Skinny Sneakers

Skinny sneakers sketch. Click for larger version
(they don't get any less skinny, though).

It's rare that I just sketch for sketching's sake these days - the closest I come to doing that is doodling while I'm on the phone, which sometimes yields some good results - only sometimes, though. But most of the time I'm sketching these days, I'm doing it for a project - roughing out ideas and getting layouts into shape. That's kind of a shame, but it's the result of being busy with client work, which is nothing to complain about.

The skinny sneakers piece was done when my band Restraining Order was in the studio in 2003, recording our five song E.P. Five on Blue. We spent a lot of long Saturdays in that studio, and once the basic tracks (drums, bass and a guide guitar) were recorded, it tends to then become only one band member at a time doing the recording - which leaves the rest of us plenty of down time in the control room.


Closeup. Isn't messy linework nifty?

We try to make that down time useful - tracking changes we've made or need to make to the songs, working on the track order, liner notes and other information for the CD packaging - but all of that doesn't take very long, and we wind up just b.s.ing and eating pizza for hours on end. Bands like pizza.

Somewhere in the midst of that down time, I grabbed my pen and paper and started sketching my bandmate Phil's Converse-covered feet. I'm not usually good with sketchbooks - I feel too much pressure to fill them with only great drawings - I'm way too conscious when I start working a sketchbook (especially if it's bound, and the pages can't be removed without ripping them out, leaving a noticeable torn edge - I hate that) but here it worked out pretty well. I was in a Zen state of relaxation, and the drawing came out nicely, I think.

Eventually, when I started mining my past work for use on my Print On-Demand stores, I found this piece and wondered if it would work on any product. It's more arty and less designy than most of my other pieces, and there's no real theme or clever double-meaning - but I still used it, adding it to (among other products) a greeting card design. The inside of the card says, "What's swingin'?" - because that one foot is swinging, you see.

I've sold a couple so far - probably from fans of Converse, or maybe sneakers in general. I've always seen sneaker loyalists as the biggest untapped resource in this country, and now it's proving to be true. I win.


Skinny Sneakers greeting card on Zazzle

Video Productions by David

I'll have to post a more complex logo design project soon, because some of the recent ones I've selected - like this one - were really simple.

A local videographer found me and asked me to develop a logo for his company. He had a very specific idea in mind: since his name is David, and his company is named after him, he wanted a representation of Michelangelo's statue of David, facing to the side, looking into a video camera. He also knew he wanted a subdued color, and he referenced one of my other logo designs in terms of the style - he wanted a simple, high-contrast representation of David and the camera.

And that's what he got. He gave me these images of camera for reference on the style he wanted to show in the logo:


And I used this image of the David statue for reference:


Before I did the final rendering of the image, I composed a rough layout for the client, so he could see the basic layout and approve that before I got into the more detailed work of rendering the image:


When he saw this, he was generally happy - he liked the formality of the layout and typeface - but he asked that the colors be reversed, and that the camera be placed on a tripod. I then worked out this version of the logo, in three color variations:

He liked the blue, but he had one minor request - he wanted the camera to be a little bigger - so it didn't look so much like a consumer-grade camcorder. Here's the final logo - it's a subtle change, maybe a 105% increase on the camera image:


And that was it... until we started working on the website. Once my client saw the above logo in the original website layout - positioned in the traditional upper-right location - it looked "off" somehow - he thought it might look more natural if David were look at the text, so we switched the locations and changed the layout a bit, removing the color boxes.

Here's the web version:


Video by David website - click to visit.

The original logo was still used on business cards, brochure, and other marketing materials.

The website was laid out in DreamWeaver, integrating a header and navigation bar I developed in Flash. My client provided the images and sample video files... which should probably be updated to Flash Video and integrated into the site, but at the time he preferred Windows Media Player files. Yeah... it might be time to check in with him for an update.

Check out www.videobydavid.com

Microindie

Microindie Records is (as you would guess) a small, home-run record label that specializes in smallish runs of great records and CDs. I came to know the label's owner Mike back in 1995, when, under a different label (Drive-In Records), he put out my former band cuppa joe's 7" single -which I mentioned in a roundabout way in a previous post)

Mike created Microindie as an offshoot to Drive-In in the early 2000's, and in 2005 he asked me to design a logo for the label. Being a small label, they didn't have a huge budget, so this was the kind of logo project where I do all the exploration work on my own, and give the client a final design - which Mike was fine with. I still did lots of sketching - I just didn't follow through with the alternate concepts, and didn't have get those concepts in shape for a client to see them.

I think Mike suggested, or even specifically requested, a vinyl record coming out of an envelope - or maybe not. But either way,it seemed logical way to go - the label does a lot of mail order work. So here's what I came up with:


Yep - record coming out of envelope. Lo-fi typefaces, and a little ruler-like line with tic marks, to indicate the micro-ness. I gave him the full color version, one-color version (seen here in all-brown and all-black variations), and a grayscale verison. I'm not sure if he used any of the versions besides the full color, but hey - at least he had them available.

This was a two-color logo - I picked out the browny-orange color and only used tints of that color and black. Were this logo ever used in offset printing, with spot colors, that would allow the extra tints (which kind of register as different colors) to be printed at no additional cost. That'a real long shot, though - but as I've discussed before, using this kind of setup really unifies the logo nicely, color-wise.


Tray card for the bearsuit CD "Cat Spectacular". Yes, Microindie does
more than just records.

Mike was really pleased with the logo. He had a couple releases in the pipeline already, and I'm pretty sure the first release was the one above - an album by a British band named bearsuit. It was cool to see the piece in print, especially so soon after I designed it (a few weeks or so) - and I get nice little care packages of CDs from the label every so often. Free stuff is good.

My Girl Won't Recycle

The single cover, seen by at least a dozen people.

I the late 90's, I had an idea for a song about a young woman who had many positive attributes, but one fatal flaw: she would not recycle. I worked out the first verse and part of the second, writing it down in a notebook... where it sat for a few more years until 2002, when I finally fleshed it out in hopes of having my band Restraining Order learn it so we could perform, and ultimately record, the song. Here are the original lyrics:

My girlfriend wears her safety belt
She never lets it slide
She's always thinking of her health
When we go for a ride

She stays away from MSG
In her Chinese food
But if they inadvertently
Add some, she's never rude

Just one point of contention
That I feel I must mention

My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
What the hell is her excuse?

She's quite aware of homeless pets
Funds all their charities
Sends money every chance she gets
She just can't deny their pleas

And when she's tired of her clothes
They go in plastic bags
Salvation Army always knows
She brings the finest rags

She's so considerate
There's one thing I don't get

My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
What the hell is her excuse?

She backs up all her files
So careful changing aisles
Participates in walk-a-thons
Covers her mouth when she yawns
Gives blood when time allows
Drinks milk from free range cows
But why can't her plans
Include reusing cans?

Too many ugly contradictions
Just one thing left to do
Since I can't change her predilections
She'll be recycled for someone new

She's normally so nice
Except for this one vice

My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
She has no excuse
My girl won't recycle
She won't reuse - she won't reduce
My girl won't recycle
There is no excuse

The tune was titled "My Girl Won't Recycle". I recorded a demo on a very primitive piece of Mac Recording software called Easy Beat, which I loved at the time, because it was the only MIDI software I had - this was a few years before GarageBand was released. The sounds are pretty crappy, but it hardly matters for a demo - this is just a guide for the band to learn the basic structure of the song, and for our singer to learn the lyrics - and for those purposes, it worked fine.

Here's the original demo, followed by the Restraining Order version below:

My Girl Won't Recyle - original demo version:




My Girl Won't Recycle - final studio version:



I recorded the vocals for the demo right after waking up one morning, at around 5:00 (I was going on a weekend trip to see a friend and wanted to get it done before I left) - my voice is not usually so hoarse and ominous-sounding.

Of course, many things change when a band records a song. For one, my demo only had simple bass, drums and "guitar" parts (which really sounded more like an old Casio keyboard), but our band has a couple guitarists, as well as a sax player - so the arrangement was changed - I think for the better.

The tempo also increased dramatically - also for the better. The demo is pretty dirge-like, which wasn't necessarily my intention - it just came out that way. That felt natural when only the demo existed, but after hearing the band version and playing it live a bunch of times, the faster, upbeat version is the "real" version to me now.

Another big difference: the intro. I don't remember ever hearing "Judy In the Sky with Glasses" before, but the few people who heard the demo thought the songs' beginnings were way too similar, so the band worked out a totally different intro, with some dramatic guitar/sax interplay.

Also, once we got into the studio, our singer Jason realized that he couldn't fit in all the words in that last verse (the word"predilection" was especially hard for him to deliver at the new, faster tempo) - so he and I worked out a new verse with less syllables:

Although it may seem to severe
I know what I must do
My waste reduction plan is clear:
Recycle her for someone new

He also suggested changing one instance of "What the hell is her excuse?" to "What on Earth is her excuse?" to better tie in the environmental theme - and so we did. That was a cool idea and a nice way to vary the lyrics a little.

I did the sound effects in the bridge - the girly "Excuse me!" (for the aisle-changing reference), the yawn (for the mouth-covering reference) and the cow sounds. I love doing cow sounds.

The song came out on our five-song E.P. Five on Green (also available on iTunes) and garnered a good reaction from both those who heard the recorded and the live version. People like the funny, I guess.

I thought the song had potential to get us some publicity, so I created a single cover (using the same "mean girl" drawing I used on my Staring Problem products (I like to recycle for real, y'all), burnt about 50 copies of the CD (with only "Recycle" on it), and starting sending it out to people. I don't remember my distribution list, except I did send a copy to the Philadelphia Recycling Office.

That was a pretty bold move, but it paid off (I guess they're not used to receiving music submissions at city offices) - someone there liked the song and sent it to a P.R. firm who handled only environmental companies and causes. That agency was putting together an Earth Day celebration at Citizens Bank Park (home of the Phillies), and they asked us to play for a bunch of school kids who were being rewarded for their school's recycling efforts by having a day just for them at the park.

So we "kidfied" many of our songs ("Wars We Need to See" became "Smores We Need to Eat" - not very environmentally-themed, but much more kid-friendly as kids don't tend to like warfare) and spent the day performing. The Philly Phanatic actually came out in the middle of one of our sets and joined us. He came marching out during "This Land", and everyone went wild. The Phanatic alternated between conducting the band, mock-grabbing our instruments, and generally causing havoc amongst the kids. He really is a great performing, getting a huge reaction without even being able to speak. We were all very impressed with him - he's now my second-favorite green creature. And - we were on the evening news on at least one station - our biggest clam-to-fame thus far (unfortunately).


Restraining Order at Citizens Bank Park for Earth Day 2006. And no,
unfortunately, we aren't still in touch with the Phanatic.

It was a nice little run, all from one song idea. I should write another one, maybe about getting free drums, in the hopes that it will yield free drums in real life. I'm always prepared for more drums.

Adam West-Style Batman Sketch

A little Batman sketch, absently done on the phone while I was talking to my wife. I do a lot of phone sketching, and sometimes they turn out pretty neat. It's always surprising - I'm barely conscious of what I'm drawing while I'm doing these sketches, but that probably only helps with the fluidity.

The full body version is a little awkward, though:

I actually finished the sketch post-phone call, and I was a bit too conscious of what I was doing at that point - kind of like a hypnotized person coming out of a trance ("Where -- where am I?"). His right arm (the one on the left0 is a little forced. Looking at the cropped version at the top now, it seems I should have had Batman bound in some way - it would have paid off the anguished, struggling look on his face, and his body position (especially the upper arms) would have worked better if they had something to struggle against.

The Adam West-era style was probably subconsciously influenced - a friend recently saw him at the Monster Mania convention (I went a couple years ago) in my town, Cherry Hill, and said he was very entertaining. I guess that stuck in my craw (or is it "gullet"?). Had someone mentioned seeing Christian Bale, this whole sketch may have taken a decidedly different turn.

After sketching and scanning, I cleaned up the pencil work a little - the slight tone is actually the tone of the paper (I deleted it outside the figure) and added a blue tint. If I ever add linework and true color, guess where I'll post the updated version? Right here, on my blog. That's the answer.

The Jim Henson Company Proposed Website Redesign

Here's something weird - about a year ago, I visited the Jim Henson Company website, and I was not pleased with what I saw. I'll get more in-depth on Jim in the future, but suffice it to say, he's a a hero of mine - maybe the only person I look up to or idolize, and not just as an artist, but as a human being. So when I saw the Henson.com (it's since been redesigned), I just didn't feel it was worthy of the man or his legacy.

The layout back then was simple, but inelegant, and broken in many places - links didn't work and images were missing. And for some reason, whoever put the site together (in previous and current versions) likes using Jim's "Henson" signature truncated at the top of the page. I do not approve.

The whole site is very 90's - it's not elastic in its layout - the content sits in one narrow area in the center of the page, no matter how wide the window is. The Flash elements have no smooth transitions (something Flash is ideal for), and I swear the frame rate on the Flash elements is too low (probably at the default of 12 fps) - an error that screams amateur. I'm not usually so critical of others' work, but this is Jim Henson here - maybe no site could ever be good enough for me, but I know it could be better than this.

Archived versions of Henson.com


Click image for larger view.
Page Two Concept | Page Three Concept

So I did something a little wacky: I created some static layouts for a redesign, found the contact information for the company's Marketing Manager, and sent him links to my work with a short e-mail saying that I'm a designer, an admirer of Jim Henson, and I'd like to improve the site.

I kept the layout very simple, leaving the full Jim Henson signature intact and (after finding a vector version of the official Kermit image/logo) extracting the true Kermit color for the background. I found a few images and treated them with the color as well.

And... I never heard back from them. Or not "back" - I just never heard from them. The current redesign of the site went up a few months later - probably with no connection to my e-mail or proposal - as much as I'd like to believe I shamed them into reworking the website, I'll assume they were already planning the update. It was a step or two in the right direction, but still a long way from what a Jim Henson website could and (in my opinion) should be.

I believe this is the first time I ever did this - proposed a redesign for a company (especially a big company) out of a combination of disappointment at the current site and enthusiasm for what it could be. I doubt I'll ever try something like this again - not because it didn't work out, but because there's really only one Jim Henson, after all.

WCS Brochure

Brochure front and back exterior (top), and interior
spread (bottom). Click for larger image.

I used to a lot of print design in the 90's - brochures and booklets, full stationery systems (letterhead, envelope, and business card), ads for newspapers and magazines, book covers, DVD and CD packaging, flyers, posters and more. However, over the past ten years, that work has declined significantly - and the print pieces I do create these days are often handed over to the client for production.

I guess you can owe this decline to a couple factors. First, I trust you may have heard of the Internet. Many of the business I develop logos for these days are almost completely web-based - they still need business cards (I always use VistaPrint these days), but it's rarely worth their time to create offset-printed envelopes (if anything, they print their own labels) or letterhead (a Word template almost always suffices). Aside from those essentials, and some more straightforward business forms and documents (estimates, invoices, even fax cover pages!), these clients don't need much in terms of printing in the 2000's. For more specialty pieces, like display materials (large posters, banners, table tents) they're more than likely to hand the project over to a vendor who may have an in-house design department (or even a single designer) who can put together a design - and then it gets printed or produced under the same room. Who can argue with that kind of convenience? Not I. And small businesses are much more likely to advertise online than in more expensive print publications with longer lead times, less focused audiences and increased fees. What I said in 1993 still holds true: "The Internet is Good." (I never really said that in '93 - '96, maybe, but not '95).

The other factor is home-based printing. Up until the early 90's, consumer-grade printers either really sucked, or they were really expensive - sometimes both. But nowadays, you can get a more than decent inkjet, LED or laser printer for your home business for a reasonable amount of money, and produce your own printed materials in quantities too small for a commercial printer. Even brochures, booklets, and other material requiring specialty finishing (like folding, trimming, or binding) is achievable. If I were a teenager now, I'd have a publishing empire going full speed.

Detail from interior spread. Do you wish the text was larger, so
you could read it? If so, then you are a nerd.

Where am I going with this? The piece here, for a water consulting firm named WCS, was created about four or five years ago, when I was still getting a decent trickle of print work. As is often the case, the client did not have an unlimited budget, so they asked for a two-color piece. I designed the piece in Adobe InDesign, selecting a fairly straight blue spot color, which I used along with black. Initially I tried making the photos into duotones, which means they're created using a percentage of black and the spot blue - but (from what I remember) I was reminded of the crappy, cheap textbook photos of my youth, and so I went with all-blue photos - which are called "monotones", by the way - as if you couldn't have guessed that.

I didn't assist with the printing of the final piece - the client went through a few rounds of text changes (quite a few, as I recall), but once it was finalized, I handed over my InDesign files, as well as a .pdf, and they - I assume - took it from there. This was another of those nebulous projects where I never hear from the client again after my role is complete - I can only assume the client, or one of their vendors, went off and printed the final brochures. I hope they didn't get nutty with my source files and switch the photos back to duotones - that would hurt my feelings.

Future Story Ideas

Here's a "living blog post" to remind me of the ideas I've had for future stories, be they feature length screenplays, short screenplays, short stories, prose books, children's books, audio plays, or as-yet-to-be-determined ideas. Some of these are pretty rough and some are just nuggets of ideas, but I'm okay with that - they'll be smoothed out and extended once I take them out of the drawer.

Malformed
A pre-teen boy living in a swampy backwoods village gets severely injured. For the first time in his life, his mother is forced to bring him to a hospital. Once he returns home, he is followed by a strange woman who appears outside his window. When the boy seeks out the mysterious woman, he learns of a dark episode from his childhood. Fun Fact: While I was working out this premise, I didn't have a title - then I got a "malformed request" from a website's contact form. Nice timing.

(Untitled - maybe "Backroads")
When I was younger, my Dad told me about a trip my family took, to a friend or relative's house in rural North Jersey - a part of the state we'd never been to before We arrived late in the evening on a Friday, after the sun had set (so my Dad didn't have a good sense of the area), and were invited to stay for the night. After dinner, I got violently ill - vomiting and shaking, with deep fever-like symptoms. My parents called around and got an emergency number for a pharmacist who worked out of his house. This is the mid-70's (a perfect time for horror - no cell phones or GPS), by the way. My Mom stayed with the friend/relative while my Dad drove me at night down dark, unfamiliar roads trying to find the pharmacist's house. When he finally found it, the pharmacist was very strange, and had this big parlor-like room where he kept his drugs, which he was in no rush to dispense to my Dad - but eventually, he did. I'm pretty sure I remember laying in the back seat while my Dad was driving around in a panic, trying to find the place. It may have been a fever dream, I may have just imagined it after hearing him tell me about it a few times, but I know there's at least a short horror story here. A sick kid, unfamiliar area, strange guy who you're depending on for help... seems perfect.



The Sleepover
A 12-year-old boy recovers from a long-term illness. His parents are let him have a celebratory sleepover, inviting a dozen or so of his friends. In the excitement and confusion, they don't realize that one of the boys doesn't really know their son (though he does seem familiar) and no one can remember inviting him. Once the parents are upstairs for the night, the uninvited boy begins causing chaos in the house, telling the other boys about the secrets of adulthood and daring them to do unthinkable acts before dawn.

(untitled - dual-photo story)
One of the idea nuggests: A character visits another person that they don't know well (maybe a friend-of-a-friend, or someone hosting a party) and sees himself/herself in one of the framed photos on the wall (possibly at a theme park), with a camera - he/she reveals that he/she has the reverse photo at home. Not sure where I'd go from there, but I've always thought this kind of coincidence must happen (especially on sites like Flickr) - I also think the idea is somewhat influenced by Smoke, a favorite movie of mine. Inspired by two family photos from my own family, from a Disney trip - two of us were taking pictures of my nephew meeting Mickey, from opposite sides, and got each other in the frame.

Overgrowth (in progress)
Right after we bought our house and moved in, I was sitting in our living room and checking out the property out on Google Earth. I saw a strange structure in the back yard (the satellite photo was a few years old), then turned right in my chair, pulled up the blinds, and saw a mound of oddly-packed dirt in the spot where this structure once stood. It got me thinking of a story idea, and I've recently begun working on it as an audio play:
A young guy who sells things on eBay for a living is asked by his father to move into his recently-deceased Great Uncle's house to sell off the belongings. Once he's there, he finds satellite evidence of a structure in the house's foliage-heavy back yard, and then runs into a strange retiree who was very close to his Great Uncle. Things unravel from there.

Possible titles: Data Loss. System Recovery. Failure.
A girl computer tech gets assigned data recovery on a client's computer. She starts working on the recovery, then finds out from her manager that the client has died. The girl begins looking through the data she's recovered and getting to know her deceased client.

(untitled - maybe "Scheduled Posts")
Probably too close to the above idea for both to work. A man dies, and his wife discovers that he has written months' worth of blog posts, each scheduled to be published daily. She is given the opportunity to receive these posts all at once, but declines, instead enjoying the simulated daily updates from their loved one. (this may be too small an idea - could be incorporated into another story as a subplot)

Prussian Blue
A 20-year-old young man goes to a family funeral for his Great Uncle Through interweaving anecdotes from different family members and friends, he discovers that as a little boy, he was responsible for his Great Uncle losing one of his eyes. The fake eye he wore, by the way, was colored "Prussian Blue" - a color I once read on a tube of paint in college. I started working on this story idea in 1993, and then saw a novel with the same title and, stubbornly, gave it up. Now I see on Amazon that there are a few books and audio books with the same title - I should have hung in there.

The Border Guard
Children's book. A little girl in a divided city saves the life of a scary guard who controls the passage between the two halves of the city. In gratitude, he gives her a week to decide who she'd like to take with her through the gate - and there will be no return. I began drawing the main characters... also back in '93.

I'll post updates if/when any of these gets some progress - Overgrowth will be the first.

Interactive Creature Maker prototype

Click above to play . Click on a piece once to grab it - then drag it so the blinking dot is laying on top of one of the dots on the body - then click again.

Wow - I totally forgot I did this. This little piece was an experiment when I was working on my project Jabloo, trying to find my way. At first I was thinking along the lines of an interactive world where you created your main character (like a lot of other game - Spore, most directly) and then use that creature to navigate a world.

I didn't get far before I decided to change directions, but I did work out a little system in Flash to allow the user to pick up a body part and lay it on one of the articulation joints. The interactivity is a little odd - instead of clicking and holding (really, dragging) you click once to grab, click against to release. If you're on a joint, it secures to the body - if not, that piece goes back to its original spot. If you drop a piece on a joint that's already holding a piece, that piece gets replaced.

You can also change the global colors of the piece - I had to make the shadows transparent so that they show through to whatever the main color is behind them. Each joint on the body has an optimum rotation angle, so the pieces always snap to a logical position. And the shadow has to be a generic shape - with a 2D application like Flash, there's no realistic way to make the cast shadow of the creature reflect all the body parts the user chose.

Well, have fun with it. Sorry there's no background, or animation or anything more than some random body part assembly. If I ever add to the piece, you, blog reader, will be the first to know.

Studio Crossroads

When my band Restraining Order recorded our first CD Last Time You Took Me Back, we chose a local studio called Studio Crossroads. The home studio (though that term does it a disservice) was owned by the father of a friend of my niece, and I didn't have high expectations when I originally checked it out, but it was an amazing studio, home-based or not.

The studio consisted of one large recording room where you could easily fit an eight-piece band and all their gear. Off of that main room was a control room (with a hallway that lead to a waiting area and bathroom), and four smaller recording rooms of various sizes - one big enough for a large drum set, a couple good for guitarists and amps, and one small enough for a single vocalist.

All of the rooms were guarded against electro-magnetic interference, and none of the walls were parallel - a difficult engineering feat in a home studio, but an ideal way to avoid harsh sound reflections. All of the walls were wood paneled, and the lighting was offset - it was a very relaxing environment in which to record.

And not only that, but the owner/engineer Mike was a great guy to record a CD with - we should know, as we were in there for six months, recording and/or mixing once or twice a week over that period. He was technically proficient, but more important for us, Mike was an excellent sounding board for us band members, helping us come together when the road got rough.

I took my Canon AE-1 into Studio Crossroads several times, for what was perhaps the last serious photo series I ever took before going digital. I find it much easier to get shallow depth of field with an analog camera than with a digital camera - in fact, I usual cheat digitally and just blur part of the image in Photoshop. It's never the same, though.

Here are a few of those photos - unfortunately, they don't show the studio itself as much as some of the house instruments and gear in closeup. But music gear is still cool, right? I thought so. Originally these photos were just for me - then Mike asked me if I could develop some marketing material (brochure, website, logo, business cards) for the studio to help promote it, so I thought I could use these images. Then he thought about it more and realized he already had all of his available time booked with bands waiting for availability, so it didn't make sense to promote the studio - so the marketing material never materialized. Don't be too sad - just a little.

Click for larger versions of each photo.

Indie Music Magazine Illustrations

In the mid-90's, I did a lot of black and white band illustrations for a few independent music/pop culture magazines. I'm not even totally sure which magazines each of these was for, but I believe most of them were done for Carbon 14, which still seems to be in existence (and has a now-coveted 3-character URL - impressive!).

These pieces were all done in a flurry, and I don't believe there was any payment involved other than one or two issues of the magazines in which my work was featured - which was fine back then, as I was still developing my style and getting used to doing this kind of work. Still, I had to turn these around quickly, and they were all illustrations of real people, which took me much longer to work out (though the average person wouldn't be familiar with these musicians' faces, so if they didn't look perfect, I doubt there would have been any protests).

Though the Internet was around back when I did these pieces, it was in its very early stages and I didn't have access - the magazines probably didn't, either. So since these were done essentially for free, and in a short timeframe, there was no approval process - I'd get 8x10" glossies of the band, possibly with photos of them in other magazines, and I'd sketch and then ink them with my brush-tip markers. Then I'd send the final pieces into the magazines, and they'd print them as-is. If only things were always so simple and direct.


A band called Sinkhole. I really like the way the guy on the left turned
out, though I think I'd be scared to meet him in person. I can't be sure,
but this may be the same band.


The Refreshments, who had one big hit in the mid-90's.


A cool little band named Betty Goo. I gooified them. The top
photo on this page is the one I used as reference, way back in '96.


Ben Folds Five. Get it - "Folds" - like in Poker? And I drew
them in playing card costumes? That's supposed to be clever, people.


From a computer advice column. The logo is
supposed to be shown on a mouse pad,
though I'm not sure it totally registers as one.
From Escargot zine.

As always, some turned out better than others. The one guy's arm below, drinking from the soda bottle, is particularly effed up - but I still take responsibility for them, and I resisted the urge to clean them up in Photoshop before posting them. That's got to count for something, right?

TuxScout

Final logo. Click for larger version.

This project is from the same client who I'm developing the Xipwire logo and website for - he might describe himself as a "serial entrepreneur" (an admittedly overused term), as he's developed several web-based businesses over the past few years - including five we've worked on together.

TuxScout, which is no longer in operation, was a web-based resource for Linux developers. If you're not familiar with Linux, it's an open-source operating system, and its mascot (all OS's should have a mascot) is a penguin. Therefore, most products and services having to do with Linux incorporate a penguin in some way. It's not necessary, but in researching the project it felt like anything non-penguin would be a mistake.

My client, who would be programming the website himself (as he always does), asked me to design a logo and website layout for TuxScout, with emphasis on friendliness. Here's what I came up with...


As you can tell from the top of this post, this was ultimately the winning concept. I was going to attempt to be dramatic and show this one last, but instead I decided to present the four options in the sequence the client saw them. It usually turns out that the first concept I show is the winner - I wonder if that has more to do with me showing what I perceive to be strongest first, or a client's predilection toward what they see first?

Regardless, the client liked the speedy quality of this one best, but he had some change requests: a little more of a 3D look (like the second concept, below), removal of the rear fin (for streamlining purposes), larger text and repositioning the text away from the penguin's belly. The dimensional effect definitely took this away from being a typical corporate logo (as you can see above) and into more of the friendly mascot/character realm (as you can see at the top of the post) - I still don't know that I prefer it either way, and though I often fear that the subtleties of a 3D version might be diminished in other uses (like when printed small on a business card), it wasn't an issue here as I don't think any typical corporate collateral was ever created.

On to the unused options:


This was even more of a mascot, and damn - he's fat. The font is fun (maybe too fun) and the gradients throughout give this one a CGI-generated look. The client liked that look, but wanted it applied to the more dynamic figure and pose in the final option.



A departure - an old-school pixel-based character. This might have appealed to the Atari-loving Linux developers, but ultimately my client thought it wasn't totally representative of the look and feel he was going for. I did find a use for it, eventually, which I'll show at the bottom of this entry.

And this one - a completely 3D isometric view. Maybe I was playing Zaxxon right before I came up with this one? I think the client liked it more than me, only because it was so different, but in the end its odd angle might have proven too difficult to integrate into the website, so it was not selected. Looking at it now, I feel like I should have kept all features cubic - those round eyes and conical beak are just too different from the rest of the shapes.

Once the tweaks were made to finalize the logo, I developed a website layout that my client put together himself. This was the sixth and final iteration, though it's not a screenshot of the actual site (which I don't have), so all the text was just temporary to give a feeling for how things could look. From what I recall, the final site didn't stray from this layout very much - the text size may have been reduced a bit, though. "Friendliness", again, was the theme here.


And so the site went live, had a lot of activity in the beginning (especially in the Job Market area, which was the meat and potatoes of the site), and then it slowed off and eventually died, and my client took it down. Such is life in the internet world. It's a pity it didn't really take off so it could still be around today, and I could post a link here. Now you just have to use your imagination.

When looking through the unused logo options, I really thought I could make use of that pixel penguin. I actually posted it to Zazzle but used "Linux" as a keyword tag, and they deleted my product. That was dumb of me - I've considered re-posting it without the tag, since the image alone has nothing to do directly with Linux (I just wanted to attract those developers), but I didn't want to get in trouble again (they may keep records of such things) so I instead posted it at CafePress and Skreened, now targeting the many penguin lovers of the world. I know they're out there... somewhere...



Pixel Penguin shirt on Skreened

Rosies

Illustration parody of Rosie the Riveter. Click for larger image.

Once more, an atypical project - but maybe since I've posted so many of these "oddball" projects that I don't think of as being typical, I have to acknowledge that the weird ones come along more often than I think or remember. I'm coming to terms with it.

An agency approached me (that sounds funny - like they snuck up on me or something) and asked if I could help them create a parody of the famous WWII Rosie the Riveter illustration, which you've certainly seen, but just in case you haven't - here it is...



Now, the agency took a stab at it on their own, and they didn't do a bad job, in my opinion - I think this could have passed as the final product...



...but they just didn't like it enough to present it to the client - who, as you may have figured out by the logo, owns a tank cleaning business named Rosies - hence the poster as the inspiration source. It wasn't a far reach in terms of parody, but it was appropriate. So I selected a subdued color palette and started rendering in Freehand, using my Wacom tablet.


Super duper closeup detail.

The funny thing is, I didn't have much direction other than to follow than the comp the agency provided and a few rounds of feedback on my work - which was fine, but as I look at it now, their version is a burly man with ruddy skin, his eyes mysteriously hidden by the hat like the Marlboro Man. My version looks like Joel Grey in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (and why did the adventure never continue, by the way? I loved that movie when I was a teenager), but with huge biceps. I asked if I should avoid linework, to make this vector version look more like the original painting, but the agency and client wanted line - so they got line, and a chunky line at that.

So the agency liked the piece, and the client liked it, too. But the real question is: would Joel Grey like it? I hope so.

MMC Lifestyle Coaching

This logo project came from a woman who had started her own lifestyle coaching consultancy. You want to improve your career, your social skills, your love life? You call her, and she helps you create a plan, then works with you over the course of several weeks or months to execute that plan. At least she did - it looks like the website is no longer live.

My client wanted her business's logo to show the qualities of strength, growth, power and potential (makes sense, right?). The company name, as you may have guessed, was based on her initials. I did some sketching and type work in Freehand, and came up with five original concepts for her:




This first one was a little impractical - that hard edge on the right, where the "M" and "C" hit, creates a nice opportunity to work with the negative space on other uses (business cards, letterhead) but without something to the right to give it balance, it looked too heavy on the right - and with something to the right, like the "Lifestyle Coaching" descriptor, it was too linear and would take up too much space or require it to be significantly shrunk to be used.




This second option came from some sketching. I sketched a kite, then drew two lines symbolizing gusts of wind lifting it up (get it? potential and growth?). The gusts were initially a second color and they looked harsh and heavy (I'm pretty sure wind is not supposed to be heavy) so instead I cut them out of the kite shape, adding little serify-shapes at the kite's edges to give the gusts a little more emphasis. The client liked it - she also pointed it, it looked like three cats. Nothing wrong with that, though.




This third concept was a pretty straightforward representation of power - probably a bit too straightforward, and either the client or I (can't remember), after reviewing it, felt it looked too masculine. It probably needed more subtlety, too.




This one was meant to show growth - I was thinking of Best, that chain of stores that went out of business about ten years ago. It's nearly impossible to find a logo - googling "best" plus "retail" or "store" just brings up lots of "Best Buy" images. But I remember seeing that logo when I was younger and thinking it was weird - each letter was a little bigger than the next. Then I read an interview with the designer, who said that was meant to show the quality of "best" - the "T" was the largest, and therefore (I assume) the best letter in the logo. Never noticed that before. I think it worked better here, with the two M's - the second M was the improved version of the first. That kind of left the C stranded, though - and the colors wound up being too feminine. I could have changed the color scheme, but that wasn't necessary because the client liked this concept most of all:



That doorway in the space between the serifs won her over, and this is the logo she chose. I was cool with it - I think it represented her company best (ha ha). Her only request was to darken the blue, which I did (see the top of the post). And then we were off to the races (never spoke or typed that phrase before - it feels weird).

After we finalized the logo, she applied it to the website (which I didn't design), and I developed business cards and a letterhead template for her. Here's the card:



Such a formal logo seems to require, to me at least, a centered treatment. Or, at least, you can't go wrong with centering. As I always do, I provided her with logo files of different file formats, resolutions, and color styles - a two-color version and an all-black version. I believe she used the all-black version for t-shirt embroidery, though she had it stitched in white on blue shirts, which looked pretty sweet.

When I opened my Zazzle store a year ago, I started looking at all of these unused logo options I'd created over the years. Since the client only pays for overall development and the buyout of the final logo, but not the unused options, I'm free to use these as I please - and I have. The type-based logos obviously are too specific to work, but the image-dependent concepts were cannibalized for business card templates and other products.

I think Zazzle's strongest feature is its ability to allow customization to its products through a very user-friendly interface. And while that feature works well on t-shirts, hats, bags, and other promo-type products, I find it's most useful on business card templates.

The way it works is, store owners like me set up card templates. I upload, size and position the image, then set up the lines of text I'd like to include. The typeface, color, size, position of the text are defined by me as well. Finally, the templates are tagged with keywords like "growth", "strength", "potential" - words appropriate to the design that help potential customers find a template that suits their needs.

Once a customer finds a card template they like, they fill in their information in a form field and the thumbnail of the card is updated on the fly. This is very helpful - the customer instantly sees exactly how their final card will look. If it's allowed by the store owner, they can delete text fields, move and resize the logo, pick a different typeface and color - but my experience is, most of the users trust the design and use it pretty much as is. If they were interested in designing their own card, they'd probably have done that instead. Maybe they even tried to do so in Word - if they did, my guess is they ran away screaming.

There's an ethical debate in the design community about these kinds of templates. Some designers say that providing custmoers with pre-made options that they can buy in (for example) 100-pack for as little as $20 or $30 plus shipping (the price depends on the percentage the store owner sets - I set mine at 30%, in case you're curious) impacts the need for design services. Horse pucky, I say - I can virtually guarantee you that anyone paying such a tiny amount for a card with a pre-made logo is not going to consider spending upwards of $2000 for a full identity design. It's inconceiveable (just watched The Princess Bride last week - couldn't help it).

As an example, my biggest seller by far is a fitness logo targeted at personal trainers - sometimes I sell a couple batches per day. I very much doubt that a personal trainer working out of a gym with a handful of clients, is going to want or need to contract the services of a designer for their logo and identity system. Maybe a few superstar trainers will go that route, or those expanding their services - but for the most part, the people who use these templates are happy with something that looks nice and represents them well.

The downside for these customers is that anyone else in the world - even their competitor in the same city - could be using that same template. And they don't have the ability or right to use the logo anywhere on their own - they're only purchasing the finished cards - nothing more. If they were to scan the card and use the logo? Well, for one it would look horrible. And it would also be a legal violation of my rights. That would be bad - I hope it never happens, though I doubt I'd find out about it if it did.

And not to toot my own horn, but I haven't seen anyone else use a Print On-Demand site to create a full line of customizable products with the same images, as I've done. Maybe I just haven't run across them yet, but I do a lot of browsing on Zazzle. Each of the logos in my Business Products product line is available on t-shirts, baseball caps, canvas bags, mugs, keychains, buttons, mousepads (do people ever get tired of giving away mousepads?), and the card templates themselves. This way, a small business owner can get a few customized shirts for themselves and their employees (if they have them), or they can buy the other items for office use or for promotional giveaways. It works out nicely - I've spent many hours setting up all of those templates, but now they're available for purchase - and I have sold quite a few. Passive income is nice.

So here are two of the unused designs from this project, transformed into business card templates. At this point, I've sold a few of the lightning bolt template, but none of the kite. Maybe it's too abstract for people, even though I mention the wind gusts in the item description. Perhaps I should market it to cat lovers instead.


Kite/Wind Business Card Template on Zazzle


Lightning Bolt Business Card Template on Zazzle