What The?

So at my day job, we do a weekly e-newsletter and we feature new products to our stores in it. A few weeks ago, we had a new product in our healthy stuff department. It sounded harmless enough: Lily of the Desert Aloe Vera Juice. It's supposed to help digestion. Still doing good. I was processing the photo in Photoshop and I zoomed into the product label and noticed that it says "Inner Fillet":

Come again? I associate "fillet" with filleted fish or other meat. I don't think I want to drink something that gives/makes my "innards filleted. Methinks next label design should skip that notice...

Schweet Schmap of Nashville!

I just learned that my photo of the exterior of Hatch Show Print in Nashville has been selected for the Schmap guide to Nashville! :D

About Schmap

Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More than 90 million Schmap Guides have been downloaded since first release in March 2006: this phenomenally popular series can also be browsed online, with versions optimized for iPhone and Nokia users

kNOwHOW

A few of the HOW Design Forum members who were unable to attend this year's HOW Design Conference in Austin decided to have a "kNOwHOW" conference. Nothing fancy, just a few designer friends getting together to share knowledge, friendship and food. Our host, Karma, along with her mom, and fellow HOWie Patti really went all out: we had food, a creative exercise (doodling monsters!), a photobooth, and schwag bags!

It was a great bit of creative inspiration and friendship, well worth the 9 hour drive from Ohio to attend. Enjoy the photos on my Flickr here.

Doodle Swap #2

The first Doodle Swap between members of the HOW Design Forum (aka HOWies) was so much fun that I couldn't pass on doing round 2! The trick was working about a few other projects that were all due at that same time.

Fortunately, one project gave me the inspiration for my doodles for round 2 and my interpretations of 4 classic monster movie creatues was born! I did 4 versions each of Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, and the Mummy, and 2 versions of The Phantom of the Opera (doodle below) (1 for me and 1 for a lucky recipient! :)

Each doodle was done by hand (no retracing or other tricks here) with loving care, or at least by hand.... :P

I tried the smooth vellum artist cards this time and while the colored pencils did work better on them, I still feel as I've not gotten what I'd envisioned outta them. Next round I may try just black and white using my Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens (which ROCK, btw! :)

Doodle Swap Blog.

Doodle Swap Flickr.

New Nap for That T's!

Yes, I've been working hard on a few new Nap for That t-shirt designs: check 'em out (or even better, buy one) at my Zazzle store. Free shipping for a limited to anywhere on Earth via code: JUNESHIPFREE. Enjoy!

Creative Postcard Club—R50 Stamps

I’m pleased that I was able to participate in the Creative Postcard Club’s 50th round. Congrats to Travis on a fantastic milestone!

For this round, I knew I wanted the theme of my stamp to be Art Deco. But the genre encompasses such a large variety of work, I wasn’t sure what to narrow it down to. I spent time thinking and researching and decided on “The Art of Wine” in the Art Deco style. I did many a thumbnail sketch and somehow, they just never felt right. So I put them aside for awhile and I was listening to a story on U.S. Postage stamps and they mentioned that typical themes on stamps are the flag, flowers, or American art/artists. Bingo! My idea was born: American Art Deco, represented by an American flag.

Below: flat color version in Illustrator.



After a few sketches, I followed my usual procedure and scanned my sketch into Adobe Illustrator where I set up my colors and layout. I then imported that file into Photoshop where I added textures and lighting.

Below: final image and final image with stamp border appplied.

Theory Thursday: Shrinking Attention Spans Cause Expanding Waistlines?

Ok, not a design related topic this time around, but it's my blog and well, I can do whatever the hell I want! :P Promise to get back to design next week!

I have a theory. Not sure what exactly prompted this one, but it sorta popped into my head one day. Could it be that the shorter our attention spans get, the larger our waistlines get?

It sounds contradictory, I know, as you'd think all the running around people do nowadays we'd all be skinny as rails. But think about it: we run around, faces glued to our Blackberries or iPhones or whatever and we don't have time to eat a meal, so we go for the high-fat fast food that we wolf down in as few bites as possible. Some folks don't "have time" to excercise, so they skip it. When we do sit, we sit for hours glued to TVs, computers, or some other device. So all that high-fat food just gets added on to, well, us.

I'm sure there are holes in this theory, and I'd love to hear what you think about this topic!

(hmm. it appears that today is not Thursday, whoops!)

HOWie Poster 2009 Edition

I participated in the second somewhat annual poster made by and for members of the HOW Design Forum. The theme this time around was "stamps". Other than that, we were free to do whatever we wanted. I thought about different subjects and since postcards are typically used to send correspondence from people who live in different states, and since HOWies live in many different states, I decided on celebrating my home state, Ohio.

That still left a lot of room for narrowing and I originally considered doing an art deco-esque postcard design. However, it just wasn't working out. I had happened to just have visited my local park where we have 3 very old trees (500 years plus), called the Three Sisters. I just love these trees, they are magnificent and very calming. So I decided to use one of my photos of one of the Three Sisters.

Hey That's Me! n2 Quoted in Caffeine for the Creative Team

Late last year, members of the HOW Design forum were asked to contribute their thoughts about how the forum acted as a team for the book, Caffeine for the Creative Team. A couple of my quotes and photos that were submitted were used in the chapter on the HOW Forum.

Congrats to my fellow HOWies who also made an appearance in the book!