9.29.2007
Sketch Book
I would like to thank Alex for nagging me to the point of no return for me to post my sketches.
Music In Mythology
Awesome new spots from Troika, called "Music of Mythology". Check out an interview with Dan Pappalardo, one of the original three founders, as well as four of their spots for MHD, here.
Fall Is Just Something That Grown Ups Invented
Created by the wonderful people at Shilo for Cartoon Network.
9.28.2007
9.27.2007
Saks Branding Explosion
Pentagram just exploded all over Saks. Check out their new campaign here. It is incredibly sexy, at least i think so.
The Truth Is One Step Closer...
Work in progress posts are truly insightful. I can see my process throughout each stage of the project. All the changes I've made. Just can't wait till this gig is at its end. Not that I haven't been enjoying this, but I've been working on it for a few months... two officially. Hopefully I'll pull a miracle and post the finished pieces by the end of the week!
I really love the facebook graffiti application. It is a really fun and expressive tool to communicate with people and has an awesome replay feature that you guys need to check out if I haven't bugged you about it already.
9.24.2007
Old Work
I don't think I've yet posted these pieces and felt like posting some old work. So here it is.
9.21.2007
The Usual WIP.
I had to age the boy so he'd appear a tad more mature (because teenagers usually are), and since I am not in the mood to completely redo entire drawings, I just copied over the positions of the younger boy and redrew that as a teenager. More to come shortly.
9.20.2007
Simplicity, in Practice is Hard
I was trolling my old links and I came across this post from iA last year that has a new relevance since my company is going to undertake the revamping of it's institution website this year. The current website is a messy behemoth, with subsites living on the same URL with completely different branding and running on a template and architecture that was built in 2001. In internet years, that might as well be the Bronze Age.
In starting to think about the new architecture and the types of needs that the many different programs at IIE need, I go back to the tug of too many audiences to please. On the current site, we are over loaded with copy that no one reads. It is always taken from the print bloated Annual Report. I would love to get the PR team here to think more about the online branding a part of the core identity of the organization and not a superfluous accessory. After, all the the website gets upwards of 400,000 hits a month. This is no small amount.
"Simple websites are easy to use, easy to understand, nice to look at. In practice, websites are either unusable or ugly and in general filled with too many complicated words. Why do designers have such a hard time to keep it simple?"
Read the post by Oliver Reichenstein, Simple Is Best
In starting to think about the new architecture and the types of needs that the many different programs at IIE need, I go back to the tug of too many audiences to please. On the current site, we are over loaded with copy that no one reads. It is always taken from the print bloated Annual Report. I would love to get the PR team here to think more about the online branding a part of the core identity of the organization and not a superfluous accessory. After, all the the website gets upwards of 400,000 hits a month. This is no small amount.
"Simple websites are easy to use, easy to understand, nice to look at. In practice, websites are either unusable or ugly and in general filled with too many complicated words. Why do designers have such a hard time to keep it simple?"
Read the post by Oliver Reichenstein, Simple Is Best
New Sketchbook Art
This new sketchbook i've taken on has been taking on a life of it's own and i've been staying somewhat consistent with my executions and style. I might consider getting the first sketch as a tattoo at some point soon.
9.19.2007
9.18.2007
Happy Ending.. Interesting
A very interesting and inspired video by singer/songwriter/fine artist Mika. The video features a lot of work that was created/inspired by Mika himself. Watch out for the beautiful wall mural illustrations.
Makeover Magic
Before
After
So I work for a large not-for-profit that administers educational grants. That being said, the design of sites here has to tread a fine line between really boring or really bad. But I am able to take some liberties and create some interesting sites sometimes.
One of the challenges is also that we work with the US State Department and they take the Americans with Disabilities Act very seriously. We have to make sure that our sites are as compliant as they can be and that we take web standards into account. We also have an audience that is outside of the United States. In this case, the program Scholar Rescue Fund, is targeting people that may have limited internet access and have slow connection speeds. But the audience in the US has an expectation of what the web presence should look like. To solve the problem, I took the old web site that was laden with nested tables that can really take time to load and replaced them with div tags, a single top banner and drop downs that are semantic and ADA compliant.
I also had to use the imagery and the same color palette as the original site as much as I could. The program was pleased with the results. Especially since they gave me less than a week to design, revise and implement the new website. I was so glad that it was straight HTML and no interactive pages.
Link to the before site: SRF Old
New Site:SRF New
After
So I work for a large not-for-profit that administers educational grants. That being said, the design of sites here has to tread a fine line between really boring or really bad. But I am able to take some liberties and create some interesting sites sometimes.
One of the challenges is also that we work with the US State Department and they take the Americans with Disabilities Act very seriously. We have to make sure that our sites are as compliant as they can be and that we take web standards into account. We also have an audience that is outside of the United States. In this case, the program Scholar Rescue Fund, is targeting people that may have limited internet access and have slow connection speeds. But the audience in the US has an expectation of what the web presence should look like. To solve the problem, I took the old web site that was laden with nested tables that can really take time to load and replaced them with div tags, a single top banner and drop downs that are semantic and ADA compliant.
I also had to use the imagery and the same color palette as the original site as much as I could. The program was pleased with the results. Especially since they gave me less than a week to design, revise and implement the new website. I was so glad that it was straight HTML and no interactive pages.
Link to the before site: SRF Old
New Site:SRF New
9.17.2007
Scanning takes too long.
Unfortunately, taking a picture of a drawing doesn't look so hot either. But you get the gist.
'The UIltimate Drag Off' / Comps
I'm doing some work for a friend who's revisiting a show he did a couple of years ago titled: 'The Ultimate Drag Off'. The show, which centers around a game-show like scenario, has a revolving trio of drag queen contestants who on a nightly basis for the title of the Ultimate Drag Queen. The show is an interesting premise, and a few years ago, I did the initial show design. The design was meant to be very kitschy/gameshow/flashy. This time around, the director wanted to go a different route, a much more concise,modern feel. Initially he had wanted to go very similar in logo to the first design, but I tend to not re-use old design elements, as I've learned so much more in the last couple of years. I felt it could be worked upon. Below is the initial design used, then three preliminary options for postcard imagery. Each has it's own distinct take, although none are done, these are the directions I'd like to take it.
Initial Design:
New Concepts:
Initial Design:
New Concepts:
9.16.2007
Hey...buy this thing
So, with my handy iPhone rebate, I picked up the Logitech NuLOOQ....something I had been eyeing for a while. It's basically a controller that's optimized for the Adobe applications. However, since it's programmable, it works with anything on the computer.
I explain and demonstrate most of it's highlights in the video- however something I forgot to mention was how heavy it is- I'm bad at estimating weight, but I wouldn't put this on a glass table, because it would probably crash right through it.
