April 6th, 2009
Watching the Wheels go round and round.
So I’ve been keeping pretty busy, trying to find a job as the last weeks of school are slowly winding down. It’s crazy that a couple years ago I was sitting back in Tucson designing puzzle boxes for Masterpieces. It seems like a spilt second and lightyears away – at the same time. SCAD has definitely been an experience. I’ve met some great friends, learned quite a bit, and I am glad to get back to working. I love designing and its amazing that I can actually do this for a living.
As I am sending out resumes and portfolios, school is making sure I keep busy. I am currently working on a package redesign for Swiss Army Knives. When I get further down the road in the design I’ll post up my thoughts on the project. But so far, I am really digging what is coming from thsi project. The package is really simple, but I have many ideas and reasoning for my design. I can’t wait to share that when I have it finished. It also gives me a chance to use the laser die-cutter here at SCAD. In business we are working on an Identity for a small business here in town. As well as a poster for the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf Tournament. Since we’ve only had about a week of class, all of this stuff is in the early stages.
At Indulge, I have been working on random signs here and there. Above is a tent paper sign we used on the tables – all the plates and utensils were bio-degradable. It is pretty neat to have complete freedom in design. I really dig the look of these signs and the butcher paper (yay texture). Also the varying events make for interesting changes in design solutions. From Indulge, I met my friend Paige and I am working with her to develop a brand identity for herself. She is a jewley major here at SCAD and after discussing with her some styles she liked, I went to work. Alot of the stuff she was into had a Victorian wallpaper look to it. So I decided to go along those routes. I will be developing her logo, business card, and website over the coming months. Below is a sample of what I am working on for this. The logo itself is made up of her initals – ‘P’ and ‘B’ for Paige Barbee. Couple with that is tools of the trade for her. Including a goldsmith’s hammer and a jeweler’s saw. I surrounded this by a Victorian looking wallpaper that has elements of her previous works in it. Some of these things include a scarab, pills, and a ring. I wanted to make sure the background has a purpose, or meant something to the artist. This background will also serve for the website later on in a simplified form. Anyways, let me know what people think.
Tags: Laser Die-Cutter, Legends of Golf, Paige Logo, Swiss Army Knife
Posted in Identity, Packaging, Poster, Tips | No Comments »
April 6th, 2009
Brushing up on my fonts
I’m not the greatest at knowing type names and faces. Hell I can pick out a serif from a san-serif, but distingusihing two fonts with very similar characteristics I find a bit excessive. I usually go through my fonts, and actually choose the font I feel fits with my design – I hardly care about what the name is. Granted, it usually is a famous well-used font like garamond, helvetica, etc. But if the font fits, use it. Picking em out and naming them straight off – I would probably fail. I know I probably couldn’t pick that many fonts out from a line-up (this is excluding the usual suspects like comic sans, papyrus, etc). Saying this seems like, as a designer, I have no regard for typefaces whatsoever -that is completely untrue. I have great respect for type creators and the magical feeling you get when type fits perfectly together. I was actually laughing at myself as I sat there kerning each letter in a sign that was to be used at a baby shower. Yet, as I continue to gorw as a designer I find myself doing this more and more. It feels like designers, good designers, sort of have this minor OCD condition about type. I noticed it as a young designer in the actions of my mentors, and I am noticing it now as it comes over me. Perhaps this is a good thing. Type is important tool for designers. It is but one of the few domains we have rule over. It is one of our babies – cherish it. And Ithis blog entry was about something totally different and I wandered a bit there. So, yeah, I know as a graphic designer it is important to get a handle on a basic set of fonts that you know inside and out. And while browsing through other blogs I came across a nifty little game to help me, and you, brush up on our fonts. So, shoot to your heart’s content.
http://www.deep.co.uk/games/font_game/
Tags: Fonts, Game
Posted in Tips | No Comments »
February 15th, 2009
A Screen Printing Test
I have long been interested in the ideas and process of screen printing. I like the fact that it is such a simple process that can be done by basically anyone. I love the manual-process aspect of it and the variations in quality that are associated with it. Yet, for some reason I have (until now) been reluctant to even try screen printing. I have had a small screen for over a year and, for lack of a better term, have been afraid to put an image on it. I think it has to do with the permanent aspect of a screen. That is to say, once an image is on it, that screen is used and done. So I guess I just never wanted to waste a screen on just anything. But finally I have talked myself into using it up and actually trying to screen print
The design I created is inspired from two things. First is an old Walt Disney animation about skeletons dancing. check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP1TzHbt7do The second source is from Tim Burton’s Corpse bride and specifically the musical sequence about the back story of the corpse bride. The final output is intended as a t-shirt and being a big fan of Disney and Burton, the whole design can be really seen as created just for me. The purpose though is to just try out screen printing and perhaps learn some technique that I can use in future designs. So to create the piece, I drew the design by hand and then scanned it and recreated it in illustrator. This allowed me to tweak the design and be able to create a repeating pattern (Adjust bone sizes and fix weird areas). You will notice that pieces of the finished piece are actually mirror images of the other side. I drew about half the skeleton then finished it off in Illustrator. Again, this was to make sure everything lined up and worked as a pattern.
A challenge I had for this project was the size of the screen. Being small, I was only able to fit one skeleton the screen. This would mean that I would have to use the same screen multiple times on the same design. I knew ink lift-back would occur but decided to figure it out when I got to that stage. I printed the design out in black and white and taped it to the back of the screen. Next I used screen filler and hand painted in the negative image of the screen. I chose hand painting instead of photo emulsion because I already had screen filler (bought when I got the screen) and I hope would make it a bit rougher image. Once dry, I used black ink on some extra paper I had laying around. I can’t believe how easy this process is to do and actually is kind of fun. After my first test I had to wash off the screen and go back to fill some more spots I had missed with the filler. But after it was dry again I got a pretty cool image. As for the repeating pattern, I solved liftback by wiping down the screen really fast with a damp paper towel. I am quite happy with the results but in the future, I am going to use bigger screens and photo emulsion to save time. For now though, I am happy wearing my dancing skeleton t-shirt.
Tags: design, screen printing, t-shirt
Posted in T-Shirts, Tips | 3 Comments »
February 7th, 2009
My Macro Photo Studio & Coffee Cups
I was searching around the internet not too long ago to try and find cheap and easy ways to take some decent products shots. What I found was an awesome blog that showed me how to make a macro photo studio for under $10. That site can be found here. Well after reading his directions, I created something similar with some foam board and tracing paper I had around the house to make my own little studio for free. I have to say, DO THIS whenever you are taking product shots. It’s fast, cheap, and easy (took me maybe an hour at most). I have to say I am not a expert photographer (my photography work probably shows that), but I do think this helps a lot.
As you can see from the picture, this photo box helps produce a diffused, soft clean light. I was using just a regular clip light that had sort of a yellow bulb. To fix the color I just used Lightroom and eye-dropped the background to while balance it.
As far as the cups are concerned, this was a fun little project I did for my History of Graphic Design class at SCAD. The idea behind the project was to create or alter a product so it was in the style of five different designers which we had studied. So for this project I decided to choose the Starbucks coffee cup. My idea was to make it like a campaign in which Starbucks was honoring the arts and each cup honored one artist. Then on each coffee sleeve would be a very short biography for the corresponding artist. Depicted on these five cups are: Saul Bass with the cut paper style seen from his Man with the Golden Arm movie poster, Paul Rand with his reebus poster seen on his “Eye Bee M” poster, Alfons Mucha with his Art Nouveau woman from his Job Cigarette Ad, Marcel Duchamp styled after The Fountain, and finally Theo van Doesburg and styled after his De Stijl work.
I especially like the Marcel Duchamp cup, as it is just a white cup that is signed “S. Bucks 1971″ (1971 is the year Starbucks was founded). It was a bit liberating turning in a design that was completely blank and took a whole 2 minutes to complete. But Like Duchamp’s work, it was all about the idea of that cup, which makes it seem even more right.
I created each piece on a generic dieline that I actually found online after looking for a coffee cup. Each one was created in either Photoshop or Illustrator. The linework for the girl on the Mucha cup was done in illustrator then live painted in. From there, it was brought into Photoshop to add the little bit of shading on it. Behind the girl spells Starbucks with little hand-drawn (well in the computer) tiles to be consistent with the Job Ad. I printed each piece then adherred them to actual Starbucks cups that were donated to me via the local Starbucks (after a couple weird looks from the Starbuck baristas).
Tags: coffee cup, design, graphic design, history, Photo Studio, Photography, starbucks, Tips
Posted in Packaging, Tips | 1 Comment »
