LorraineDesign

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to see the opening night of American Artifact at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Not only is the film an excellent retrospective of American rock poster design, but the director, Merle Becker was on hand with local poster artists, Jay Ryan, Mat Daly, Steve Ryan, and Jim Pollock, to field questions from the audience and sell posters. (NOTE: I am horrible with names and unfortunately didn’t recognize the last two designers on the panel discussion in person…I grabbed the line-up from the theater’s site, however, I am fairly sure that they meant Steve Walters of Screwball Press rather than Steve Ryan. That is, unless there just happens to be two Steve Ryans out there designing in Chicago.)

The film begins by highlighting shops, such as Hatch Show Print, that were involved with designing/printing event posters for sporting and music events as far back as the 1800s. It then follows the progression of concert poster design through the psychedelic era until today. I was especially interested to see if Becker had managed to interview Wes Wilson, who has been incredibly hard to interview in recent years. She hadn’t, but his colleagues helped to present his work. (I was lucky enough to have Wilson speak to my college class, and the man is fascinating.) In all, I found the film to be incredibly interesting and thorough: complete with interviews with personal favorites Tara McPherson, Jay Ryan, and Mat Daly. The panel discussion was rather insightful as well.

Before and after the show I was lucky enough to visit with Daly, Ryan, and Becker. I loved hearing about how Daly is influenced by Impressionism (see posters in foreground above), while Becker shared that she had tried contacting Wes Wilson during filming (he declined an interview). I also had a (-n internal) fan-girl moment when Jay Ryan signed my book with a cute little bear:

I highly recommend seeing the film if you are a fan of music or design history: especially if you get the chance to hear the participants speak in person. Thank you to all of the artists and the director for a great film and a fun evening. And a special thanks to Craig and his friends for inviting me along.

Due to faulty internet service, I find myself once again posting Wednesday’s Weekly Reader on a Thursday…maybe a name change is in order. Ha! In any case, this past week was a huge week in the world of my first love: animation. Oscar nominations were announced, and I have to say that I hadn’t realized just how great a year this was for animation until I saw the Best Animated Picture line-up. Most of my news comes from Cartoon Brew, so I won’t repeat what they’ve already said. However, if you love animation, be sure to check out their post on the Best Animated Short nominations: it has links to view all of the films online. (I think you’ll know who I’m rooting for after reading this post…)

©Aardman Animation

I thought it only fitting to dedicate this week’s Reader to one of my favorite animation studios: Aardman Animation out of the UK. Home to Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts, Aardman has been making films since 1972. They have created numerous tv shows, shorts and feature-length films, music videos and commercials. Personally, I’ve been a huge fan of their’s since watching Chicken Run (I love that ditzy-knitting chicken: hilarious!) Recently, I just stumbled across their monthly podcast where they talk about the history of the studio.

©Aardman Animation

Aardman’s latest Wallace and Gromit, A Matter of Loaf and Death, is currently up for an Oscar: watch it online here while it’s still available.

A couple weeks ago, Jason Schwartz challenged me to do A Project A Week (APAW): something that I have since included in my Design Resolutions for the year. The past two weeks have been spent finishing up projects that were already in progress. This week, I hope to start working on some new work.

Week 1: Prost! Tea Towel

Week 1 was spent finishing up the embroidery work on the third tea towel in my series (see the first two here). I still need to iron it after washing before I can take better photos, but thought that I would go ahead and share the sneak peek photo. I feel like this pattern allowed me to experiment a bit more with various satin stitches. Note the Prussian Blue? I tried to make the blue/creme motif match the colors on a Meissen vase I bought during my first trip to Germany.

Week 2: Behance Page

This past week I worked on slowly migrating my AIGA portfolio over to Behance. I must say that I’m rather impressed with all of the customization options that Behance offers. I’m not quite finished uploading everything, but will slowly make more projects public as I finish the descriptions. You can view my page either by clicking on the badge to the right or by going here. Any one else on Behance? I haven’t had time to look around for other people…

What’s Next for APAW?

This week I plan on creating some goodies to share: watch for them to be posted this coming weekend.

After a half-year hiatus, Wednesday’s Weekly Reader is back! (Although…erm…as I write this, it IS Thursday yet again…) Since finding myself unemployed last February, I found it increasingly hard to find the time necessary to compile all of the links I wanted to share each week: until I stopped the series altogether. In any case, I have had plans to revive my weekly links post since finally settling in to Chicago back in September. After reading Linden’s first Tuesday Links post in a similar amount of time, I realized that a change was in order.

So rather than a compendium of many (and sometimes unrelated) links from the week, I am going to move to a more topic-based format beginning next week. February will focus on some of my favorite Creatives, but first a few of the blogs I’ve discovered in the past few months.

Scoutie Girl
Focusing on handmade goods of all sorts, I was especially excited to see classmate, Doug Wilson’s, Simple Is Beautiful poster at the top of today’s post.

Design Work Life
The studio blog for Seamless, DWL scouts out an awesome selection of inspiration.

Intrusive Focal Point
My sister’s new blog where she’ll be posting links to the articles she writes for Columbia’s Missourian paper, her photography, and current events in geology as they relate to journalism. (spot the pun in the name? I helped come up with it.  )

If you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog, you may have noticed me hinting here and there about getting to work on exciting projects that I’m not able to post about until they go live. This past week, Kansas City’s own Hallmark Cards kicked off their year-long centennial celebration: something I have been bursting at the seams to share with you since 2008! Erin and the gang over at cre-a-tiv-i-ty have all of the news over a series of several posts starting here (be sure to look for the employee-customized crowns: they’re really awesome).

In any case, back in 2008, our clients over at Hallmark approached us for ideas on how to brand their entire celebration. At that time, they had the logo (see top), taglines, colors, and custom script, but were struggling to find a cohesive look and feel that could be applied both internally and consumer-facing across a wide variety of signage, media, and occasions. They wanted to tap into our department’s brainstorming power to help jump-start their internal team, and I was the lucky designer chosen to man the project. Head over to the Centennial Site if you want to check out their actual solution (which I just saw myself for the first time last week).

Although we presented several options, this one was my favorite. Hallmark wanted to look to the future rather than focus on their past, so I tried to keep the design fresh while epitomizing what Hallmark has done best since their start in the early 1900’s: bringing people together through the art of communication. Consisting of both solid and outlined speech bubbles, the branding system could be customized depending on media or use. Through the addition of color and photography, it could have been expanded for use across their entire product line. (For example, highlighting the more somber colors with the word “Care” for their sympathy line.) Below was just one application example that I gave them: a sample magazine ad for their general birthday line.

I absolutely loved getting to work on this project. Everyone at Hallmark was so great to work with, and I also enjoyed the tour of their headquarters I got to take as a part of my research. So Happy Birthday to everyone over there: I hope you enjoy the celebrations!

Last year, I started a new tradition for myself by setting Design Resolutions for the year. After giving it a lot of thought the past 2 weeks, I think I am finally ready to set this year’s resolutions in stone. So, without further ado, here are they are:

1. Be More Disciplined in How I Use My Free-Time
   Now that I am back to working full-time, my free-time has once again gotten scarce. I need to focus on using the time I do have in the evenings and weekends more wisely to ensure I can accomplish the rest of this list.
2. Launch the Portfolio Site
   As a continuation of last year’s resolution, I want to actually launch the site I designed. (I still haven’t been able to get past the hurdle of how to build it out in WordPress.) Whether this means I step up my research efforts so I can code it myself, or that I pass it off to a partner to code it, it will be done! And soon!
3. Post More Frequently
   While moving to Chicago over the past 6 months or so, I got into the bad habit of not posting here as often as I used to: going to get back in the habit.
4. Personal Project of the Week
   Yesterday, I had a very inspiring talk with Jason Schwartz, and he challenged me to do one personal project a week. Sounds easy…yet from past resolutions, I know how hard it can be. Whether it’s something as simple as a desktop background or writing an article of design, or as complex/time-consuming as embroidering a new design or doing an ad hoc redesign of a company’s site, this is the year I think I can do it…especially if I have others willing to help me hold to it.
5. Find Studio Space
   To help with number 4, and allow me to get back into the screen printing habit, I’ll need to find some place that I can spread out my work and not be afraid to get messy.
6. Be More Inventive With Typography
   I have a lot of really great ideas on how typefaces I want to use in personal projects should look…but have lacked the ability to realize them on paper: practice makes perfect!

In addition, I have two general resolutions that I made for myself this year that somewhat fit in with my design resolutions…

1. Take Classes
   This is the perfect time in my life to take classes on things that I really want to learn: whether they be on coding/html or more swing dancing classes. I’m going to count the bowling league my friends and I joined as part of this…especially since I currently average around 75 per game. (although for the record, I Have broken 100 before…once…and not on the wii either.)
2. Read 2 Books a Month
   I just saw Linden’s post on her booklist for the year, and it inspired me to vow to read more. (I’ll have to watch this one though as once I get on a roll, I tend to read too much…) I’m hoping to knock off some of the design books on my booklist while I’m at it. Be sure to check out Linden’s list too as she has some really good ones on there: especially if you are interested in linguistics or running.

The past month was a blur of working, getting ready for the holidays, and travel, but the kickoff to all of the fun and mayhem was the Firebelly Holiday Shop. As I mentioned last month, I contributed a booth showcasing embroidered goods and illustration prints/postcards. I was really excited that my good friend and fellow illustrator, Jennifer Carson, sent some illustration prints up my way to be included once she heard about the show (that’s her leaping sheep on the left). You can see more of her excellent work over at Calcography.com.

I think the tea towels turned out quite nicely, don’t you? I’m currently working on the third in the series, so will post photos once I have them. Here are a couple of detail shots from the first two:

This was the first time I think I really mastered the French knot: good thing too, as I designed a lot of them into this one!

This design was really just an excuse to experiment with different variations of the Lazy Daisy stitch: I think it quickly became my new favorite!

Needless to say, the event was a huge success and ended up raising thousands of dollars for Firebelly’s Reason to Give charity. I was deeply honored to be part of it and send out a huge thanks to Dawn, et al. for including me!

…well-wishes, that is.

As you can see, I was a little late on getting any cards out this holiday season…including this blog post! I blame the blizzard that majorly hit the Midwest during vacation. Ha! In any case, I hope everyone had a great holiday season and enjoyed their time off.

Well, tonight I headed over to Firebelly with all of my wares to set up my little table for their Pop-Up Holiday Shop. Unfortunately, (fortunately?) I bought a car last week, so between car hunting and Thanksgiving I wasn’t able to finish all of the projects I had planned. That said, the ones that I did finish turned out great. So: the art is framed, the table set up, and everything is marked. Here is a little teaser for a tea towel I made that will be featured at my booth. Other items include embroidered wall hangings, illustrated postcards and framed illustrations. More photos to come from the event itself.

To continue the theme of November: Design Month, I found out in late October or so that Firebelly would be hosting their annual Holiday Pop-Up Shop to benefit their Reason to Give charity. After asking Dawn how I could help out, I have since spent the last month frantically crafting/designing away in order to have enough wares to sell. Expect to see some sweet embroidered goods, art prints of my illustration work, and possibly some stationary/paper goods. I’ll try to post some sneak peaks before the shop opens, but between the holiday and frantic crafting/designing, they may not come until the shop itself opens. Details below in the awesome flier designed by Will Miller: