type babies

The marriage of American Typewriter and Apple Chancery.


The marriage of Curlz MT and Arial Narrow Italic.


The marriage of Century Gothic and Century Schoolbook.


The marriage of Hobo and Didot.



This is the marriage of Gill Sans and Georgia.


This is what happens if you combine Giddyup and Goudy Old Style:

black and white!

cover in progress

This is the potential cover for my magazine redesign. It is obviously missing the photo (hence all the white space) but I think I like the text laid out this way.

Click to see larger!

masthead in progress

This masthead is a redesign of poets and writers' old (and in my opinion, lackluster) logo. I am going for a hand-created, organically composed feel in this masthead.

wine redesign (my own photos this time)

(I find it interesting how much the wine bottle label feels nothing like the fact sheet for the same wine.)

wine research part 2

While looking online for reasonably priced empty wine bottles, I stumbled upon a 375ml size, the shape of which I fell in love with. However, my limited experience with this size is that you don't really find it in much more than ice wines or maybe champagnes. It is called a "demi" size (meaning "half" in french).

Much to my luck, though, if I do decide to design my bottle in this size, I found an article at www.gourmetgrrl.com that will help me back up my decision:


Less is More: Half-Bottles. Half-bottles of wine (375 ml) seem to be making a comeback, so before you think your date is just being cheap, read on.

In the States most of the half-bottle production goes right to restaurants although you can usually find a selection in a good wine shop. Bubbly is quite often bottled in half-bottles, called a split, as are dessert wines. You won’t find many French table wines in half-bottles; they produce very few due to retailer resistance. Pricing is where things aren't so even: production costs are higher for half-bottles so the prices tend to be a little more than half the price of the full, 750ml bottle.

And half-bottles aren’t just for the lesser wines; a half-bottle of Opus One anyone? Clos du Bois, J. Lohr, Qupe, Bonny Doon, and Niebaum-Coppola are a few California producers getting into the game, as are the Australians. (The Swanson Merlot and the Etude Pinot Noir are two little bottles we cherish.)

When should you go for the half?
*If you’re having a delicate fish soup and your friend is having a steak, you can each order your own bottle.
*If the by the glass selections just don’t cut it – tastewise or budgetwise.
*If it’s a schoolnight you can still drink up (and drink well) and not feel guilty.
*If one of you is abstaining. (Half-bottles contain 2 to 2 1/2 glasses of wine, depending on the pour.)

In California check out a good wine shop if you're shopping for half-bottles or try Cost Plus World Market; they stock a good variety. In New York City head straight for the half-bottle section at Astor Wines & Spirits and Union Square Wines.

The wine geek tip of the week: use half- bottles to preserve leftover wine. Just pour the wine into the 375ml bottle and cork it immediately and it will keep for up to a week. (A winemaker friend swears it's the best way to keep wine fresh.)

Wine Bottle picks

I took photos of all of these at my house after spending like 30 bucks. But I still haven't uploaded them to my computer so I just took some screen shots of google images of these brands. I think these brands have promising futures because of their creative names, but their logos now just feel a little static and lackluster.

My two favorites are Charles Shaw ("two buck chuck" offers a lot of potential), and Menage a Trois. The last is Pinot Evil, which i felt could be fun with the idea of "hear no evil/speak no evil/see no evil" and the monkey idea they already have, but I am not as excited about it.

Bag Lunch Blues

This is incredibly low-res, but you can get the idea of what's going on anyway.

Short film expressing one of the seven deadly sins, mine of which was envy.

Enjoy!

i prefer enterprise...

Just curious what everyone thinks about the new logo for Hertz car rental company.

before:
after:



Personally the only thing I think improved was getting rid of that harsh dropshadow. I'm not a fan of that r.


EDIT: here's an article talking about the change that my friend found:
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/hertz_loses_its_shadow.php

cheers!

click to see larger!

Blog #4 (GRD 4020)

There are quite a few artists that really inspire me to push my work further. Though I believe that if I spent enough time and energy in any project, I could be just as good, but most of the time these artists just make me feel inadequate.

I think that MC Escher's intense shading and obvious prior planning in his visual puzzles are astounding. I would love to see his work in person to be able to see the actual marks in his works. His attention to every detail in this piece is inspiring to me as an artist.


brandon boyd, while also being one of my favorite lyricist, is also an amazing illustrator. I love how all of his line drawings feel like they started out as doodles and it inspires me to pick up my sketchbook and doodle more often.



Lastly, the wood paintings and drawings of Audrey Kawasaki have kept my attention for many years. I love how her painting style feels so wispy and delicate, yet her subject matter is usually devious and is painted on such a hard surface. Her coloring is absolutely beautiful, and it serves as a reminder that not all art has to be on a piece of paper or a canvas.

Blog #3 (GRD 4020)

There are a few design trends that I have been noticing in logos as well as packaging that I feel are worth mentioning.

When it comes to packaging, there is a lot of heavy set type in different directions broken up with lines to organize the space:



Also, clean sans-serif type is placed on flat, bright backgrounds. This accentuates the beauty of the set type while also catching the eye because of the simplistic clean layout:


Lastly, in the package design category, the trend of recycling and going green translates to the design itself. This box for ebay exudes a natural feel:



For trends in logo design, I feel as though hand-rendered or imperfect type seems to be coming back. This gives logos a certain spunk and playfulness that they might have not had if typed in a serif font:

Laura-Best Magazine Ever!

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/

Aura Board (Print&ed)

For my magazine Poets and Writers, I plan to bring more creativity into the masthead and incorporate more imaginative visuals on the cover and spreads. Dynamic grid systems can be used to keep excitement about the contents for readers. I feel as though poetry and writing is built so much on creativity, and this magazine could just as easily be a science or travel magazine based on the standard type and photography used. Though it has relatively good structure on the cover and inside the magazine, I feel there is a lot of room for creative growth and more can be done to broaden the range of readers that the magazine currently has.

I plan on using some pencil drawn imagery for the masthead to charge the magazine with the bare and true feeling of writing. I want the entire magazine to be an inspiration piece for writers and poets alike. Not only will there be book reviews, but there will be articles on possibly bettering writing skills or getting one's manuscript published, and the imagery used for each article will exude imaginative processes from the brain to the pen to the paper.

As a writer, this magazine in its current state would not hold my interest for long. I plan to make it something that is not only visually appealing, but I prefer to have its content be something relative to a young writer's interest.

Bar Alphabet in Progress

Blog #2 (GRD 4020)

I think of all the types of design, I am most inspired by package design. Effective and poignant package design is difficult to produce, but it's very fun to look at. I frequently check www.thedieline.com just to see what is going on in the package design world and to find inspiration. It is by far one of my favorite inspiration websites.

These are a few packaging photos that I found especially lovely:

This was a rebranding done by a former student of SCAD. I like the hand-rendered type as a playful aspect and I love how the type creates an image above the labels. It is fun, but still believable as a real product.



This one doesn't really need a description. It's just a really awesome idea for a juice box.

I feel like this line of body care products feels very fresh and clean, which is fitting for the product inside of the box. I like the different colors used to distinguish the various products.


I promise I don't have a milk obsession. I love the illustrated elements to this, as well as the thickly cut out type. If I saw this in Target, I would jump to buy it instead of the regular brand.

In this packaging for a laptop computer, I love the fact that it is nothing but the type on the top. As a fan of copy writing, I love how witty the copy is, and how it becomes the design.


I love when package design carries on a design from one physical package to the other.




Ok, I suppose it's time for some bad design:

Why does Kroger Brand EVERYTHING have to be so ugly? Target and Publix goes out of their way to have amazing design all of the time. Why not Kroger too? I hate when people misspell things for no reason. Bitz? What was wrong with Bits? Why does marshmallow have to be all jumpy and lame? Why does everything on this package look straight from the 80s? At least the octopus is happy.


I can see what Nabisco was going for here, but why change what is already working for them? I know the whole clean, plain look was in for a while, but this just feels overdone. They do nothing for me or my childhood memories. I'm glad it wasn't permanent. If I was a professor and a student designed this packaging, I would not let them into the design program based on them. On a lighter note, I think the open tab for the new oreos is pretty awesome.

But really? A circle with the letter?
That's it?


There's just something about the one on the left that makes me want to buy them more. It makes me crave them. The one on the right is so...lackluster. That packaging doesn't really care whether I buy them or not.