You’ve probably heard us talk about the Big Nerd Ranch once or twice, but we can’t help it, they’re our favorite nerds! Plus, they give us an opportunity to stretch our creative muscles in all sorts of different directions. Our latest project involved a pen and paper and some tongue-in-cheek copy.

So here’s the background, Big Nerd Ranch actually holds classes at a ranch, go figure, right? And at this ranch, they host weeklong programming camps, where nerds of all levels can come together and learn about Ruby on Rails, Python Mastery, Cocoa and several other languages that go way above my knowledge level. When the students aren’t in class, they have the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors, mingle with fellow students, indulge in some pretty delicious meals and even roast a marshmallow or two.

The ranch is an awesome idea and has been hugely successful for the Big Nerd Ranch team. However, the Nerds have found that communicating all the details to the incoming students included too many un-read emails and repetitive phone calls. Therefore, in order to keep the Big Nerd Ranch staffers from losing their voices and ensure that the campers actually receive and read the camp information, we created a camp checklist. We brought in one of our favorite illustrators and long-time friend, Greg Kletsel to work his magic and bring the fun, funky checklist to life.

Check out how some colorful copy, a fabulous illustrator and our favorite nerds turned a regular checklist, into something worth reading.