I was so psyched to make this the cover of the Jan-Feb 2021 issue of On The Level, the official club magazine of the BMW Riders Association. I found the artist, Raul Contreras on Instagram where I was fascinated by his high contrast, highly graphic style. So I slid into his DMs and found out that he was a Spaniard living in Germany. My Spanish is terrible, so I had to use Google Translate to communicate with him. Turns out that he’s a friend of legendary motorcycle designer Hans Muth (designer of the BMW R 90 S and Suzuki Katana, among others) and Hans was happy to write an introductory paragraph in the spreads featuring Raul’s work. I love how the Internet works sometimes.
Chris, the designer of the magazine, blown away by Raul’s work. Chris is an illustrator too, so he knows good work when he sees it. When I proposed wrapping one of the illustrations around to the back, Chris was 100% on board.
Here’s an inside spread featuring Raul’s work and Hans’ text and the front and back cover in more detail. Be sure to follow Raul on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/raulcontrerasart/
And here’s Raul receiving and opening up a copy of the magazine: