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Print Design — a double spread


Click on the thumbnail above for a larger image.

Some fun with type punched out over a pasted-painted background, and hand lettering over a wall of Velvenda Cooler type, done for Print Design class. The quotation is from Henry Adams. I’m working toward integrating hand lettering with type. “Toward” being the operative word here. The print version of this has better contrast, by the way, and at 11″ x 17″ the background type on the right was a more noticeable and readable list of adjectives.

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Color Theory – dimensional color study

In Color Theory we’ve been working with Color-Aid pasted onto bristol. This image fulfilled the assignment to make a color study which gives the illusions of three-dimensionality, rendered through a consistent depiction of light and shadow. I missed making the light and/or shadow progressive. It’s hard to hear when I’m looking at color. And when the 400+ different colors of Color-Aid are all laid out on the tables, I feel something akin to panic.

The craftsmanship of these exercises is challenging — a bunch of little pieces of painted papers adhered with PVA onto one side of a 9″ x 12″ sheet of bristol. And as we all know, pasting anything on one side only will cause cockling, wrinkling, generall drawing-up of that side of the paper. Can’t fight physics. The study shown above is 6″ square.

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Why the lull in activity here?

Well, there’s a lot going on now. I’m in the Fine Arts Graphic Design program at Florida State University , and this semester I’m taking an unprecedented 15 hours … and they’re all studio classes:

  1. Animation
  2. Print Design
  3. Senior Design Seminar
  4. Dynamic Web
  5. Color Theory

I need to graduate in December, so this semester and the summer semester, in particularly, will be a slog in terms of class load .

Shockingly enough, on top of that we still need to eat and have clean clothes to wear, things still break and need repair (we’ve been riding on a wave of those), children still need help with their homework, and … I’ve got regular customer in my free-lance business who still call me on a regular basis.

As my grandfather said, “It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken.”

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In Defense of Doodling


part of a doodle from last year

I always knew that doodling helped me concentrate in a meeting, but here’s a scientific study that backs up my intuition. The new study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, shows that “people may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate,” says study co-author Jackie Andrade. Read more about it in the blog post at Wired.

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A Designer’s Portfolio, 16th Century-Style


A recent post at CR Blog showcases The Macclesfield Alphabet Book, a 16-century pattern book, the precursor to our modern black-vinyl-and-plastic portfolio books.

According to the Rare Book Review, The British Library is trying to acquire this recently discovered manuscript. The purchase price is £600,000, partially because these pattern books are so very rare.

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Two favorite videos (or more)

I really like Denis Brown’s 2008 new year’s greeting to fellow calligraphers. It works as a time-based greeting card, encouraging the viewer to slow down and reflect on the passage of time. Because of his background in sound production, I’m sure he produced the sound as well as the video, making this an entirely original piece.

I also like this kinetic typography piece based on part of “Lions Roar” by the Hush Sound. There’s a lot going on.

A longtime favorite of mine is “The Child,” created by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet for the french dj Alex Gopher, way back in 1999 — or maybe earlier.