I forgot these

Just a couple logotype experiments for Unesco world heritage sites. Tubbataha's a coral reef in the Philippines. Banidagara's a cliff city in Mali. 

I was looking through some old photos and I came across a video my dad took of me after a play in high school. He meant to take a picture so I'm just standing still, holding a smile and saying cheese while everyone around is moving about. It's really funny looking. I might do a series of little movies in that vein. 

I was also thinking about a little font satire project using objects to create new versions of cheesy typefaces:

Party: in confetti, streamers, cake, etc etc. 

Curls: locks of curly hair

Impact: indented or pressed/punched into clay

Comic Sans: non-serifed happy faces. 

Hey Mom, this doesn't make any sense anymore -or- "New Work"

Lettering and accouterments using french fries, pickle remnant, strawberry, tomato, onion, ketchup, and sandwich spears. House Industries' hand lettering class rubbing off on me much?

We had a pretty good pre-crit on our posters last night. Mali was right, that wall looks nice. Everything's really fitting together this semester - lettering, illustration, screen printing, and portfolio prep. Can I be a designer-illustrator? Rachel Zimmerman from InLiquid, the Philly artists' site gave us a talk yesterday and she was talking about how important it is for us to have a cohesive body of work; a unit. 

Baltimore

We like stuff. So do visionary artists. I can't believe yesterday was my first visit to the Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. Chris Roberts-Antieau and J.J. Cromer are a couple of my new favorite artists. Self-taught, outsider art.  Over the winter I saw the James Castle exhibit at the PMA. Like a lot of the artists in the Visionary, he developed his own visual language and used any/all of the materials he had on hand to make his art. 

Justin was reminded of Dan Deacon while we were there. It did seem appropriate that such playful, glittery, silly things were housed in Baltimore where: 

There is a mountain of snow, up past the big glen.
We have a castle enclosed, there is a fountain
Out of the fountain flows gold, into a huge hand
That hand is held by a bear who had a sick band

Of ghosts and cats
And pigs and bats
With brooms and bats
And wigs and rats
And play big dogs like queens and kings
And everyone plays drums and sings

I want to make my graphic design more fun. More absurd. 

Still, this The City from Below poster is a step in the right direction - more me.  

Pause

It's been a few days since my internship ended and classes don't start until Tuesday. Today then, is a pause between what was honestly a fairly relaxed, low-stress foray into professional life and what I expect will be a very intense final semester. 

My internship ended well. We were working on illustrations for an editorial in Boston Magazine the last couple days and Oliver pretty much based the design off of my idea. It was good to feel useful, especially since there were some points where I questioned my competency. In Illustrator particularly. I learned a lot about it in an effort to avoid embarrassing myself and a lot from just watching how he did things. 

I'm not so clear on when it would be ok for me to post an image of this poster I did for The City From Below, but I'm impatient so I think I should be safe with this detail. I can put up the real thing sometime in March. 

A week off?

It seems sort of strange to have a week off during a mere 5-week internship, but when you are just working with one person and they go out of town that's what happens. To me. 

What also happens is that since it's just you and him when a client is all right with screen printing 2 posters you get yours printed too. So I spent a bit of my week off tightening that up and working on a sticker design for my friend's band, A+ Gold Star. 

 I couldn't seem to stay away from DC even while I was off. Jake and I visited the Museum of Natural History and saw a piano/violin duo and string quartet from the NSO preform at the Kennedy Center. (They have a free show every single night at 6 on The Millennium Stage).  The pianist was a swaying, bobbing balloon. In the most dignified way possible.

The pen tool - it's really not so bad

Also, I'm learning how to work faster. I did a poster from start to finish on Friday for a conference in Baltimore: The City from Below.  Oliver works really quickly. Decisively, might be more accurate. 

There are hundreds of port-a-potties lining the national mall. I usually get off work pretty early - 3 or 3:30, so on Wednesday I decided to take advantage of the $10 I had already paid to get into the city to enjoy some of it's free offerings and stopped by the National Botanical Gardens. It was such a respite from the 11 degree day. 

 

That first one is called a pink powder puff. It looks an awful lot like the flowers from my favorite tree - the mimosa. 

After seeing all those Bobby's Potties I'm pretty glad I can stay home on Tuesday, but I did get the chance to go to Baltimore yesterday to see Obama. Rad. 

Interning with Oliver Munday in DC: Week One

So I'm interning this winter in DC with Oliver Munday. This is the street his house/studio is on. I stole the picture from google maps new street view feature so I could be an internet creeper rather than a real-life creeper taking pictures of his doorstep.  I guess goggle is driving all over the country with a 360 camera.  I found my house on it too. Weird:

Since I'm just working with one guy there isn't enough work for me to come up to the studio everyday. Last week I was just in Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday we went over some of the specifics of the internship, talked about projects we would be working on, etc. Then there was a little glitch in getting the internet hooked up. Oliver had just moved into a new place in DC the week before. Two hours on the phone with verizon and no success later we had lunch down the street and called it a day. 

On Thursday, I brought in some sketches for a t-shirt Oliver is working on for a group called Yeah Class. (Thanks to Katie for an envelope that came in the mail that day reminding me of how funny big mouths are!)

We put them through photoshop and made up a presentation for the client of the shirt choices. Then we talked about logo ideas for a charity and spreads for a book on Stanley Kubric. I'm pretty excited about the Kubric thing. So far it seems like I'm going to be involved in  all the fun parts of the process and not just boring intern-y stuff.