A color by numbers wall mural we created for Facebook

Facebook asked us to create this enormous custom color by numbers wall mural for the cafe in their new data center in Fort Worth, Texas.

Chris illustrated this collage of Texas and Texan food themed images including things like a Texas Longhorn bull, a BBQ smoker, hot sauce, a prickly pear cactus, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, a Texan ranch and a jalapeno.

The design features a prominent ‘Cowtown Cafe’ sign, which we initially hand illustrated before working into the digital illustration file. The font is based on American wood type. Following an expansion in the commercial printing industry at the start of the 19th century, typefaces were etched into hardwood with each character on its own block, to be used in letterpress printing. The arrows and zigzags in the design also reference American wood type printing, ornamental arrows and borders can be found in wood type catalogues from the late 19th century when the wooden type was being mass produced by a handful of American designers.

The wall mural was installed at the Fort Worth Data Center as a color by numbers. This is a really fun process, we design the finished mural in full color then take out the colors and replace them with numbers. We then stick numbered labels to corresponding paint pens, artists quality markers that we fill with custom mixed shades. The staff at Facebook then colored it, having fun creating a giant wall mural together.