The Black Keys Posters

No i am not currently working on a Black Keys Poster. I would love to work on one so... maybe i can pull off some Black Keys goodness.

Why do i bring this up, you ask? The wonderfully talented Mr. Stevens created some wonderful Black Key prints. Personally, posters based on lyrics always seem to make for intimate and intriguing imagery.

Here are the two posters that he decided to print, the Half and Half team took care of the printing.






Please hop over to check out his work. He holds down the 9-5 over a Hawse Design. Again a truly talented group of artists and designers. Case in point, the hilarious and magnificent Joey Ellis helped Matt Stevens take home the Best in Show ADDY Award last night. The sensationally crafted 2nd Annual Guts Campaign was a shoe in for this award. Glad to know that the judges know talent when they see it.

Till next time

Doc

Love Language Poster II

It's getting close. I went back to the type and tried to make it a bit more legible. For those of you who don't know about the event. Here are some details for the event.

The Love Language is playing Jan 14th in downtown Wilmington's Soapbox. They will be playing with Wilmington locals, Onward, Soldiers. Doors open at 8, tickets are $10 adv/$12 day of.

After reading the write up/ review of the Love Language posted over at the Soapbox, was when i decided on the direction of the woman imagery.

“After three decades of sonic observation, you start to realize what really good music sounds like. You know what you like. You like the Beatles. You like Thin Lizzy. You like Stevie Wonder. The declaration, “You’ll love this band!” no longer arouses much excitement. You’ve heard thousands of bands, millions of songs, and find little incentive to embark on any audible adventure when “The Boys are Back In Town” has already been written. In terms of music, we download it, we burn it, but we rarely really listen to it. Perhaps I’m being selfish, but I listen to the Love Language because they write music I wish I’d written. I often picture myself playing these songs for some awkwardly shy, yet strikingly beautiful French girl on a jetty in Quebec, romantically duping her with my plagiarized sentiments. Dishonest, yet undeniably feasible. I could figure out those chords on guitar, and placidly convince some girl that these thoughts and feelings were my own. It’s not like trying to pass off “Blackbird” as an original composition. As you strum, you begin wishing that these poetically mundane moments were parts of your own past, until you realize that they are. That’s what the Love Language is to me: The modest declaration of the universal obvious. Songs written about apartments you’ve lived in and rotary phones that you’ve hung up. Although McLamb’s arrangements are typically overcast, each song reminds you of the towering trees that relish each falling drop. That there are winners and losers, but sometime tragedy makes the most beautiful story. After all, no one would remember the Titanic had it not sunk. That is the Love Language- the celebration of the sinking ship. Bon Voyage.”
– Jon Kirby, Wax Poetics

"Winners and losers, but sometime tragedy makes the most beautiful story" was the line that hit me. I wanted the mystery of this image to be about mood and body language. Not knowing if it was a story about winning or losing at relationships. Is there a tragedy being told with her eyes and closed off posture or the makings for a story warmer and less overcast?

Either way you should check out the show if you are in the area. Here are the narrowed type treatments for the poster.





Till next time, thanks for stopping by
TTFN

Doc

Love Language Poster

Here are some type development and color schemes i am working on for an upcoming poster and show. Still trying to decide whether i should type set the rest of the info or use the hand written type as well.

The magenta and cyan are a palette that i enjoy but also felt it lent itself to the boy meets girl aspect of the songs. Lots of songs about relationships both good and bad. Well see how it turns out when its finished.


Option 1


Option 2


Option 3

Option 4


Option 5


Option 6
Option 7

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Purposeful Pinhole

Every now and again you come across something so simple and wonderful that you have to share it with everyone you know. I came across this in my rabbit trails of late night interwebbing and thought that this is worth sharing. I was completely excited to think that i could possibly brighten the day of someone on the the other side of the world, someone who i've never met before. That old saying of a picture is worth a thousand words is taken to another level. I think i'll have to get some of these to send to those that became my family in Thailand and then see about meeting some new family members in some other parts of the world.



Doc

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Do Horses Swim?

Last night UNCW hosted Tyler Ramsey and Beta Radio in the Burney Center. If you missed it, your loss. It had been a while since i have enjoyed as intimate of a show as was delivered to those who came out. You may know of Tyler Ramsey as he has been touring with Band Of Horses for a spell now. If not I encourage you to stop by your local record store to see if they have a copy.

I, unfortunately, forgot the camera to snap some shots of the show. Fortunately, Millie Holloman was handy with her iPhone to snap some shots of the event. I have to mention again that Tyler was one of the most down to earth musician i have had the pleasure to meet.

Beta Radio cam e out and warmed up the crowd nicely.












Also put some personal projects on hold to make some room for making a poster for the event. There were a few concepts that i bounced around before i had had a chance to listen to Tyler's music. It was his title track, A Long Dream, that stuck with me and helped steer the direction posters. It was a quick and simple idea of and underwater dream. What might that look like?

I wanted it to be a slightly odd portrait of Tyler. Just a hint of juxtaposition in the imagery. If you remember your dreams, you're aware that some things just don't add up. They're off ever so slightly that you don't pick up on it till after your awake. It would be perfectly normal for a guy to walk around the street with goggles and a snorkel in a dream, right? Well it would in mine. Put him underwater and in a button down western style shirt and you start wondering a little bit. Am i in another "Weekend at Burnie's"

Here is the rough sketch of the type. Didn't stray to much from here to the final.

Here is the first color thought. I liked the contrast that i could get but the magenta was to punchy. I wanted to cultivate the underwater color scheme of blues and greens.


Then came this option. I liked the addition of green into the palette, but felt the contrast in the portrait would not survive once over printed. Shift the visual weight to the bottom of the poster and add some air bubbles and i think we're ready to roll.



I ended up going with the call to make the drawing the dark blue and shading in green and over print the "sea" with a light blue.









If you like what you see here, head on over to the etsy store and pick on up. Being this close to the holidays, i have to say it...stocking stuffer.

While i was taking in the show i tried to get some sketching in. I have always wondered how character designers capture people when out sketching in public. I have the hardest time with this. Again, my admiration goes up for all you character designers out there.

Thanks for the visit. Hope you have a tremendous Thanksgiving. May it be filled with laughter and love of those close to your heart.

TTFN

Doc

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Designing For Yourself Sucks

So originally this post was started back on 7/19/10 at 10:49 PM. A little more than a fortnight after my little girl was born. The sketching had started back in Jan. So when i think about it, this project has been hangin over my head for nearly a year. Not really sure how many hours i have logged on this project. It's now close to 5 months since the original post had been started. The best part is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thought i might share with you a few of the revisions and steps that i went through. Some of the original sketches of course were for a boy back when we didn't know what we where going to have. Even looking at it now, the type treatment looks more masculine than i thought.









Once i got all excited and was certain we where having a boy i put the sketches down and waited to work on the details till after we knew the details. You know the weight, time, date, length etc.
Glad i did cause we ended up having a girl and felt that softer curvy lines would lend themselves to the the announcement.










Once the letters had been refined a bit, i moved on to illustrator to clean things up a bit. Tried out some color ideas. I didn't want to do a standard blue=boy pink=girl card so i went round and round with what to use.






At this point i had come to the orange and pink colors. The plan at this point is that i would be screen printing these beasts by hand... I know, "what was i thinking." I have about 150-200, double sided, tri-fold self mailer that i telling myself i was gonna screen print. Then affix a photo of Coraline to the announcement before mailing. I was trying my best to keep it a two color job. Wanted to take advantage of the translucency of the inks and the paper color. A lot of thought went into making the card look more like 3-4 colors.






That is what it looked like a few weeks back. I had come close to finally finishing this task only to realized that Christmas is only a month or so away. Why not make more work and tweak the colors one last time and make it my our Xmas letter. It's already late, why not. Below are the individual panels of the final colors. I have to say i am pretty excited to get these out to the printer, and out in the mail.









I'll post some pictures of the finals once we get them back from the printer.
Hope you enjoyed these process pieces. There are lots of things i have learned on this single project over the course of the year. Here are some of them:

• I now have more of an appreciation for those that create typefaces.
• Those that are able to create pen tool curves w/out bumps or awkward tangents make me sick and jealous.
• CS 5 didn't come out soon enough.
• The Illustrator "Width Tool" will be your best friend.
• Don't tell your wife you won't design and print any more posters before you finish the announcements. Why? It will make you a liar.
• The week you take off of work to be home with the wife and baby will not be when you can finish the birth announcement.
• You will stare at your baby for hours in silence and be totally fine.

And the final tidbit i'll take from this project is the truth in the old saying
"You're your own worst client". I have to say, "Yes, yes i am."


TTFN

Doc