Posts Tagged ‘Design’
Wu-Tang Design Remix Project pt.2
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
So I want to take back something I said in Part 1 -- "almost all of the Wu-Tang album art was horrible" is a bit too harsh I think. Some people have really run with that and gotten quite upset, and rightfully so. There are definitely some good ones in there. I've thought about it and I think it would be more accurate to say that my real problem with the original covers was how disjointed they all looked when put in the same playlist. The cleverest thing the Wu-Tang Clan ever did was negotiate separate contracts for everybody, but since these came out on so many different labels the cover art varies drastically. The "Wu-Note Project" is my attempt to amend this all the covers work as a set.
Let me know what you guys think of Part 2, either in the comments here or on Flickr, where I'm posting each as they're made. All in all I'm pretty happy with them, although I wish there was a Killa Bees Volume 2 fit into this series chronologically so I could do that Thelonius Monk yellow/red trick.
Tags: album covers, blue note, Design, remix, wu-tang
Posted in Design, Music, Portfolio | 17 Comments »
Wu-Tang Design Remix Project pt.1
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
A little while ago I put a bunch of Wu-Tang (both group and solo) albums on my computer. 21 of them, in fact. I inherited some mild OCD from my mom, and as anyone who has seen my iTunes can attest to, it manifests itself in weird ways. I need to have decent-quality album art for every album on my computer, which currently equals over 90 gigs. The problem was that almost all of the Wu-Tang album art was horrible (ODB's two albums being the only real exceptions) -- no offense to the original designers, but as iconic as they might be they're looking pretty dated these days. So, armed with inspiration from what Olly Moss and others are doing (as written about by me here, and later by Kottke here) and a book of Blue Note Records covers, I set out to remake all 21. The first seven are here (click for full-view):
I've changed the art for these in my iTunes and love the results:
So seven down, fourteen to go. From here on out I'm going to start uploading them to my Flickr Photostream as soon as each is done, so you guys can bug me if I'm not making them fast enough. I'll post the next set of seven here when they're done. In the meantime, enjoy, and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
Tags: album covers, blue note, Design, remix, wu-tang
Posted in Design, Music, Portfolio, Uncategorized | 104 Comments »
3 Flickr Sets
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Otl Aicher's Munich 1972 poster series (uploaded by Blanka)
Vernacular Typography Polaroids (by onpaperwings)
Otl Aicher is one of my favorite graphic designers, and his identity work for '72 Olympics in Munich is worth studying if you have any interest in how work like this is supposed to be done. I don't much about the Vernacular Typography Polaroids other than there are some great examples of hand-drawn type in there. Check out the book "Handjob" by Mike Perry for more (modern) examples. Lastly, a set of posters for Int'l Male, a nightclub act. Loved this bit from the description: "Images were sourced variously and used without permission. Posters were printed digitally and thrown away after the gig." Must be Swedish or something.
Tags: Design, flickr, poster
Posted in Design | No Comments »
UEFA Euro logos
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Travis alerted me to these great logos used for many years by UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, for their "Euro" football/soccer competitions (think World Cup but just for Europe, played in the off-years). I tried and tried but could not find any info on who designed them. Whoever it was did a great job, these were used for years with just slight changes (the flag represented whichever country was the host) every year. Some may question the legibility, but I had no trouble identifying it. Sometimes recognition is more important than preserving the sanctity of each letter.
A few years ago this logo was thrown out and currently a brand new logo is unveiled for every competition. This summer, Austria and Switzerland are co-hosting the games. Their logo is below.
This is a great example of what's wrong with logo design today and how far it's fallen, corresponding (I think) with the rise of computers and design software. Every surface is shiny, the type is uninspired, and that drop shadow -- it looks like someone's copy of Photoshop just threw up over the whole thing. The idea of using the Alps is fine, but the execution is weak. Why would an outline of mountains be beveled?
If you have any info on whoever designed the older logo, drop me a line.
Tags: Design, logo, soccer
Posted in Design | 3 Comments »
Process: My Bigfoot poster
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
A few weeks ago we got the word that the AIGA: Detroit (American Institute of Graphic Arts) was hosting the third fourth iteration of the Urban Forest Project, and that Media Genesis had been selected to produce two of the posters. For those that don't know, the Urban Forest Project (first held in New York City in the Fall of 2006) is an outdoor exhibition of posters dealing with issues of the environment, specifically trees and their importance in our ecosystem. Denver hosted the second Urban Forest Project shortly thereafter, and more recently Baltimore was the lucky host.
After researching some of the posters produced for both the New York and Denver projects, Matt and I began sketching out ideas for what we would produce. The brief mentioned using trees as a metaphor, but we both noticed that previous designers had taken this very literally and we began brainstorming ways around the "tree trap."
One night before falling asleep the phrase "Reason to Save the Trees #____" popped into my head. This seemed like a promising start; it was a blank canvas to come up with bizarre and off-the-beaten-path ways to subvert the "tree trap." I remember having a few impossibly ridiculous ideas at first, but the one that stuck was that of a homeless Bigfoot. This intrigued me. Bigfoot = funny, but Bigfoot with a bindle = comedy gold.
The next day at work I drew this:
I was excited about this direction, so I started to work in Illustrator. After a bit of drawing around I realized that if he was holding a sign instead of a bindle, there would be a great opportunity for a second joke inside the sign. Pretty soon I had this:
After messing around with some type treatments in Illustrator, and being generally unhappy with the results, I decided to move everything in to Photoshop. Generally Illustrator is the preferred app for print work, especially large posters, but in this case I wanted to try some things with layer grouping and blending effects that I felt more comfortable doing in Photoshop. After a couple missteps I decided to put the image in a frame, with the text outside it. Because this would be hanging on street lamps, I put all the text underneath the image. Bigfoot's sign was still blank, so I polled some people on what Homeless Bigfoot's sign should say. My girlfriend came up with "Will Verify Existence For Food," so I scribbled this on a piece of paper and scanned it.
Finally I had something that resembled a poster:
It was right around this time that we had our first internal critique involving me, Matt, and Antoine. It was a generally positive crit, although some very good valid points were brought up. One issue was the separation of text and image (I agreed that the layout seemed lifted from a Far Side cartoon). Another was the complexity, there were after all three "jokes" in something that most people would only glance at as they walked by. Not only that, but they were in a strange order:
Back in Photoshop I did my best to address these issues. Rachel suggested I replace the text in the sign with "Homeless and Hungry," which I really liked because it brought the text and image together and also simplified the layout (two jokes instead of three, basically). To accommodate this I had to move the text to the top, which I was skeptical of doing but if there's one thing I've learned about design it's that you have to be willing to experiment. Your gut feeling isn't always right, and your design isn't sacred, so you might as well experiment.
The obvious thing that felt unresolved to me at this point was the "Would Be" text. It was just sitting there, not doing anything for the design, but I was getting a little frustrated and couldn't see a better solution.
A few days passed and I came back to it. It felt off. It was awkward to read, and there was still too much going on. I decided then that my mantra from that point on would be "simplify, simplify." I took out everything that I thought was unnecessary, including previously-untouchable elements like the sign and the "Reason" text. I also decided to scale back on the number of colors used. Again, nothing is sacred and you have to be willing to get rid of things you think are good but just aren't working. After a bit of work I had it boiled down to this:
I felt close now, but the text at the top still bugged me. I reduced the number of colors more and went back to an old design stand-by of mine, the banner. For the first time, it felt finished.
But not for long. I left it alone again, came back to it, and this time it didn’t look as resolved as I remembered. If my mantra was “simplify,” why was there still that graphic noise in the background? I had tried to avoid gradients up until this point (for some reason, possibly involving my design education and preference for analog vs digital) but I tried it on the background and really liked the result. Antoine mentioned that the removing the “Reason #” text confused my initial message, that being that there are hundreds of reasons to preserve our environment, and after some consideration I agreed and brought it back. The banner moved to bottom, some colors were changed, and finally:
It was done.
I’ll post pictures once it’s printed and hanging up outside.
Tags: bigfoot, Design, poster
Posted in Portfolio, Process | No Comments »