New Work (Sort of)

I've completely neglected to mention that my branding and web work for Great City Productions (an audio production facility here in New York) was finished as of a few weeks ago. The owner also happens to have mixed my band's album. He also does a lot of post production work for MTV and Comedy Central. Anyway, check out the link below:

Great City Productions

Poster-Eyes

Here's a fun poster I've just finished for The XYZ Affair's 4 day tour with Pela, The Teeth, and The High Strung. Should be a good time. It's pretty self-explanatory. It made me chuckle. Hopefully it does the same for you.

It's So Now

You may have thought that because of the holiday season I'd be taking it real easy. You'd be wrong, El Capitan. With days off from my day job (only one more week to go) I'm working harder than ever. Here's a few things I'm working on right now.

Below are some business cards my brother and I collaborated on for our father. He was fussy as they get. Enjoy:



The general branding was done by my bro, I was more the layout artist here. I think they came out rather nicely. The way the words and logo on the front form a kind of building-scape is nice.

Next, I'm working on a logo for toy manufacturing startup. These are some of the first attempts. I'm having a trouble striking a balance between the two halves of their name. They are, as you can see, Intellitoys. They are a technological toy company. Cool right? Well, yes and no. As a designer, my task is to marry the cold ones and zeros of modern computer-chip technology with the cuddly-wuddly feel of a much-loved teddy bear, all the while remembering that their target market is the new "Apple" generation of iPoders, iTuners, and PodCasters with babies. Whew. I've got one word for you. Sisyphus.





I am open to ANY AND ALL suggestions/insights.

Love us or Hiatus

It's Thursday. The last post was over the weekend. Disgraceful. Perhaps, though, you will forgive me the lashings when I tell you that it's not out of laziness. I've been furiously working over the past three days to finish an identity project for the man who mixed my band's album, as well as trying to churn out some inspired typographic design for a report my brother is presenting to McKinney in NC.

Here are some of the variations on the logo I've been developing:




I had previously presented the client with other versions of the logo, but after letting them sit in my head for a while, I realized they weren't really logos at all, but bland arrangements of text. So came up with these instead. Overall, I think they're fun, refined, surprising, and clever. Just about everything I could hope for.

Here's a couple layouts that I've done for my brother:



Notice any similarities? Yeah, I thought so. The only thing that really translates are the colorful lines. I made them for the typography project first, but liked them so much I couldn't help but include them in different colors in the logo project.

If anyone is reading this, let me know what you think.

Weekend Addition

I'm excited, but very tired. I'm currently juggling three projects against both my band and my day job, but I may soon be juggling 5 projects et al. One of these jobs is a lock, but I'm pretty sure I'll get the other one as well. If that happens I'll be set up to start the studio full time. It's scary but exciting. I hope I don't fall on my face here. This means anyway that I've got to get the new Visual Field site up ASAP (make that 6 projects) and really hone in on making my resume hum.

One of these projects is a layout project for a proposal that promises to be a great learning experience.

Rubber's really gonna hit the road here in a second.

I also recently read something in Noisy Decent Graphics that really struck a chord. It was sort of a pep-talk about doing things FOR REAL. If you're going to do something, do it for real. Say I want something written on a chalkboard. I should write it on a chalkboard and photograph it. I should do it for real. Finding some chalk font and pasting it on a stock photo of a blackboard is never going to look as good, or as real. Strong visuals are often made strong by the simple fact that they don't look computerized and composited, but are, in the truest sense, real.

I have long been the world's foremost offender of faking it. I hereby repent.

Vote Like There's No Tomorrow...Today!

I'm very excited to report that my very own AmpCamp.com has been nominated for a Plug Award for best online Indie Music Retailer. You can vote online at this address. You'll find us under the "Media Categories: OBSESSIVE." This is good. Go vote!