The first design drop in my War on Christmas series is something I'm pretty proud of. "The Smell of Eggnog" references one of the defining scenes in Apocalypse Now, when Lieutenant Colonel William "Bill" Kilgore (Robert Duvall) waxes poetic about the appeal of napalm. Duvall squatting shirtless on his haunches is an image from the film that sticks with most people who have seen it; it certainly did for me.
Because this image is so recognizable, I knew it would work well as a silhouette, with the gold trappings of Kilgore's (lack of) uniform standing out with maximum contrast. The sun is a heavily-stepped-on version of the bloody sun in the movie's various posters. It was a very short jump to replace the Huey helicopters passing in front of the sun with Santa's sleigh.
I struggled with the title/tag line for quite a while, mostly because I have used "eggnog" recently in another design in this series that will be dropping in a few days. In the end, though, "eggnog" worked better than "turkey" or "stuffing." It definitely has to be a two syllable word. I am toying with "I love the smell of Baileys in the morning" and putting a coffee cup in Kilgore's hand. I'm not sure if I can get away with a brand name, though, and "Irish cream" doesn't work. We shall see.
As with all of the designs from this series, "The Smell of Eggnog" is available on a wide variety of products at Redbubble, some of which are highlighted below:
I also made it available at Zazzle, on their print-all-over women's racerback tanktop and their leggings. They're pricey, even at their current sale price of 20% off, but I can't resist working with Zazzle's design interface. That's why this version has a different text style:
