20/20 Graphic Design

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Snapshots from the beach

This year for Thanksgiving, my mom decided she needed another dose of the beach so my parents and I headed to Gulf Shores, Alabama. My mom is a teacher and when she found out that she got a week off from school, she booked the same house that we stayed in this summer for vacation. Lucky for me, all of my classes were cancelled, so I was able to meet them down in Alabama. I flew standby from Atlanta to Mobile on Saturday morning and they picked me up there.

This week has been full of long relaxing days that involve lounging on the beach, reading, and lots of eating. A little football thrown in there too. The weather has been beautiful. Mostly sunny and in the high 60s. I wish it were warmer, especially the last few days when the wind has picked up and created cooler weather on the gulf. I put on plenty of layers before heading out into the wind, and I sit bundled on the sand and watch as other families come running out in their swimsuits and actually go swimming! I'm a wimp when it comes to cold weather, I admit.

I've been taking lots of pictures of the beach since it's pretty rare to see it so empty. The first time I went out there I couldn't figure out why it looked so weird; then I realized it was because there were not rows of chairs and tents set up on the sand.

The Dismemberment Plan show poster

Tonight I've been working on some of my Entertainment Design stuff. Not surprising since it's my favorite class and I'd rather spend all my time working on it...haha. Anyways, I just threw a poster together and I think I really like the direction it's going. It needs to be arranged better and edited around maybe before I decide how I want it, but I thought I'd post my progress so far. The assignment is to create a show poster for our band and I am doing a poster for a tour my band went on with Death Cab for Cutie.

Tour with: The Dismemberment Plan+Death Cab for Cutie=The Death and Dismemberment Tour

Since the title of the tour is so graphic, I wanted really graphic images. Also, since it describes kind of a horrific mental image, I wanted to play off of it so I decided to use mannequins as my visuals. They look like human bodies and parts but aren't in actuality. Anyways, I did all the type by hand like the rest of my pieces. See what you think

I'm having way too much fun finding Twilight spoofs

So with all of the Twilight madness going around, I thought I'd share some of the spoofs I've found or been shown recently. I read the first book and saw the first movie, and personally, I think they're vastly overrated and I didn't enjoy either of them. Granted, I may not be in the target audience bracket, so maybe I'm not supposed to like it. I thought it was very poorly written and the movies translate the stories even worse than they're written. I don't need to elaborate, I'll just leave it with I didn't enjoy the book or the movie so I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

However, I have seen some hilarious spoofs/parodies of the books/movies and I really enjoy them and thought I'd post a few here.

The first is an article from Entertainment Weekly that I found laugh-out-loud funny. You'll probably only understand it if you've read the first book, since it's written almost identical to the first few chapters, only sarcastic and cynical. haha

'Nightlight,' a 'Twilight' Parody:

Exclusive Excerpt | The 'Twilight' Saga | EW.com

(one of my favorite excerpts:)

'It was then that I saw him. He was sitting at a table all by himself, not even eating. He had an entire tray of baked potatoes in front of him and still he did not touch a single one. How could a human have his pick of baked potatoes and resist them all? Even odder, he hadn't noticed me, Belle Goose, future Academy Award winner.'

check out the full article here

The second is from a site called The Oatmeal, which uses comic style cartoons to illustrate their posts. They have an entire entry entitled, "How Twilight Works" explaining the series' phenomena. Check out the entry here

Lastly, is a video clip from Saturday Night Live when Taylor Swift hosted. She did a digital clip of a fictional movie called 'Firelight'. Check it out below:

I'll post more as I see them. Hope everyone is enjoying their weeks and is having fun preparing for Thanksgiving!

The Decade in 7 Minutes

See more funny videos and Technology Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Typography mistakes

someone from school shared this on facebook and i wanted to post it here. It's an article from the new york times about inaccurate or unpleasant typefaces used in different public places or in movies/tv shows. it's pretty entertaining to read about how designers notice type mistakes

From the New York Times

DESIGN

Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists

My favorite quote from the whole article. Said by Michael Bierut of Pentagram:

One of his (least) favorite examples is the Cooper Black typeface on the Mass sign outside a beautifully restored 1885 Carpenter Gothic church near his weekend home in Cape May Point, New Jersey. “Cooper Black is a perfectly good font, but in my mind it is a fat, happy font associated with the logo for the ‘National Lampoon,’ the sleeve of the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ album and discount retailers up and down the U.S.,” Mr. Bierut explained. “I wouldn’t choose it as a font for St. Agnes Church even as a joke. Every time I go by, my vacation is, for a moment, ruined.”

read the whole article here

Music

So i never claimed to have a good sense of music taste..I usually catch on to new bands after seeing them at Austin City Limits Festival or hearing about them from friends. Actually, I have been better lately about finding new stuff to listen to, but I always fall back into my nerdy old bands/singers that I've loved forever, and I confess I shamelessly love some good ole poppy acoustic guitar singing music. But, I just bought 3 new cds and have a serious love for all 3.

First of all, I saw The Avett Brothers at ACL this year, and although I had heard them before, after seeing them live I was smitten. I have been meaning to buy some of their cds or steal some of their music from friends, but I hadn't gotten around to it or felt like spending the money. Well I broke down and bought their newest album I and Love and You, and I confess, I am completely obsessed. I've had it blasting through my ipod all morning and it puts me in the best mood. It makes me want to drive through the countryside with my windows down blaring this in my car. Listen to the whole thing here

For my second cd choice, I bought Phoenix's newest cd Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Also a great album. I like Phoenix because most of their music is so bouncy and I can't resist dancing around to all of their songs. I also saw them at ACL and posted about liking them but just now getting around to buying their music. Check this album out, it's pretty incredible.

Lastly, I couldn't resist filling my craving for some good ole acoustic guitar crooning by none other than John Mayer. I have always had a huge love for John Mayer, but it has recently faded somewhat and I haven't listened to him much lately. However, I just couldn't resist buying his newest album, Battle Studios. Make fun of me all you wish, but I absolutely love this cd. I was reading bad reviews on it, but from the amount i've listened to it so far, I like it alot. It's definitely not as unique as his previous two cds, but the soft poppy love songs are right what i wanted and expected when buying this newest album. I guess i'll always have a soft spot for john mayer that started when I got his first cd at 15 years old. Check it out, I think it's pretty great. listen to it here

alright, well better go do something productive with my life. hope everyone is having an amazing day

blogger Image problem

I can't figure out why blogger isn't allowing a viewer to click on an image and for it to appear larger in a new window. I think the problem is that once I place the images into a post, I later cut and paste them to where I want them to appear within the post. I think this is causing me to lose the link to the original image saved on my computer. It's driving my crazy because I'm not copying and pasting, but linking the image using the upload image tool. Anyways, i'm gonna repost all of my image uploads from my post about handwritten type and see if that will work any different. Let's see if this works!

Still so excited about this being made into a movie

So i posted before about my favorite book series (that i originally read in middle school) being made into a movie. Anyways, I discovered another blog post about it and got really excited so I wanted to post it here.

The movie's imdb site

Originally from here

FILM NEWS: “Tomorrow: When the War Began”

September 17, 2009

Before boy wizards and sparkly vampires dominated the best-seller list, in Australia there was a little series about a group of teenagers waging a guerilla war from ‘Hell’ that captivated teens everywhere. Considering the unprecedented success of the film adaptations of the Potter series and the first Twlight film, it seems fair to wonder; will Tomorrow: When the War Began be Australia’s first book-to-screen-series success story?

If you were an Aussie teen growing up in the 90s, you had to have encountered John Marsden’s iconic Tomorrow: When the War Began series. An engrossing story that spanned seven main novels (and a sequel series some years later), theTomorrow books followed the exploits of a small group of rural-based teenagers, who attempt to fight back after an unspecified nation invades Australia.

These books were essential reading to teens everywhere, whether you waited until it finally became available at your school library, or hit up your nearest and dearest come birthday or Christmas time. And now, for better or worse – though, this cynic can’t help but feel it will be worse – the first Tomorrow book is set to become a feature picture. Beginning filming in late 2009, Ambience Entertainment and Screen Australia have pumped 20 million dollars into this ambitious venture, handing over both directional and screenwriting duties to Stuart Beattie.

The ‘creative mind’ (and I use that term exceedingly loosely) behind the cringe-inducing script for recent ham-fest G.I. Joe, it seems a shame that the screen adaptation of such a definitive novel is being left in the hands of Beattie. Also responsible for the ’story’ (again, IMDB’s words, not mine) behind Pirates of the Caribbean and the screenplay for Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, it’s difficult to be optimistic about the creative vision that Beattie will bring to the film. Heading up a a cast that will most likely be populated by unknowns is former Neighbours star Caitlin Stasey (as heroine Ellie).

Whether Beattie’s Tomorrow is a horribly misguided mess of a book-to-screen adaptation or a surprising triumph, perhaps some of the real and unavoidable disappointment arises from the very notion of an adaptation.

While film is a wonderful medium, and easily my favorite means of creative production (stay with me on this one) there is something to be said about reading a text that is so fantastically vivid you’re able to paint your own imagery in your mind. When the words make you imagine something so engaging that it will always outshine whatever you’re physically shown on screen.

Perhaps then, the better the book, the harder it is for the filmmaker? This would certainly seem the case on some of the worse ‘re-imaginings’ of past novels, for example, Nick Earls excellent novel ‘48 Shades of Brown should have produced a film far better than the exceedingly shallow 48 Shades.

If this is indeed the case, come next year, it will be with fear and trepidation that I will edge into Beattie’s Tomorrow. And if it is as I expect (read: bad), I will perhaps have to make a note to only watch film adaptations of terrible books.

In Bb 2.0

A friend posted this on facebook and I thought i'd share it here. This is a sound experiment project that combines 20 different video clips that can be played all together or in any order to create a harmonious song/melody. It's pretty incredible, check it out here

Michael Bierut's tips for lazy designers

ORIGINALLY FROM AZURE MAGAZINE

FACETIOUSLY POSITIONING HIMSELF AS A "LAZY" DESIGNER, MICHAEL BIERUT, THE PROLIFIC FOUNDER OF DESIGN OBSERVER AND PARTNER AT PENTAGRAM’S NEW YORK OFFICE, SHARES HIS SEVEN STEPS TO SUCCESS.

1. Keep it simple.
Avoid ideas that require the same level of craftsmanship as those of, say, Canadian graphic designer Marian Bantjes. “Her work is extraordinary,” says Bierut. “I never have ideas that call for that same amount of effort, though.” Referring to the simple illustrations he creates for The New York Times’ editorial pages, Bierut explains that if commissioned in the morning, a designer should have an executable idea by 5 p.m. the same day. Otherwise, turn down the job.

2. Don’t reinvent the wheel [Part 1].
Instead of starting a project with a clean slate, take the MacGyver approach. “I come on the scene and think, there’s got to be something around here I can use,” says Bierut. The logo for the New York restaurant The Oak Room has gone through a series of changes since its opening more than a century ago. After trolling through some of those logos, Bierut decided to restore the original logo.

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel [Part 2]: Rotate the tires instead.
Keep what the client has, just tweak it. “I say, ‘What you have is great, it just needs some improvement’,” says Bierut. For the signage he created for Saks Fifth Avenue two years ago, Bierut kept Saks’s age-old cursive logo in the square, but created a program that sliced the square into 64 smaller squares. The smaller squares are randomly assembled on 90 pieces of packaging, including gift bags and gift certificates.

4. Do as you’re told.
Simply following the client's instructions will yield wonders. For Bierut – who likes limitations – creating the gargantuan sign for Renzo Piano’s New York Times building was fairly straightforward. The Times Square Alliance mandates that all buildings in the neighbourhood feature bright, large signage, to "keep Times Square looking like Times Square,” says Bierut. (He adds that, for Piano, hearing the words large-sign-stuck-on-your-building must have been, "like, the biggest 6-word, ‘F--- you, architect’.”) And so, the almost 6 meter-tall logo was chopped into 893 pieces and applied to Piano’s ceramic rod façade.

5. Steal.
If your idea isn’t working, says Bierut, steal one. The new brand identity he created for Activision’s Guitar Hero is a riff on the logo art for the rock band Chicago.

6. Once you come up with something, never let it go.
If the idea isn’t working, don’t come up with a new one. “Beat it to death.” Bierut cites the logo he created for New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, which is based on the physical footprint of the structure itself. The final approved identity, based on this concept, was Bierut’s third design.

7. Make other people do the work.
Even if the designers are dead or retired, pawning off the work will always yield great results. Take, for instance, the work Bierut did (or didn’t do) for the Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that helps rebuild school libraries in impoverished areas of New York. Bierut commissioned designers and artists (including illustrator Lynn Pauley, Stefan Sagmeister and even his own wife) to create the wall murals above the library shelves. (Read Azure's coverage on the initiative here.)

Excerpted from a lecture by Michael Bierut at Toronto's Designthinkers conference, delivered November 3.

New favorite technique

So my new favorite thing to have in my projects this quarter is handwritten type. I have 2 books that show incredible examples of having hand-made items in your graphic design, so I've been trying to utilize it in a lot of things i'm working on.

Mostly i'm using it in my entertainment design class. We are designing 2 album covers, a show poster and 2 pieces of merchandise for an assigned band. I was given Dismemberment Plan which was a pretty successful indie rock band that formed in the 90s. They have a unique sound and really creative lyrics. I wanted to convey the fact that they were a self-promoted independent band and that they have very iconic song lyrics. I decided to use handwritten type to show that they kind of hand-created their image and include song lyrics and song titles to show their importance.

I love the effect of hand-done type but it takes forever! I always think that I am going to get so much done at once and then it takes me twice as long to accomplish things! I have to write it out in pencil, go over in it different markers, erase the pencil, scan it all in, change it to greyscale, adjust the contrast and levels in photoshop, move it to illustrator, live trace it and then adjust the settings so it looks write and THEN work on coloring it how I like. I've gotten used to the process but I am still surprised by the time consuming aspect of it.

I started with the logotype of the band. I scanned in the different parts I wanted in the look I wanted:

Then I got it vectorized how I liked it and this is the final result:

I did the same thing for the single cover that I am doing which will be 12X12 like a record cover. I wrote out most of the lyrics so that they will overlay a picture of Boston in the winter (the single is called the Ice of Boston). Here is the first scan:

Then I converted it to illustrator

Then I moved them to be layered over the picture. This is the direction I've been going, but probably not the final version yet:

I am also doing 4 cd covers that are going to go together in a box set. Basically so fans could buy all of their studio length albums together. I decided to create grids on the covers like the logotype and then every space would have an icon or the names of a song title. Here are some of the original scans:

And here are the near-final versions that include the front and back covers:

These will eventually be printed on a cardboard-like material. I am also using hand-done type on the show poster I'm doing. Which I think I am going to screen print so I'm really excited about that. I'll probably end up screen printing t-shirts as well. Anyways, more to come later!

Re:Minds, a blog started by PC students

2 people from my school started this new blog and I wanted to share it.

re.Minds is an effort to offer people comfort in troubled times. Remember your friends, past and present, with fondness and humor and share those memories with the world. Hopefully others will be comforted and entertained and encouraged to join in and share their own memories. Find a picture and let us know who it reminds you of and why. Now go waste some time enjoying yourself in the memories we’ve recorded for you!

Check it out here

smashing guitar

Eric Smashes Guitar from EWD Design Productions on Vimeo.

So in my Entertainment Design class this quarter, we are designing an album cover, a single-song album cover, a show poster and 2 pieces of merchendise for a band that we were assigned. I am doing The Dismemberment Plan (will post some of my stuff later). Anyways, a guy from my class is doing an album for Deftones but his concept put a spin on it so that they are releasing an acoustic album. In order to get the images he needs, he set up a photoshoot where he smashed a guitar. They also took video of the shoot so I thought i'd post it here. I thought it was a really cool idea so I thought i'd steal the video and post it myself. check it out!

Portfolio Center president Hank Richardson named Art Directors Club Grandmaster

Hank, the president and design department head of my school was named a grandmaster by the art directors club in New York! They wrote about it on our school's website...and in the NYTimes! check it out:

originally from The New York Times:

People and Accounts of Note

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: October 26, 2009

Art Directors Club, New York, presented its A.D.C. Grandmasters Awards to four educators. They are: Deborah Morrison, Chambers distinguished professor of advertising at the University of OregonSchool of Journalism and Communications; Tom Ockerse, professor of graphic design, Rhode Island School of Design; Hank Richardson, design department head at the Portfolio Center; and Ron Seichrist, founder and president at the Miami Ad School.

Hank Richardson, The Portfolio Center
Hank Richardson has long been a leader of The Portfolio Center. During his tenure there, his students have garnered more than 5,000 local and national awards, and his graduates are employed in the most highly respected firms and agencies in the world, including And Partners, The Attic, Cartoon Network, CNN, DesGrippes Gobe, Goodby Silverstein, Hornell Anderson, Hallmark, Landor, Leo Burnett, Martha Stewart, MTV, Pentagram, The Richards Group, Sapient and VSA and others.

ADC GrandMasters are educators whose careers in creative education have impacted and mentored generations of student creatives and whose legacy is a far-reaching network of industry leaders and professionals in Advertising and Design.
The program salutes those who have dedicated over 10 years of their teaching careers to establishing and raising standards of excellence in visual communications with an award presentation and a 3-week exhibition representing the ADC GrandMasters’ work and that of a cross section of their protégés. Scholarships are endowed by alum in the name of the ADC Grandmaster for their alma mater.

That magic season between using the air conditioner and using the heater

So i've discovered that in Atlanta there is this phenomena called Fall. In Texas, we don't really have Fall. Yes, we have small cool fronts that bring temporary relief from the heat and humidity, but we never have consistently cool weather during the fall months.

Although Atlanta weather isn't a gigantic leap from Texas weather, there is definitely enough difference that I notice. For at least a month, the weather here has been in the 50's-to-high 60s range, often getting down to the 30s at night. My roommate and I have had our apartment windows open constantly this whole time. If it gets warm we turn up the fans, if it gets cold we put more blankets on our beds. I absolutely love the fresh air in the apartment and we get the handy perk of lower utility bills. win/win situation!

Another wonderful aspect of fall is the changing leaves on the trees. In Texas, (at least in Houston and Austin where I've lived most recently) a few trees will change but the effect is not very drastic. The trees here in Atlanta are incredible! So much so that I have basically been obsessively taking pictures...some of which i will share right now

Hope everyone is having a great day! More blog posts to come!!