thank you cards
My sister gave me a set of watercolor notecards for Christmas; I used two of them as thank-you notes for other Christmas presents. This created the perfect opportunity for me to dive into my recent purchase,
Type Style Finder, an incredible source of newer fonts by some of the more well-know type foundries.
I picked out individual letters from various fonts in the book, scanned the ink drawing, and used the ghetto carbon-transfer method (pencil scribbled on the back of the paper, the letters traced over on the front of the paper) to leave a light impression of the word on the card. I inked in the letters using a Pilot Precise pen (V7 Fine), which is fairly waterproof once dry.
I then proceeded with the watercoloring... the trees were a last-minute addition. I took a very minimalist approach, since I wanted the letters to be the focal point of the piece, but the words felt bare and unfinished without a flourish behind them :)
Labels: design, life
the disease of design
The Internet is great for self-diagnosis. Here's a dead-on
description of how designers like me see the world, and why walking down the street can cause me heart palpitations.
Labels: design
space pirates
Meant to post this awhile back: these are the pages I created for HOWieZine #8. The zine is a collaborative effort of members of the HOW forum, the themes are decided upon in advance. The due date of HZ8 coincided with the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean, hence the pirates theme. If you'd like to see more of the amazing work that other designers came up with, you can see a PDF
here.Labels: design
a day off
Last Friday I had the day off, and on a whim I decided to play tourist in my hometown of Annapolis. I parked my car in a garage and set off on foot thru the Historic District. No, I didn't join one of those tour groups led by people in period garb; I just wanted to venture off the main roads. I spent the better part of 5 hours walking thru the quieter residential streets and checking out some galleries I didn't know existed.
It's amazing how much more you see when you're going at a slower pace. I wouldn't have discovered the sketch opportunity below if I had been driving thru in my car. But walking along a street, you end up subconsciously observing things around you, absorbing them gradually as you approach them.
Labels: design
in honor of the World Cup...
Here is a pretty cool article on two of my favorite topics:
fonts! and
sports!Linotype went ahead and
identified the fonts on several of the jerseys of particpating nations. Enjoy.
Labels: design
leaving my mark on Naptown
I'm pretty psyched about one of my latest projects at work. The company president landed the bid for a building in downtown Annapolis, and I got to design the signage for it. It wasn't always vacant: back when I was in high school, it was an open-air, indoor market down by the City Dock where I used to hang out after school. The city wanted to make it more high-end, so they closed it down for renovations. Now it looks like the high-end vendors fell through, so they may end up going back to what it used to be!
I ended up putting more pressure on myself than I should of, but it's pretty fascinating to be able to leave your mark, so to speak, on something that was a part of your past.
The sign is carved HDU (high density urethane? bascially very dense particleboard); the text is gold leaf. Because it's in the historic district, it has to look old fashioned, and must have spotlight illumination.
Labels: design
torpedo'd in alexandria
This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit Old Town Alexandria, VA for the first time. The real reason for my visit was a designers' meetup from the HOW forum, but I decided to arrive a few hours early and check out the art scene. I spent a few hours in the
Torpedo Factory, which is (obviously) an old WWII torpedo-making factory that was converted into 3 floors of studio space for artists. There is such an incredible range of talent being honed there, from watercolor (my favorite) to scupture; photography, pottery, metalwork, etc. On Saturdays the factory has "open studios," where visitors can watch the artists in action and view their work.
I wasn't sure how the artists would feel about having pictures taken of their work (and I was too shy to ask!), so I'll just post links to some of my favorites' sites:
coming soon!
Labels: design
food for thought
"You're like a waiter in a restaurant... you can recommend the best thing the chef is making. But if the guy wants a hamburger, you have to bring him the very best hamburger you can make."-- Scott Timms
good food for thought [pardon the pun] on the world of design :)
Labels: design
