Collection of the hand made letters for The Dangerous Alphabet.

I have been working rather consistently this semester on Project 1 of TypoPhoto. We are given the task of taking an already existing children’s book and re-imagining it as a typographically driven story. I picked Neil Gaiman’s The Dangerous Alphabet. It is a story about two kids who go on a treasure hunt through very murky, spooky and dangerous scenarios.

For this, I hand illustrated every letter in the alphabet and major/focus words for each. Then after inkwashing them, I scanned them in and reassembled it with InDesign. The paper I printed the book on was stained with tea, coffee and flour (for texture) and cured in an oven at 300 degrees. The cover is on bond.

Larger images here

This is the letter pressed poster side of the October 2009 Roughs Newsletter in all of it’s glory.

Roughs has a long history at the KSU Art Building through the Visual Communication Design (VCD) major. Produced by Glyphix for VCD students. Only 140 were made. The opposite side features articles written by the VCD faculty and students.

A big thank you to Jes Mellen on production, it would never have been finish on time without her help. The other exciting news that came to me recently is that it was both entered into the regional Akron Addy Awards and that it won an award. I will be going this next Friday with Glyphix to receive it. So I’ll post the results then!

Business cards for April

A mockup before they go to print, using the logo I designed for her not long ago.

(the design on a screen)

(finished product)

The team at flourish all got together, thanks to our Creative Director, Steve Shuman, with the gang at University Tees the other day. We socialized over some wine/beer and snacks and eventually got a tour of their facilities before screen printing t-shirts designs. Last week we all voted on our favorite designs that we each made. The design above was mine. So I was looking forward to making it on their equipment. I had done this a long time ago with far less useful tools and screening methods, so being able to do it professionally was a good experience.

My t-shirt design (above: top) is a collection of things that visually speak some of the personality and tales around the studio at flourish. I was happy to see it get picked, but even more so to make it and be able to wear it. I wish I had access to this kind of stuff more often. So thanks to the staff of University Tees for making it happen and everyone at flourish for liking my idea enough to pick it.

I’ve been working on a logo for a close friend of mine. She is a stylist who attends the Rudy & Kelly Academy (A Paul Mitchell partner) and is also currently getting back into the fashion industry as a model (her first passion).

So to get her to stand out amongst peers, I wanted to keep it classy and simple. Focusing on her initials wasn’t enough, but rather keeping a high end look was important. I made this with a modified Verlag (light and regular) for the logo and name.

Next week I am going with the flourish gang to screen print some shirts. We all made some really great ideas. ”Think. Create. Live.” is the motto there. This was one of mine that didn’t make it to the final round. I liked it enough to post. Though this one didn’t get picked, one of mine did make it to the final though, so I’ll post pictures once we get the shirts done.

My logos for Corporate ID last semester can be seen here. We were given the task of creating new, or changing existing companies logos as the first project in the class. We could pick anything we wanted to. The companies I picked to do were: Gamestop, Maize Valley Market, FA Skate Shop, Summit Racing, First Energy of Ohio, and the Aut-O-Rama Drive-in theater.

This is the overall all black view of the marks. I will post color versions, and stuff next.

I was fortunate enough to score tickets to the very last Browns game of the season on January 4th 2010. I owe a thank you to Eric from Genie Repros who gave me tickets that were really close to the field. I got to take a lot of great photography from the game.

More photographs here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsthejameson/sets/72157623074745613/

I have recently learned that my grandfather (right) was quite the photographer back in the day. Before getting into advertising and in store promotions in the 1960s I wasn’t sure what he did. After coming across a ton of photos he had taken, I was able to learn a bit more. This particular photo was my favorite. He is seen here with his brother post World War 2 at an airfield in the Cleveland area. The back says “Strauss Airport near Lorain Road 1947-48” I talked with my grandmother for awhile about the picture and I was able to learn that he was known for being the guy with the camera at family things and otherwise. After learning last year that my grandmother was trained as a communication artist in the 1930s, it was inspiring to learn this too.

Perhaps having a talent and interest in things passes on through generations too. Good thing for me.

Happy Twenty-Ten! New Year, new projects and new goals. Best of luck to everyone! I’ll do my best to post more regularly this year. I have plenty of new projects coming up, past projects I want to share and 364 more days in 2010 to find cool stuff online. See you then.

By golly, get jolly! Merry Christmas to all that celebrate. I’ll post my holiday cards soon as my computer is back from Apple (LCD replacement number 3).