Finished, almost

My posters are printing as I type. Last night (and the last week) was a late night. Fonstruct is not my friend. After several failed attempts at a typeface, I built one in Illustrator. This assignment gives me a new respect for typeface designers. And now its time to go home and take my dog on a nice long run.

It has been a great semester, thank you for all of the insightful input along the way. See you in class tonight!

revisions

Hey guys...

I revised my images to make them all 3d and did a lot of blood work. I still have to create my font which is going to be the movie titles. The type i used for the quotes is not mine, but i think it's almost perfect. What do you guys think about it so far...???

Finally...

Posters are printed, mounted, and trimmed. Trimming was a bitch...especially at 1:30 AM, but I wanted it done, so it's done. Big shout out to Bobby G. I saw him at the lab and whilst he dealt with his printing debacle he gave me some much needed insight on the various tools in Photoshop and Illustrator. Thanks for your patience dude, much appreciated. My final images are halftones, and not exactly alike between the pieces, but I like them enough to be satisfied. I received great feedback also from Tess and Meg earlier in the week. I considered distressing my self-created text per Tess and Bobby, but I think distressing that in addition to using the halftones is overkill. I like the contrast between the smooth typeface and halftone images, for better or worse. "The Making of a Killer" stays in...a direct reference to the migration of each of the movie's main characters from an innocent to a killer...and a play on words...ie. Stone made a movie about a killer. I fought myself about the grammar here, but it's quirky and fits with Stone's persona...so again, it stays. Wanna see them?...sorry, you'll have to wait! (sorry Tess!)

THANKS TO EVERYONE for a great semester. Although I have alot of of growing yet to do as a designer, I feel like I've grown immensely over these past few months. The critique is invaluable and the blog has been a tremendous resource. It's amazing how much you can grow personally from a class like this. It certainly doesn't hurt to have great people in your class either.

C y'all Thursday.

On my way…

It is 1:56 PM on Tuesday, I'm about to head to school to print out my posters, they will be mounted tonight and I will be done with many hours to spare. Good luck, mates. I think I'll take my crew on a long walk too.

Neenah paper app

Hey guys Neenah paper has this neat app for iphones. NEENAH THINKINK You can create custom color palettes base on photos on your iphone then share upload, etc...

Whataya think?

I'm feeling pretty good about it right now. I had U-Turn in the middle, but since the "the Making of a Killer text is bumped over more to the right due to the shears image, it made the group look uneven. The only thing I see now is that the images are causing a slight slope upwards to the right when viewed as a whole, but that's because of the double point on the open shears.

Where's my bourbon?...

2 of my 3 rough posters

thoughts welcome...not yet done the U-Turn poster, but will have the same treatment. I simplified the treatment of the images. The only thing that initailly bothered me was that the bayonet and sword don't point to the same spot on the movie titles, but I don't think I can make that work without compromising the angle, and I want the angles to be the same here. The typeface I created is the movie titles and "The Making of a Killer". It's my handwriting. I eliminated ligatures and all the letters are repeated.

Project 3 revised again

Thanks for all the great crit, this was one of those projects that I needed to walk away from, have some new eyes on it and go back to, refreshed. Let me know what you think. Thanks again.

We all can't be Meg

So Adobe makes things like Kuler for the rest of us. Adobe’s Kuler is a community driven web app that lets you browse color palettes created by others. You can also create your own by using the color wheel, harmony rules, and color sliders.

when I grow up I want to design something like this

Designed by Martin Kann Design | Country: Sweden

“The Swedish rock band Bob Hund released their single Fantastiskt (fantastic) as a one copy vinyl record that only allows 30 playings. The record was placed on a turntable with the lyrics etched on the turntable lid. It sold on eBay for US $3,650 and became the most expensive record ever sold in Sweden.”

SiteGrinder

This plug-in for Photoshop allows you to take your site mock-ups from PS & "effortlessly convert your Photoshop designs into standards compliant, CSS-rich webpages. All within Photoshop, and all with no coding required." No joke, I'm using it now and life just got much better. The more CSS & code you know, the more you can tweak and edit your site, but for beginners, you don't gotta know shit to make it happen. I have a 15% off code for the regular & a $50 off code for the pro, I got the pro, if you want either discount code, just ask & if I like you, I'll give it.

They have comprehensive tutorials and support files, however they could use a lesson in good design, but that is another review for another time.

I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow when I make the site I created today LIVE! I'm so psyched about this!

Posters- Project 3

I'm still working and adding details in the 3 posters but I'm giving you guys the first pick. I hope you can see this before tonight class, so maybe the list of feedback tonight can be really helpful. The idea on each poster comes from:
1.- Amélie is a more romantic film. This story is about a woman who takes pleasure in doing good deeds but cannot find love herself.
2.-The City of Lost Children (1995), a dark, multi-layered fantasy film with a twisting plot about a mad scientist who kidnaps children in order to steal their dreams thus preventing him from aging prematurely.
3.-Delicatessen (1991), a black comedy set in a famine-plagued post-apocalyptic world, in which a block of flats above a delicatessen is ruled by a butcher who kills people in order to feed his tenants.

See you tonight!!

better? worse? the same?

I've made some improvements on my last set of roughs. Some thoughts:

1. my new self-created font is the headline "OLIVER STONE". I like this much better..more modern and says "Stone" me because it's edgy.
2. I'm using an ultrathin Bernhard font for the subtitle and movie title. I like it for the subtitle, but it's getting lost on the movie title. Maybe I need a different font, or possibly convert to outlines and raise the stroke size.
3. I changed the gun in the Platoon poster and took out the sunlight effect. The color is altered slightly here, and I'm thinking I may need to lighten the orange to more of a white to get it in line with the other posters.
4. The U-Turn poster is totally redone, save for the concept. The background color was changed to more of a sandy color. The move takes place in the desert. The black in my old rough was just too strong and overpowered the other posters. I also change the image and bumped down the size to match the other posters. I was hesitant to use a closed pair of shears, but it's consistent with the other images...ie. the gun isn't being fired and the sword isn't being wielded. I added a different effect to this image as well...oh and that "sto.." is the Istock watermark, not me being clever with my director's name. i have not purchased this image yet.
5. Obviously I need to add the AFI logo yet, etc.

Sorry to ramble, time for your thoughts...

Project 3 revised

This includes my custom-made font, thank you fontstruct. All the copy is now included, strong, interesting images that offer lots of texture and create interest. Clear and interesting typographic treatment. Please, tell me what you think.

New Project 3 Concept

I came up with a new concept for my posters. My theme is "the disintegration of a family," each film features a family or families that are slowly falling apart. These posters are really rough, but I would like to know if you think my concept is working. The first image is an allusion to the Tenenbaum's house on Archer Ave. and the bricks are falling out. The second image is an Indian cloth that is unraveling. In The Darjeeling Limited, three brothers travel across India to track down their mother. I still have a lot of work to do on this image, but do you think the theme is coming across? Do you think the cloth looks like it is from India? For my final poster I am going to make a tree consisting of a grassy texture, an allusion to the "lawn wranglers," a landscaping crew featured in Bottle Rockets. I also still need to make a typeface.

Typekit

This may be the answer to using fonts on your web site. I'm very interested in this.

Project 3

How about some feedback for your friend bob?

the 3 images are as follows: elephant man is a desaturated sepia, straight story is desaturated full color, eraserhead is black & white–homage to the style the movies were shot in.

i have created a custom typeface that resembles the type the movie titles are in, haven't been able to download it from fontstruct yet.

i am also still adding the details like show times, dates, etc. I am also going with a different treatment for lynch's name, but that is the place holder.

AFI Logo

You're welcome.

http://www.vector-logos.com/

http://www.vector-logos.com/logo-en-1902.html

or

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/search/114491126/48481.html

Rough Posters

Hey Gang,
Okay feedback from last class was to keep it simple, show the actual weapons, and don't make my audience work too much. My movies are Alexander, U-Turn, and Platoon. The samples here are real rough...layouts are in progress and I need to get a yay or nay on my "Oliver Stone" fonts... likes, dislikes, etc are welcome on those.

While keeping it simple, I still need to convey Oliver Stone's film style. I did this by showing the weapons using the prominent movie effects/shots he uses in each movie.

In Alexander, (by the way this is his sword on the poster) there is a sequence towards the end of the movie where Alexander gets stabbed in battle and Stone applies a red filter to everything. Everything also becomes posterized and appears in slo mo. The poster also has a red filter and posterization applied. I had to be careful with the red filter because it turns the white blade pink if I apply it too much, and I don't want that...actually, come to think of it...and I'm just thinking of this now....Alexander was bisexual in the movie, so maybe the pink would work...

In U-Turn, the garden shears were used to cut off two of the lead character's fingers for money he owed to a bookee in Vegas. He winds up killing later in the movie to get money to repay the bookee so he doesn't lose his other fingers. Stone uses alot of close-ups in the movie...so I'm using a close-up here and applied some effects similar to what Stone uses.

In Platoon, Stone doesn't use a ton of his classic film effects, but he still uses plenty of symbolism, and sunlight through the trees is prominent. One of the main themes of Platoon focuses on the lead character (Charlie Sheen) losing his innocence. At first I wanted to show sunlight coming from behind the gun, but once I started playing with the sunlight effect I liked how it could shine through the gun...like the warm light was becoming one with the deadly weapon.

At any rate, like I said, these are rough, but time is of the essence and I would love some feedback early. Oh yeah, and does anyone have this AFI vector logo? My understanding was that this needed to be in the poster.

Thanks,
Chris

Brainstorm Club

I have been thinking of starting some sort of club at school, I just haven't been able to nail down a concept that would get participation, be fun and perhaps continue long after I am gone. I think I have it, thanks to Tom Kelley of IDEO. I want to start a Brainstorming Club and I encourage you guys to give me some feedback and ideas for it that would make you want to join and meet weekly, or more.

I envision a weekly meeting at school, brown craft paper, markers, pencils, crayons & M&M's covering the tables and a topic that we really explore for about an hour or so. NO BS, no structure, just creative minds working on exploration, innovation and creativity. To have fun would be the only rule, meeting new colleagues & learning would be the hope.

The topics can be discussed over the week on a blog until we decide on one or we can help on another out and brainstorm project/portfolio/thesis ideas. Maybe even invite guest to participate from local firms & agencies. I foresee something positive here for everyone in the local design community.

What do you think?

Gorilla Photography

I have been very interested, but semi active in a form of photography called gorilla photography. I have been getting more active in it since I want to shoot my own images for the final poster project. In the two days that it didn't rain last week I went out and got some cool shots, a huge adrenaline rush and thoroughly creeped out. Some of these places would make exceptional locations for shooting horror flicks, no joke. Above are a couple shots I got this week.

I discovered something today while I was editing some of the pics and sharing them on the web, it appears I have been calling it GP for a while now and it seems I am the only one. I'm not sure where I got the name from, but I always thought that is what it was called. So, I'm not sure if this form of photography, which is a favorite of David Lynch, my director for the project, and very common in the Soviet Union, Detroit & other rust belt cities (unlimited subject matter in those places), even has a name. So, from this point on I am declaring that it is called gorilla photography. Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?

Hopefully, I get the perfect shot for this project soon, anyone want to shoot some gorilla photography with me?

brilliant new TV ad

One of the great things about the holidays is the release of new commercials. My wife was watching A White Christmas before bed and I happened to sit down for a few minutes before turning in. This fantastic American Express commercial came on which was segmented in two parts: the first part showed frowns in normal everyday items...for example a simple crease in a chair coupled with the riveted buttons on the back cushion. Nothing was altered. The second part, where they spoke of what kind of benefits AMEX can bring, showed smiley faces in everyday items...the one that stood out at the end was the front of a prop airplane. Again, nothing was altered to force the smiley face images.

I just thought this commercial was very clever. I believe I called it "brilliant" last night. I just searched it on YouTube and it wasn't out there yet, but I'd be interested to see if anyone else has seen this and what they thought of it.

Santa

What's the deal with the fat, jolly SOB in the red suit, huge beard and leather boots? Funny how a good concept and strong design can change the world. The Coke Santa.

Design Hell Comic

Maybe it's just me, but I can really relate to this freelance experience: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

66.6 percenters

2 down, 1 to go!

Poster work

I have rough scaled-down posters tonight for class that include movie images but I'm seriously leaning towards not using movie images at all. After the Caddyshack debacle, and spending countless hours searching for print-worthy images, I want to have more fun with this in terms of creativity and not relying on photos from the movies. I sketched some thumbnails last night that I hope to put into rough-print for tonight.

ONE OTHER NOTE...
I know Bobby sent the link to brands of the world for the AFI vector logo, but a search for "AFI" only pulls up the band AFI, and a more detailed search doesn't bring up anything. Has anyone found this?
Chris

Progress

Sounds like everyone's been making progress on their projects over the break. I would have liked to get more done on Project 3, but there's still two more weeks left, right? Anyway... I've been distracted by my thesis ideas and have started to explore some ideas with Amy and Julie Simon. I am curious to get some outside opinions. So I thought I would post my ideas here. To start my plan is to do a documentary, and I am shooting for either a half hour or a full hour depending on which idea I choose to go with. They are:

The Comics Code:
The Comics Code, established in 1954, came out of congressional hearings on Juvenile Delinquency, which focused much of its attention on comic books and their affects on children. The hearings were initiated in large part based on the research of Fredric Wertham. In his book Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham claimed that comics were linked to juvenile crime and sexual deviancy. The code was a concession made by the Comics Magazine Association of America to self-police the content of comic books. Through interviews with publishers and creators, I would like to discuss the affect the Comics Code and Wertham’s research had on the comic book industry. My sense is that the Code and public outcry against comics as a result of Seduction of the Innocent stigmatized the medium for nearly forty years. Traditional superhero comics were sanitized so they only appealed to children, and the industry was so stifled by the extent of the Code’s censorship that creating literary work was nearly impossible. Comics that did not conform to the Code were pushed underground and became even more subversive and received very limited distribution. Since the late eighties, the Code’s influence has waned particularly with the success of literary works geared toward more adult audiences (including the work of Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and Frank Miller). The industry is beginning to put the legacy of the Code behind it, finally gaining legitimacy with the national media, community libraries, and educators.

Or the Big Boyz Bail Bonds Brand:
A few years ago Baltimore-based Big Boyz Bail Bonds began a brand campaign focused solely on ad specialties, most notably their now ubiquitous pink and yellow pens. Nearly half a million pens are distributed throughout the city to bars, restaurants, and convenience stores. The pens have become an instantly recognizable icon of Baltimore life. I would like to document this phenomenon, recount the history of the company as well as the pens, and explore the validity of this as a marketing strategy. I am also interested in expanding the discussion to what this icon says about Baltimore. My hypothesis being that Baltimore has come to accept and even embrace its bad boy image, which has been affirmed by its portrayal in film and television, and the novelty of the Big Boyz pens is just further evidence of that.

Tweaking Away

I spent most of the Thanksgiving holiday working on Project Two and I think it is finally coming together. My pepper spread has come full circle, from peppers to major peppers and back again. I have also worked and re-worked my second spread, which is about dinning out in Manhattan's West Village. Let me know what you think and if there is any way to improve it. Thanks!

Network

As the semester winds down and we may never have the pleasure of each others company on a weekly bases again, I suggest you to socially network online with me. Some of you already have joined me on LinkedIn or Twitter, but there is great benefit to networking on these things and you should be a part of the madness. Besides, on sites like LinkedIn, you get to control what people find about you on the magical interwebs. (Make sure you keep your Facebook or Myspace on private so no pictures of you beer bonging Natty Light last weekend show up when the hiring manager searches for you). You can also make a free profile & portfolio on Coroflot that can be linked to from your LinkedIn profile. You can also write & receive references on LinkedIn, which could really help in your job search (once people start hiring again).

If you would like:

Twitter: youknowbobbyg
LinedIn: Robert Gillespie

You should also join your local AIGA chapter. I have met great contacts and have landed some great freelance work via AIGA & the events they sponsor. Almost every design firm & agency hires people by recommendation or by already knowing you, get out there and make yourself known. You will at least know me if you go to the Baltimore events.