Went to Portland this past weekend – to surprise Steph’s dad for his birthday. Portland is a great city. Wouldn’t mind living there someday. Here are a few photo from the trip…
iphone photos…
Sometimes, when I wander the isles of antique stores, I like to take photos when I see some cool vintage packing design.
round 2
Last week I had to come up with some graphics for a new series at Mariners. I brainstormed with a co-worker for a bit, and the result was this:
I think I executed the original idea ok, but the final product didn’t sit well with me. It’s not really my style, but as a designer, that doesn’t always matter. Still, I wanted to give it another shot. Here is the final product.
I am way more happy this. The first design was ok, but just felt like your typical mega-church graphics, or possibly a PBS show about dinosaurs. We don’t always have time to flesh out a design, then scrap it and start over, but when you do it’s really nice. Sometimes I have to get all the bad ideas out first, before I arrive of something decent.
“Love Thy Neighbor” for Help Ink
I was recently invited to create a poster for Help Ink. Help Ink uses the sale of exclusive art to help existing charities. Each week they release a new piece of art and have a line up of some amazing illustrators and designers, and I am honored to be counted among them.
When I began sketching out ideas, the phrase, “Love thy neighbor,” kept popping into my head. I am currently fascinated by how easy it is to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world within a matter of seconds. We can travel almost anywhere in the world in less than a day. This is an amazing, and a relatively new phenomenon. Literally, everyone is my neighbor. I think that was the driving inspiration behind this piece…the idea that the whole world is my neighbor. And I (we, really) can help or hurt or ignore people half way across the world, almost as easily as I can the family in the apartment across from mine.
I chose to illustrate some distinct and recognizable home styles from around the world. Some are from my own travel experiences, some are from the most easily identifiable home locations I could think of. I tried to represent a wide array of culture and class.
Because the art direction was mostly left open to me, I was able to incorporate some design styles that I am currently into. Limited colors. Extruded type. Simple shapes. A vintage/modern feel…
I had a lot of fun sketching various home ideas. The thing that caused me the most difficulty?…that stupid palm tree. I must have drawn 30 palm trees. Some ideas didn’t make the cut – I’m specifically thinking of a yurt with a yak next to it. Who knows, maybe after a few more travel experiences there will be a 2nd version.
Help Ink also asked me to record some of the design process. So we put together this little video:
A Little Boat…
Here’s a logo I did at Mariners a few months ago. I like how it turned out.
