale

Demolition derby is inherently slow, repetitive, and intensely local. It does not benefit from digital circulation or virality.

Print was chosen specifically because it mirrors the unscalable, offline nature of the subject matter, forcing the reader to physically engage with the documentation of decay.

I approached the derby not as an action sport, but as a rigid system of expected loss and mechanical sacrifice.

Process

Design & Deliverables

To balance digital layout precision with raw automotive culture, I took the production offline. Section titles like "FIRST DERBY" were hand-sprayed using physical stencils, hung to dry in the sun, and scanned back into the digital layout.