It's Alive - the Rise of the Snort Calendar

Ah Snorty, our porcine rockstar - how staid would network security be without him? Representing open source Snort, the de facto standard for intrusion prevention systems (IPS), Snorty has become the visual ambassador for the hard-edged security industry since being born in 1999. In releasing our sixth annual Snort calendar, I want to share the story behind the genesis of the Snort calendar.

I've been the visual identity manager with Sourcefire since the early days, and with it came the challenges of forging creatives for a very 'particular' crowd. But having spent years rolling the rotund ham into our visual materials, the idea to create a Sourcefire calendar back in 2006, seemed as right as bacon on hamburger.

With the concept determined, that's when the real fun started: finding the themes to 'super-fie' Snorty in the most visually engaging way. Throughout the years, we've had many contributors to the brainstorming process, but I will freely admit to the heavy bias placed toward themes that I personally had strong ties to. Popping in my first KISS album - 8-track, no less - seeing the faces of KISS on the Rock 'N Roll Over album cover; or running around a corner to find the Cacodemon while playing Doom 2; opening Adobe Illustrator for the nth time to see Botticelli's Venus; these are all indelible, visual stamps on the psyches of many a Snort fan, as well as mine.

But as much priority the aesthetic interpretation was given, it was crucial to find themes which had the greatest perceived, universal appeal. The first theme was a no-brainer, it had to be movies - when it comes to visually engaging themes, what can be more universal than our favorite flicks? Envisioning Snorty as the focal point of the many iconic movie poster images, was truly inspirational. Sure, a few more movies were high on my personal list of favorites — the adaptations of the Philip K. Dick's stories (Blade Runner, Total Recall) - but they didn't offer compelling visuals worthy of being, pigified.

Snorty has taken on many personalities throughout the years, and some of you may have seen the variations on Snort.org, and other Sourcefire promotional materials, but taking on the movie, musical, famous art, gaming, comic superhero, and mythical creature personas - breathes real, 'bigger-than-security' life into Snorty. Some of my personal favorites, which evoked the strongest inspiration, span from Clockwork Snort, Tattoo Snort, Mona Squeala, Snort Fighter, Spider-Pig, to Squealy Hollow. How many of us went through the early days of the arcades? Most from that generation probably remember spending our allowances playing Asteroinks, Pac-Pig and Snorty Kong, then evolving to the PC/gaming console days (PunchSnout, Snort Fighter, Spam, Ham-O), all the while watching the movies (Snort Wars, Office Snort, Snortzilla, the Snortinator), listening to the music (Pigvana, Pig Floyd, Spam Halen), reading the comics (Supersnort, Captain Hamerica, Bat Pig), studying the art (Sowvador Dali, Pigasso, Lichtenswine), and most recently, considering the existence of mythical/fairy tale characters (Robin Hoof, Pigfoot, King Hogthur). I hope they have resonated with some of you out there, and hopefully you've enjoyed the Snortsfigurations to date.

Giving life to Snorty, represents the creative energy that we have driving the Sourcefire culture, and we encourage you to share with us the your ideas and suggestions on how you would like to see Snorty personified; heroic transformation is how the ham rolls. So come Snort with me if you want to live… to the dark side of the pen.

Want your own Snort Calendar? Take a short survey at http://svy.mk/snortycal. Preview the 2012 calendar on the Sourcefire Facebook page.

All of the Snort calendar imagery, are created for light-hearted promotion of the Snort pig, and are intended as parodies of any originally copyrighted materials.