27 December 2008
Rarely do my two passions—design and basketball—come together in such a perfect union: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac is the probably the most exciting, well-done, and fun example I’ve seen in years. The illustrations are great, the writing is both quirkily dramatic and smartly insightful, and the information design, charts, and diagrams are amazing. AND… it’s not very much money—13 bucks on Amazon. Check out these examples and buy it for your basketball-loving designer in your life… a little post-Christmas gift.
19 December 2008
Since I was little I’ve always been drawn more to design, patterns, and geometry (although that’s the only subject in school I ever failed…). In my last post I mentioned how I was really into using pixels in print. Since I posted that, I’ve been thinking about where that began. I think that started further back than this latest trend. I think it goes back to my childhood/adolescent aesthetic interests, sure. But something else, I think played a big role: the quilts of Gees Bend.
These are beautiful, beautiful works of art. I bought this book a while back and am still completely in love with nearly every page. Check it out for yourself. Learn some of the history—very interesting. And if nothing else, just enjoy the skewed geometric brilliance of these pieces here.
16 December 2008
Having attended a pretty traditionalist program at BYU, I tend to treat design trends with a decent amount of scepticism, opting more for good storytelling with good type and good imagery… and then more good type. That said, I have noticed that there are a few different branches of trends out there that I’m thoroughly caught up in like a catchy Kanye West single. One of those—colorful pixel patterns in print—is what I’m focusing on today.
First, I am completely smitten with the work of Christian Zuzunga. The following two images are some of my favorites of his…
And today I came across the work of Company in London. This, I thought was particularly nice.
Last, these simple pins: Love them. I’m not 100% sure who created these—they’ve been stashed in my scrap folder for some time now—but I did find this on Flickr.
15 December 2008
Beyond my normal interest in great Soda, I’m currently working on a project that has my eyes open for anything exceptional in soda packaging and culture. Last week the DieLine did a great article on vintage soda packaging. Check it out. It’s a lot of fun.
Unfortunately the project I’m working on probably won’t be making its way online for a very long time.
09 December 2008
This past summer, my friend Dane Hansen surprised us all and got married. And he did it in typical Dane Hansen fashion: He got Bryan Nivens to take and stylize the photo; he gave me free reign to design the announcement—which was then letterpressed by Rob at Tryst Press; Leo Patrone shot the wedding and the reception; Micah Anderson (along with our myself, Bret Meisenback, and Cedric Anderson) played the wedding march, al a Queen/Flash Gordon; and, finally, the Gatsbys—Micah, Cedric, and Grant Olsen—provided the music at the reception.
Dane, by the way, is an extremely talented designer and flash programmer. He works for Axis 41 in Salt Lake City and helps me out on a bunch of freelance work—including the Film is Not Dead Workshop site, which I just posted on my site, today.
These people—with the exception of Bryan, whom I’ve yet to meet—are the people I generally tackle projects with. Check out their work. It’s great.
Below is a close up of the announcement. It was really fun, challenging, and time consuming to create. Each letter is “hand cut and placed” into the design, using old Type Specimen books that I scanned at ridiculously high resolutions. Some of the lettering was even created for this piece due to missing letters in the samples…
The above photo was snatched from Black Eiffel, but unfortunately the photo isn’t as great as some of the work that’s up now.
05 December 2008
This morning, Mark Weinberg was nice enough to bring me into the studio and take some shots (or lots and lots, rather) of the work we completed for him this summer. I haven’t had time to go through the files, select, and edit the images to upload on my site, but that will follow shortly next week. In the meantime, please check out some of his work and vote for an entry of his in the PDN Student Photo Contest.
PS: if you’re reading this in Google Reader or something, take a second and link to the real page. Cody Buell—another great local photographer, as well as a talented programmer—built me a shiny, new blog. Older posts can be found here, if for some reason you need to track something down—like samples of good korean graphic design or the beautiful French type specimens that were stolen from my studio a few months back.