Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
This year I decided to do something a little different for my Holiday cards. Having access to a printing press gave me the opportunity to do something a little more hands on than I typically get to use for class. I decided that since I was going to be using a printing press, I wanted to do something that would look different inside than it would outside. To create the level of visual contrast I designed the exterior of the card in Adobe Illustrator (CS3) and printed it on 80lb recycled gloss stock. The interior is on a textured 100lb paper that I got from a paper supply store called Hollo’s in Brunswick, Ohio.
I spent quite a few hours picking out all of the fonts and characters I was using for the press, as well as doing the research into various Christmas/Holiday greetings across the world. I used French, Arabic, English, Korean and various others and set out to find an interesting arrangement of them for the top piece of the card. What I like about the printing press is that there is a high demand for perfection, but the simple fact that it is all done by hand and that the errors give it a human touch, makes it feel uniquely crafted. So, instead of meticulously fine tuning it, I decided that the extra step of visual contrast was the goal. So, though orderly, I let the press move certain letters and change some of the spacing each time I rolled the ink on, or ran the paper over the type making each one a little different than the one before it.
After that, I cut everything down to the sizes I had pre-calculated and mounted them to each other in a marathon run to get them all done. Below are some screen caps and photos I took of them being created, as well as the final inside version of the card.
front:
back:
I’ve decided that my independent and freelance projects I do on my own are going to be going under the label of blacksparrow now. Projects that I create with Jes Mellen will be Undead Design. (for those of you who know)
outside:
inside:
In all, I created 27 of them this year. It took 1 hour doing research, 6.5 hours at the press, 2.5 on the computer, 2 building all of them and another hour preparing everything to be mailed and sending them off. A little more work than I was expecting, but worth it in the end. Sorry to all of you who did not get one this year, I only had enough time to get so many of them done. Next year I will see if I can do more. Shoot me and email and maybe we can exchange cards if anyone is also creating their own. It’s the right kind of time of the year for sharing and giving.
So I hope everyone has a fantastic end of the year! I am wise to the fact that it isn’t just a particular holiday that owns precedence this time of the year, it can easily be viewed as an end of the year celebration no matter the religion (or lack of one) you may have. We are all on the same planet together, and at the end of every year I think it is only appropriate to celebrate our hard work and each other! So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year and may you all have the best of luck in the coming year! See you next time!
1st Annual Midwest Plushform Show
Carol and John’s Comic Shop on the Westside of Cleveland and Shoparooni on the Eastside are putting their efforts together to host the 1st Annual Midwest Plushform Show taking place between November 7th and 29th of 2008 at both locations. The show will be used as a fundraiser “Toys For Tots”, and 50% of all proceeds from the show being will be used to purchase toys to donate to Toys For Tots.
The Plushform is a blank, do-it-yourself plush figure made of a primed, canvas-like material that can be customized a variety of things including: paint, markers, pens, applique, sewing, and just about anything else you can think of.
After making my Munny during the summer, I really got into the conceptual freedom and design opportunities in the custom toy making field. It is a lot of fun, and a unique enough idea that really provides anyone with a chance to make something they like or create without or without experience. Shawnimals creator Shawn Smith is an ex-Electronic Gaming Monthly staffer who I followed recently when Ninjatown was announced as a Nintendo DS game. So when I heard about this, I was interested.
John, from Carol and John’s Comic Shop just got in contact with me to ask me if I’d like to participate in the inaugural year. Of course, I said yes, absolutely. So should be getting my ideas together and roughing out some stuff and posting it here soon. I just wanted to announce my entry and give everyone some links to what is going on incase they’d like to join too.
Final GD 1 Image Layout Series
I’ve been doing some serious revisions lately on my GD Image/Type/Diagrammatic Layout Series. Here are the final versions of what I’ve done:
I needed to find a way to use an image, but not just “big is dominate” which was harder than you’d think. I think though, finding a creative solution to problems big and small is what this is class/major is all about… but sometimes its hard to find a way to keep yourself interested when it quickly becomes a process of pleasing someone and no longer yourself. After several revisions to the project, I did though, do my best to find that happy medium where I could still do my own thing. So I went back to my basic training type stuff and dressed up a simple concept instead.
My Type Dominate layout most closely resembles my original ideas. I ended up abandoning the robot that I had made and instead refined it to involve only the subject matter and the three image and the information. The “type as image” fading into the background was an idea that my professor gave to me to explore. I actually originally hated it, but decided to go with it for consistency with the headline and giving purpose to the color bars at the same time.
My Diagrammatic layout on the other hand, is quite a bit different. I decided instead to use King Kong to go with the Giant Monster in the Image Dominate layout, and then used the whole “movies being played at the KIVA” idea to bring them all together… even if subtly.
I think my biggest problem right now, is that I’m enjoying Illustration a lot more than Design. Perhaps there is some significance in that.
Hooked on Tonics - Part 2
We aren’t completely done with the project yet. This part though, is complete and I wanted to share it. Jes took over the design end of this project using an interesting technique that we discovered. My job was the type treatment. We used Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign for the whole thing and Gotham as our typeface. The next step, which we are going to be doing soon is making them stickers that have this same visual style to it. Just wanted to share:
Front:
Back:
Hooked on Tonics - Part 1
Jes Mellen and I are working on our first Undead Design project of the summer right now. Last year we worked with a Ohio band named Hooked on Tonics making a ticket sized flyer that they distribute while on tour. They liked it, and like our style together so they’ve asked us to do the same thing for them this time around. The goal now, is to give it a summer like feel, so I’ve been doing some research into various influences and finding some interesting techniques to try out to try and hit that point differently than we did last time. Splitting the work, Jes has been working with images they provided and a technique for a watercolor effect, and I’ve been working on the typography. So the process is a interesting mix right now of our better talents (her’s illustration and mine typographic organization systems). I’ll post the final version soon enough, we just have to get the rough draft to them before that.
Here is a sample though:
Farnsworth House Project
For this project in Intro to 3D Graphic Design, we were given the task of creating three forms that clearly display hierarchy, then were given the task of turning it into an information kiosk that goes outside of the Farnsworth House.
The Farnsworth House was created by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1951 in Illinois and has become a famous reference for modernist architecture. At the time it was built, it was a completely unique structure in the way that it is made completely of glass and framework so that the people living in it could be more attached to the nature surrounding them. The house has since become a museum that people can make appointments to visit and tour through.
This is the house:
These below are screen shots from the PDF file of my process book for the project: 
I really liked my color palette, which was just a selection of a couple colors but varying tones because I wanted to give it a natural color scheme since that is an emphasis of the house itself. The type I picked (Baskerville and DIN) was a decision that had to be based off of whether or not it would be easy to read at a distance for people of any vision handicap and any point size. The other difficulty I had was making sure that the location of the information was within interest. I’ve learned that people do not like to read anything above their head or below their waist because turning or tilting your neck to read becomes an inconvenience. So to solve that, I had to find an effective way or designing the form that would fit all of these challenges. I feel like I did a great job using the space to invite people “into” reading the information and learning more information about the Farnsworth House, and walking all the way around it to learn the rules at the same time. We’ll see what kind of grade I get soon and whether or not I was successful at achieving these goals and solving these challenges when making an environmental design piece for the first time.
