| letterpress

I'm too tired to put together all the words needed to adequately describe how amazing it was to take a letterpress class with my Mom at fifteen/eleven, taught by Suann of Simplesong Design, in celebration of our joint birthdays. But I had to share the pictures because they're burning a hole in my pocket. If you're in the Alexandria area, you really must stop by the shop. It's my new favorite place to go to indulge in my love of paper.

day three.

When you can't read things online, you start looking at pictures. Hello Flickr. Let me first warn you that hours, and I mean HOURS, can be lost on Flickr. Because of its addictive nature, I really must get off and back to work, but I wanted to share a photographer I found with you. I love what he's done with his son's play toys. It's just brilliant. Maybe one day I'll collaborate with a friend and do something similar. Might need a new lens for that occasion. Hmmm. Christmas list starting in June? I think so.



Seriously, check this guy out, Ed McGowan. That's one of his pictures above. He's the director of design at PlainJoe Studios in CA. Picked up a DSLR a little over a year ago. How crazy is that? Check out the PlainJoe website as well. They've got some great designs and branding. And whaddya know? They seem to have some faith based clients. Always nice to see the Christian realm opting for GOOD design (let's be honest, they're not always on the cutting edge, folks).

This excited me today, not entirely sure why, but it did.

Wonder if they'd hire freelance from Chicago?

day two of reading deprivation

It's only day two and I already mistakenly failed this morning. Every morning I get an email from Google with any articles that have come out in the last 24 hours with the mention of Cystic Fibrosis in them. As usual I peruse the snippets to see if there are any links I want to explore further. All of a sudden I realized I'd just read a whole article about a father & son duo who are inventing a game for CF patients to help with compliance when it comes to their daily treatments. Whoops. No article reading for me this week. There's a lot less to do online in the morning when you can't read anything! Guess I'll go back to sketching out logo designs and prepping for my shoot this coming Sunday. Huh, maybe it really does make me more productive.

my weekly assignment

I'm trying to get back in the swing of doing my weekly reading of "The Artist's Way" that I told you about a while back. Well this week's assignment is "reading deprivation." Which means I'm not suppose to read anything. Now, that doesn't mean I need to take it so literally that I cover up all words that might cross the path of my eyes, but it does mean that I should probably not pick up a book (thank goodness I already finished my required reading for my bookclub) and I most definitely should not read blogs. This one is going to hurt. I just came off of a week of finding all these great design blogs and photography blogs, with great tips and encouraging articles. And now this. Phooey. It's supposed to help me "un-crowd" my mind so that my creative juices can flow unimpeded by other ideas. I understand the theory behind the assignment, so I'm going to do my best to try and follow it. But that means a whole week of no google reader whenever I need a break from work and no evenings on the couch reading magazines and no browsing MSNBC to see what the current news is for the moment. We'll see how well I'm able to keep myself from reading. I think this is going to be harder than giving up Facebook for Lent!

Edited to add: I'm only half way through day one of this and it's already proving a test of my will. Didn't realize just HOW MUCH I really do read on a daily basis.

science + design

He knows me so well. This came in an email from him this morning, knowing I'd enjoy typefaces categorized out as if they were elements on a periodic chart. And I do!

Sorry my posts have been a bit infrequent this week. Things are gearing up for Italy and time is running short. I'll try to get a few more in before we leave, but until then, have a great weekend!

featuring : dogstardesign

| Rodney Davidson DOGSTAR Design |

My visit to the library last Saturday yielded some great books on design. While peering through numerous examples of branding, I came across the image above and thought it genius. Can you see the C and the A that stand for Cigar Aficionado? And yet, it's just a guy with a hat on, puffing away on his cigar. I love the simplicity of it. Clean, simple, clear design. I often strive for this but usually don't hit it on the mark as well as this does. DOGSTAR has some other great examples of design on their site. Like this one for a walk in clinic:

| Rodney Davidson DOGSTAR Design |

This one is amazingly subtle. Walk in. Okay, I get it, there are footprints. But look closer... do you see the "plus" sign in the middle that often stands for "hospital." That's the clinic part. I love how he used the negative space to convey the rest of the meaning. Brilliant!

Ironically enough, I went from reading through this book: "Business Graphics: 500 Designs That Link Graphic Aesthetic and Business Savvy"


to this posting by a friend this morning entitled, "Is Advertising Art?" What an interesting question to ponder. Especially in light of the fact that I'm trying to get ideas for a new brochure design for a client. And while of course I'd like to think of my work as "art" it also has a distinct purpose which is to "sell." In this specific case it's selling a service, hospice care, but it's still consumer based. It's not ars gratia artis (art for art's sake). It's trying to get something done, convey a message, invoke an action (in this instance hopefully choosing to go with this hospice over another). Is that art? I'm really not quite sure. It's hardly on the same lines as a Caravaggio painting or a Brancusi sculpture. But the most successful designs (or branding) make use of aesthetic elements in the best way, just like a good painting does. So maybe in the end they are based on the same set of "rules" but have a different purpose or intent.

Whew! That's enough deep thought for 8 in the morning. Thanks for letting me hash that out a bit with you. Now it is off to start my day!

for inspiration | and a general mulling over

{christ and mary from the Corita Art Center catalog of serigraphs}

I just read a fascinating article on a nun who was a graphic designer. And I liked this quote from Sister Corita:

Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
Consider everything an experiment.
Be self disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self disciplined is to follow in a better way.
Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.
Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.