One Giant Anniversary

Project Details

Perini Ranch Steakhouse celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023 with a year of special events, a new anniversary book and the Meet Me at the Wagon podcast produced with Texas Monthly. The celebration also included an outdoor photography exhibition reflecting on the history of Buffalo Gap and the evolution of the steakhouse.

For the anniversary campaign, I built the visual direction around Giant, one of the films most closely associated with West Texas. The idea came from the original movie poster and from a visit Lisa Perini and I made to Marfa during a Texas Historical Commission meeting, where we saw one of the early poster designs in person.

Tom was actually photographed by Michelle Sparks in the position as Jim Dean to where I could match up the stance within the original poster. Using photo illustration, I placed Tom Perini into the composition and replaced the Benedict family’s fictional Reata ranch house with Perini Ranch Steakhouse in Buffalo Gap. In the film, Reata was the Benedict family ranch, and the exterior set was built outside Marfa for the production. 

The primary poster became the official invitation for the anniversary celebration and was mailed full size to guests. I also created a second version based more closely on the original Giant poster layout Lisa and I had seen in Marfa. Only three of those variants were printed, with one signed and presented to Tom and Lisa as a keepsake from the anniversary.

The campaign gave us a way to connect the restaurant’s 40 years in Buffalo Gap with a piece of West Texas film history that people immediately recognized, while still making the work specific to Tom, Lisa and Perini Ranch Steakhouse.

No AI was used in creation of this poster. Only photoshop and brush tools within Adobe.