Paint your own Picasso.

Keeping busy. I recently did some more design work for my good friend Shawn. He made a short film that... well, you must watch it. I created the DVD package. Check it out:


Front...


...and back, with spine.

The film features Lily Verlaine, a local burlesque star performing her act, inspired by the paintings of Picasso. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend some time with the lovely Lily at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival, where the film was screened. She was delightful. At the screening, a pair of older British women sat behind us and after the film, one murmured to the other, in her adorable old woman British accent, "Well, I hope I don't get into that kind of trouble when I sit on cushions." Yes, I know that there are actually no cushions involved.

If you're not offended by beautiful artistic nekkidness, watch the film:

Woman Sitting On Cushions from Shawn Telford on Vimeo.

Font Nerd Alert!

As mentioned earlier, a few weeks back I took a class in typography from the School of Visual Concepts here in Seattle. Local type expert, graphic designer and typeface designer Juliet Shen (check this out) taught the ten-week class as a sort of in-depth intro to typography, type history, type identification and use of type in graphic design. Fascinating! The lecture on the history of the letter A included so much historical context it reminded me of an episode of Connections.



Anyway, one of our earlier projects was to create a design to be carved into a linoleum block and then printed on their letterpress printer. So so sad that I ended up missing the Saturday session where the actual carving and printing took place, but my design turned out pretty interesting:

The objective was to use our name in a balance of positive and negative space.

Probably the most interesting project was an assignment to create a new written alphabet. We started by choosing one object word for each letter of the alphabet - so anchor, blender, cactus, etc. We then drew a simple image of each object. Then we used our calligraphy pen to draw a representation of the drawing using a maximum of three strokes. The alphabet:



Once the alphabet was complete, we were tasked with creating a sort of illuminated manuscript. This involved many drafts, as the entire paragraph of symbols needed to have a consistent "color" on the page - meaning that the forms couldn't be too open or closed in any of their interactions - meaning I had to go back and modify my original alphabet here and there. This took time. The finished manuscript:



The original quote: Last night, I tried once more to follow the oblique instructions on the scrap of paper. I took the professor's dice, and then, with the last, nightmarish sentence flitting through my mind, I rolled fifty consecutive sevens.

The final project was one we had worked toward during most of the ten-week period. The assignment was to create a "journal" to include all of our handouts, sketches, notes and assignments. The cover of the journal was to be designed with type as the dominant element. Part of what fascinates me so about type are the subtle differences between the weights and curves in a single letter - and the fact that these differences, when expressed across an entire word, sentence or paragraph, convey a particular personality. To explore these nuances, I created a version of what I learned is called the exquisite corpse. (Neat origin to the device and the phrase.) I used the letter R in twelve different typefaces with each instance of the letter cut into four pieces. These were bound into four books and affixed atop a box built out of black illustration board. The order of the pieces were jumbled so that it takes a few tries to get the correct match - so it's like a puzzle.










(the box pulled open to reveal the documents inside)

Since then I've also just completed a poster design class. The poster is now being screen printed at a shop here in town and I'll post about that class once I have photos of the finished piece. Until then, BURGER WITH A CHEESY CENTER!

Have a Ball!

Warning: The following post contains possibly crude and certainly infantile language. Proceed at your own risk.

My friends Sean and Ashley live in Montana - big sky country - and like good Montanans they ski, hunt, fish, drink beer and play hockey. They recently started up a team in a local league and (not surprisingly) named themselves the Rocky Mountain Oysters. If you're not familiar with Rocky Mountain Oysters, learn more (and find a recipe). They're also known as Prairie Oysters, Mountain Tendergroins, Cowboy Caviar, Swingin' Beef and Calf Fries. So, yeah, they're bulls' nuts and people eat 'em. Montana hosts an annual Testicle Festival where you can get 'em served up just about any way you can think of. The festival's catchy tag line is "Have a Ball!"

So, how do I fit in to this nutty scenario? Well, every hockey team needs a killer* logo for their jerseys, so Sean called up his most favoritest graphic designer to help design some jersey art for the Rocky Mountain Oysters.

*Totally unrelated side note: Apparently, surfer-speak use of the the word "killer" to market healthy bread is fraying the fabric of our society and putting our children at serious risk. No, really. From the April PCC newsletter's letters to the editor in regards to Dave's Killer Bread:

“Great bread, we love it. BUT we, and many others, are contemplating approaching PCC to discontinue your line because the use of ‘killer’ and ‘bomb’ are not amusing and should be rejected as marketing ploys. We are pondering a boycott because we don’t want to normalize these ideas for our children or promote this kind of thinking in our culture or at our table."

Hmmm. There certainly seems to be a lot of pondering and contemplating going on. Maybe, as Jello Biafra would say, they and their children were forced to meditate in school. For some perspective, read about Dave's Killer Bread, his marketing ploys and his bread jihad and I'll let you draw your own conclusions. (Thanks to Beth for the newsletter tip!)

Anyway, keep your eye on the ball, nutty professor. So Sean emails his request and ideas and I jump right in and grab the bull by the...eh... I created some preliminary sketches for the team, including a very scrotal "M" which I was certain would be rejected by Ashley, but I included anyway to give Sean and myself a middle-school snicker. You can take a look at the sketches below (as always, click it for a larger image):

As expected, the design with the scrotal "M" was immediately cut (ouch!). They did like aspects of some other designs and I worked with them back and forth a bit to finally develop the finished product:


So, there you have it. Look out Montana, there's a new team in town and they're gonna put your balls on ice. And...testicle jokes ending in 1...2...3.

Though today is indeed April 1st, this is for real. Speaking of April 1, today marks six months since I quit the cigs. It's also now been about six weeks since I quit the gum. I'm nicotine-free, baby! Booyah!

Devil's T-Shirts

Quick post to show off some photos of my newest shirt design. In addition to these I've also got a green on black and a black on black. The jury's still out on the black on black. We'll see how it looks after it's dried and been set with the iron.

Shirts, Shiitakes and Sunsets

Last post was more than a month ago, so what's up in our lives?

First, the hobbies. As mentioned earlier, I've been trying to work on some homestyle screen printing down in the basement. It started out as a way to pass those non-smoking winter nights - hey tomorrow makes five months! Anyway, it's taken about five months to collect enough equipment and stumble through enough mistakes to have some tangible results. See my first design on two shirts below. In addition to a handful of thrift store shirts, I printed this design on a few canvas tote bags and sent them off as Christmas presents. Of course, I also have a bunch of totes with printing errors. When will I ever need seven shopping bags at once? Want one? Let me know. I've got some more designs in the works but I'm still running into new challenges here and there. I enjoy the hobby, though when things go awry, the time spent waiting for things to dry gets a bit frustrating. But most mistakes are also lessons and I truly feel like I'm improving all the time. Oh, and I've found surprising pleasure in trekking out to a large Goodwill a bit north of here to search through their racks upon racks of tees. Beth is fantastic at spotting hidden pit stains on otherwise new-looking shirts. I'll post photos as they come (of new printings, not pit stains).


The basement studio's vast drying room.

Interesting aside - my friend Shawn spotted a t-shirt with a similar design for sale in a local head shop. I checked it out. This other design was indeed a space needle but it was very rigid and had small, jagged roots coming out of the bottom. My design was intended to resemble tentacles (notice there are indeed eight) but I see the root resemblance. It was interesting to see a similar concept but quite different execution. And, yeah, my design is waaay more better.

Next, the farm box. Now that neither of us work at a grocery store, we decided to jump in to a farm box subscription. We chose Full Circle Farm based on recommendations from both Zoe and a coworker of mine. Even in the pacific northwest they deliver a box all year round, though not everything in the box is necessarily grown on their farm (or even in this country - note the avocados in the photo). But, it's all organic, they will fill in their own produce as it becomes seasonally available - and the grooviest thing - each week (well, we get a box every two weeks) we can go online, see exactly what's coming in the next box, and make changes as we desire. Even though we know what's in each box it's so exciting to get it home and open it up!


Those are shiitakes (pardon my French) in the brown bag, and there are some scrumptious carrots hiding under that lettuce.

What else? Got myself a promotion at work, along with a respectable raise. That's good news. Beth studies constantly and is seeing some fruits of those labors. I'm still engaged in that dastardly jogging habit, though only on the weekends. Perhaps I'll start to hit up evenings when there is a bit more light. I still walk to work three days a week and it's a pleasure watching the daylight shift. For a while there in the winter I was walking both to and from work in full darkness. Now I get sunlight both ways, though it is still in motion. Plants and trees can tell, and many of the local cherry blossoms are already bursting out in plant-porno fashion. Here's the emerald city, lit up by sunrise on a recent walk to work:


Crossing I-5 at 45th street on my way to work.

Speaking of light, last weekend we found ourselves in an unexpected warm, sunny paradise (well, warm as in no beanie required). Beth picked me up from work on Friday, we stopped at our food co-op for a few items and then we went out to Agua Verde - right off the UW campus - for some fantastic Friday evening margaritas on the shipping canal. Bliss. Absolute bliss.


Oddly long-necked birds in a tree near the shipping canal at dusk.


Shipping canal with the I-5 bridge in the background. From where I'm sitting, Lake union is beyond the bridge and downtown is beyond Lake Union. Our house is about 15 blocks to the right.


Friday.


Yep.

I feel kinda dirty

As the job continues to plod along in its predictable pace; as the cigarette craving has subsided and the gum chewing frequency has decreased; as the long northwest winter eases out of its shortest days; I find myself looking to more creative stimulation. The screenprinting is going well, perhaps more on that later. I have also redoubled my efforts to secure freelance graphic design projects as a way to keep my design sense sharp while bringing in some extra money.

Craigslist is among the sites I troll for work. I check the Creative Gigs page almost daily and almost daily there is, among the creepy solicitations for young female photo models, a listing or two posted by someone looking for design work. The posts vary in length and information. Some seem honest while others smell like scams, or at least schemes to get skilled design work done for extremely cheap or free (I'm sorry, I will not barter a logo for life coaching sessions or for a collection of portrait photos. Not now, at least.)

Responding to the seemingly-legitimate posts can take a long time, as it often involves researching their business/web site and possibly building a PDF of work samples specific to their stated needs. Once submitted, 90% never respond. I've gotten a bit of work and may get more, but overall it often feels like a pointless exercise.

The other night, after spending a few hours responding to a handful of posts I found myself wondering what my response must look like from the other end of this cyber-tube. How am I presenting myself compared to other candidates? How does my portfolio compare to theirs? Are their tones casual? Formal? Is my rate on the high end or the low end? How many other people are even out there in this emerald burg, reading this same post on this same night, investing a packet of hope in a collection of emails?

I devised an experiment to answer these questions. Yesterday afternoon I created a decoy post of my own, modeled after many of the same vague posts I have responded to. Here is a shot of the post:

The text reads:
Logo design needed (Seattle)
Startup retail boutique needs a logo designed and possibly some posters and brochures down the road. Please include examples of your work or a link to your web site as well as a quote.

(Side note, this is actually not the first time I have been involved in a Craigslist misrepresentation. There is a fantastic story about a certain Mexican rug afficianado named Mr. Dave Tapestry, but that story is for another time.)

I published this post at about 4:30 yesterday afternoon, wondering if I would get any response to such a vague post. By 5:00 I had two responses, both including price quotes for my logo. Response #1 quoted $2,500 and up. Response #2 quoted $45. So there you go. With two responses I answered my question about price quotes. All over the place. It's now 9:00pm the following day, so the post has been up for about 28 hours and I have received 90 responses. 90! I guessed 10 or 20.

I have read about 20 of them so far and plan to read them all. That's where the feeling dirty comes in. Some of the responses are so sincere, you can almost hear them begging "please" between the lines. Every one of these responses has a tiny bit of hope affixed to it, just like I affix a bit of hope to every response I post in earnest, assuming there is actual work on the other end instead of just a colleague conducting market research. Many of them sound friendly, like folks I may enjoy talking design over a beer.

Now, misrepresentation aside, this is also an extremely interesting window into a world of regional artists who might not otherwise be collected into one place, virtual or otherwise. The portfolios presented form an incredible variety of talent. I can't think of a better way to grasp such a comprehensive snapshot of design trends in the Seattle area right now. Of course, most of these are freelance folks, so the major studios are left out, but that's part of what makes this collection so unique is that these are the little guys who are designing for the small local businesses. Nike, Coke, Starbucks, Microsoft - these don't show up in this portfolio collection, but what do show up are visual identities for boutique clothing shops and restaurants, realtors and pawn shops, pet grooming and catering services.

The artistic styles on display are as varied as the clients they serve. Some portfolios include photography work, some include packaging. Some people have worked in the industry for decades, others are fresh out of school. Some are gifted illustrators, brilliant designers or visionary photographers. Others, well, others aren't quite so brilliant. All of them need work and are looking to use their skills to literally pay the bills. With two or three posts a day and 90 responses, there is nowhere near enough work to sustain the workforce. In a way, I feel better knowing that I may not get a response simply because there are too many to filter through. But I also realize how tough this search is and that when I do get to actually do some work, I had better make it count and hope for continued patronage and referrals because I may never get another chance. As far as quality of work goes, I honestly feel comforted to judge my own work somewhere in the middle - showing more skill and design sense than some but also seeing countless avenues for inspiration and improvement.

I'll pull the ad soon. Maybe 100 is a good round number to end upon. Now that I see my ad responses are swimming in a sea of portfolios, I can examine them and take steps to make mine float to the top. I won't need to perform my experiment again any time soon. A sincere and heartfelt thanks to all the local designers for playing along.

Logo Design: Complete

Having recently received notification that he passed the Washington State Bar, friend and current housemate Anthony is dutifully spending all of his time getting a practice off the ground. I was happy to offer my help in the form of logo development.

Here are the initial sketches:



And then two refined versions:




And the final logo:

Another Threadless Submission

Yes, design submission numbero dos to Threadless.com. I admit that after my first design scored just under 2 out of five, I had my spirit crushed just a bit. But since then I've read around Threadless and found that most folks take many submissions to get their scores up. Part of it takes some campaigning there on Threadless. Another part relies on other internet campaigning (including this post). Some of it relies on how you present the design -whether you Photoshop it onto a shirt, put it into a flash file, etc. Oh yes, then there is the part that relies on the design itself.

This design was submitted into the "Innovation" contest and depicts, well, check it out for yourself and while you're there, go ahead and vote and even leave a comment. Super extra bonus points and a free t-shirt if printed for anybody who reposts it anywhere.

Oh, and as a side note, I'm reading up and buying supplies for trying out some one-color screen printing at home. So this winter I hope to be making some of my own shirts. More on that to come...

Oh, here's the design. Take a look!

Score my design!

So I went ahead and submitted one of my illustrations to Threadless to see if it makes the cut and gets printed on a T-Shirt. If you're out there reading this, please please please follow the link below and give me some scorin' love! If the design is scored high enough it gets printed and I get a cool $2,000. Pretty nice, eh? You do have to set up a Threadless account to score but it's super quick and they don't hassle you with emails or anything like that (just opt out of the newsletter option) Tell your friends!

The link:

Movie Posters

As I mentioned before, I am working on artwork for the poster / DVD / DVD box for a friend's short film which will soon premiere at the Seattle Independent Film Festival. After a little break due to full-time grocery bagging for seven days straight I finally composed a handful of sketches and sent them off to get some feedback. Check 'em out. (they're also available on my flickr page).
















Yeah, I actually intended to create only three sketches but I really liked all of the different directions. I honestly have strong favorite. Can you guess which one?