Escape is at Hand For The Traveling Man

A grueling full day of non-stop action has resulted in completed display cases. Yeah! 

Wednesday was the final install day and the Buffalo Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see info below) is complete.  The Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum collection is mounted, hung, labeled in 2 custom-designed display cases at HSBC Arena.  

They can be viewed during any event, hockey game or at the many open Sabres practice. Watching the glass guys finally drop in the panes was quite a relief.  It looks good, check it out.  More info about this experience will come down the road, for now, enjoy these snapshots.

Case 1- full!

Case 2- the view from coming up the west side escalator.

1975 Playoffs tickets, programs, buttons, etc.

The completed 500 Puck Stack!

Aud section in Case 2.

Crozier area of Case 1.

Dave Andreychuk skates.

Christie drawer displayed full of cool locker room gear.

French Connection gear.

J. putting in the final touches before glass drops.

Dr. Joe from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum. Happy to be done.

Miller stuff. What is the "ER"?

"About the BHE+M" descriptive placard.

Peca Cup Finals gear with well-worn stick.

OW credit pucks in the bottom corner of both cases.

ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance.

Fire in the Hole

Today was the final prep day for tomorrow's installation of the Buffalo Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see info below).

The OtherWisz Creative rested this weekend and got back into it over the last few days. The rock band Nickelback was sound checking in the arena today and the noise was deafening, so it was really tough to hear or think straight. Hopefully it will be quiet tomorrow for the full install.

Tomorrow is 'the day'-- they drop the glass and we are offically done. I am sure there will be a few clean up things-- we have to finish the accompanying trophy cases, the Sabres need to install some wall graphics... but the main part will be done.

Here are a few snapshots from today.


Tough puck gluing day: they were sliding instead of sticking. We tried several glues and in the long run, I had to be less acrobatic with my puck stacking.


Jersey stand with placeholder marking.


Some of the completed descriptive signage.

ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance.

Walk The Line

Today was a full install test run for the Buffalo Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see info below). Details, details!!

The OtherWisz Creative team spent all day with the help of the good Dr. Joe, the owner of the Buffalo Hockey Museum + Experience putting everything in it's place. And then taking it out. We hung graphics on the walls; some unframed as of yet, some placeholder print-outs. We mounted all the tickets, programs and other cool hockey things. We had all the jerseys in place. We kept piling on pucks, building a mound of 500. We hung hockey sticks from the top of the cases with 25# fishing line.

But then we took it all apart.... as the case glass won't be ready to drop until next week Wednesday. But for a few hours, the final cases were (almost) all together, and they looked super. I am very proud of my team. Tonight is a night finally for some sleep. Our graphics guy is getting married in two days and we all need to recharge some.

We now have a few days to finish some graphics. All the ID tags and the Ticket/Buffalo (more on that later) should be done tomorrow (right, Phil?...) and velcro will be attached, so it is ready to mount next week. A few things need to be framed and some additional graphics need to be designed. More to come, in the meantime enjoy these snapshots from today... with captions!


Dan assembles the Perreault 500-Puck Milestone commemorative mound of pucks (the second of our puck-tastic feature, see the other here).


Close-up of the first-year team autographed stick crossing with commemorative Wilkenson sword (1970) over "graphic to come".


Case 1 Crozier stuff.


Ruff nameplate in the Frank Cristie drawer from the Aud locker room.


Taro sticker (if you don't know look it up) & one of Bert's milestone goal marker.


Some 1975 Stanley Cup Finals things with Dave Shultz Wanted Poster.


Dr. Joe & Dan work on Case 2.


Memorial Auditorium stuff with stick hanging in place.


Commemoration 9/11 Boulton jersey and my arm hanging a stick.

ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance. To find out more, stay tuned!

The Lonely End of The Rink

Oh, baby.... work continues on the installation of the Buffalo Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see info below). The OtherWisz Creative team spent three consecutive late nights working hard and we are getting close. Thursday will be a dress rehearsal of sorts as we will set it all up, photograph in and then break it down. The glass manufacturer made the glass for the cabinets wrong and it is finally going to be back in next Tuesday. It would be nice if we were building this in a locked museum room, but not so, this is the HSBC Arena and it is teaming with people with the start of pre-season only a week or so away. So we can put it up, but can't leave it up until the glass is in. This means carting valuable artifacts back and forth.

Tomorrow will give us a really good sense of it all with almost everything set up except the ID tags and a few other graphics.

These are some quick shots J. took including some AUD artifacts, Miller's Winter Classic mask and the 500 mass of pucks to commemorate Gilbert Perreault's 500th goal on March 9th, 1986 when he became the 12th guy in NHL history with 500.

ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance. To find out more, stay tuned!

Ticket To Ride

Will working on this Sabres 40th Anniversary exhibit installation we have had to dig through the BHE+M archives. Here are a few first season ticket stubs (1970-71) that I thought I would share.

The tickets were not as fancy as they are now. They only came in two colors- red and green- and we liked it that way... just a like a cold Utica Club! Only $4.00 a game ticket price, I wonder what the beer cost back then?

I am a fan of this poster/ticket layout- just some typeset text, well balanced, even with all it's bad kerning issues. The abbreviated months are very dated looking as you don't see a lot of FEB'RY or OCT'BR being used these days....

There is just something very elegant about this haphazard simplicity (or I have been up too late scanning tickets).











ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance. To find out more, stay tuned!

Fifty Mission Cap

Work continues on the install of the Buffalo Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see info below). The OtherWisz Creative team spend the third day on site finishing installing photos (while wearing gloves) in the second case. We also mounted the large wooden logo (from the Aud Club), we installed the really cool puck tower (commemorating Hasek's 70-save game in 1994), built the 500-puck stack and put in the helmet mounts.

Internally we are finishing up editing content and planning the rest of the install. The case maufacturers are killing our schedule as they built the glass for the cases at the wrong size and it had to be redone. They are ruining my fine-tuned install schedule and we all have to keep altering our plans.... but we are adapting.









ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance. To find out more, stay tuned!

The Model

Work continues on the install of the Buffalo Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see info below). The OtherWisz Creative team spend two days of display set-up including: Step 1- the "massing". This was getting the risers and the mannequins set up to see how the space will be filled. We put all the jerseys (except for the rare Horton jersey which still in storage) on them to see how great they will look.

Then next came Step 2: outlining all memorabilia location with masking tape and putting in the mounted photography. We had to quit early today, but we'll be back at it on Monday with plans to get everything in by next Thursday. Hopefully... we still have a lot to do, but it is looking really great so far.

Here are some snapshots from the last few days including J. holding Ryan Miller's Winter Classic mask, some masking tape layout and some hockey jerseys getting mannequin-ed.

ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance. To find out more, stay tuned!

Tower of Power

For the Sabres 40th Anniversary Exhibit (see below), to compliment some of the awesome memorabilia from the BHEM collection, we created some pucktacular pieces to represent some of Buffalo's hockey milestones. Here is a sneak-peak: a little item I refer to as HASEK'S TOWER.

This stack of 70 pucks are speared on a steel stand we had custom built. It was designed by our OtherWisz team, welded and 'pucks a-drilled' in Holland, NY and it was delivered today! This display item (shown here, not in the display case yet) will be a part of a Dominik Hasek section at the start of the second case. This cool tower-o-pucks was designed specifically to commemorate a legendary 70-save game starring the Dominator.

The game is told as... On April 27, 1994 in the Memorial Auditorium, the Sabres were playing in the 6th game of their first round playoff series versus the New Jersey Devils. Ending at 1:52 AM the next morning, the game went into 4 overtime periods as both Hasek and Devil Brodeur dueled to the finish. Dave Hannah scored on Buffalo's 50th shot to win the game 1-0. Hasek ended up making 70 saves in a single game, 39 in the overtime periods alone. Last season (2009-10) THE average shots per NHL game was only 31.something-something... Fantastic Sabres moment remembered in a cool stack of pucks.

ALL ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Come see the full exhibit commemorating 40 years of cool Buffalo Sabres hockey moments based on items from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum's permanent collection. It all goes on display at HSBC Arena for the first pre-season Sabres game and will be up all season, 2nd floor, on either side of the big center bar overlooking the entrance. To find out more, stay tuned!

Freeze! Rock!

The first step to our Sabres 40th Anniversary exhibit installation is almost complete. The backdrop to our 2 display cases are being made to look like skated-on ice. These will be the background to the memoribillia that will be on display. Our design team came up with a great technique to recreate ice and our designer Dan spent a few nights perfecting the 'ice.' We painted the back of the cases and the back of plastic sheets white. Then the front of the sheets were attacked with sandpaper to dull the finish and add the skate marks.

Today we installed the backgrounds and tomorrow we add more 'full case' marks. I think so far it looks great and I will post more as we continue. Our deadline is to have it up and looking great for the first pre-season Buffalo Sabres game later this month.

We're Gonna Win That Cup

Hockey. Hockey. Hockey. That is all we have been thinking about as we continue to work on the design and installation of an exhibit highlighting 4o-years of Buffalo Sabres history that will be on display in HSBC arena for the entire 2010-11 hockey season. The items in the cases are on loan from the Buffalo Hockey Experience + Museum (click me) and it will feature a fantastic look at 40 years of Buffalo Sabres' hockey.

This is the largest scale project we have worked on here at OtherWisz Creative besides web projects. We started with the curating of the pieces and writing the story it tells you the viewer. Next came the design and layout of the two 108 x 80" display cabinets and five trophy cases. J. -- with an extensive background in trade shows and museum displays -- had a huge role in the design & layout. We also designed graphics, wrote the text, selected the photos used and are in the process of installing the background to the cases today.

Next week is the fun part- the installation of the displays. This will include setting up the mannequins for the jerseys, hanging banners, mounting photos and items and then placing the sticks and other pieces of Sabres history into the display.

Now I can safely say that I know more about hockey then I ever thought I would know as we have been immersed in this project over the last few months. I know all about the 1976 game vs. the Soviets, the All Star Game that took place in Buffalo in 1978, Hasek's 70 Save game in 1994 and much, much more.

I will post some photos as we progress further.

Sudden Impact!

It is not that I have nothing to say.....
or Don't call it a comeback ('cause it ain't)!

Work has interfered with life (and blog postings). The office has been flooded with projects including a really cool museum-type installation, a Flu-shot campaign, a bunch of websites and a few other things. I am not complaining- it is a good problem to have- I just want to get a little more free-time, so I can blog, sleep, stay away from the computer, etc.

So stay tuned sports-fans.

To keep you tied over- here is the latest rock poster I did for another rockin' Wolf Tickets show. This one has a great 1960s-era LIFE magazine photo of 'Broadway" Joe in stripclub prior to NY Jets Spring Training that year. Oh, the horror and the beauty of it all.

Then there is this.......


BONUS VIDEO BEATS: from Mick Jone's basement!