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.