Silkscreen dreams

I signed up for a silkscreen class at the Fairmount Art Center in Philadelphia. Its one night a week, and will cover a few different methods of silkscreening. Unfortunately for me, my college printmaking course completely skipped over the silkscreen section, so I'm forced to learn later in life. The Art Center is a cute little building in Fairmount that provides a variety of classes. My teacher Tom is pretty cool. Seems he is very excited to teach adults because most of his time is spent with kids.

I missed the first class (because I'm a slacker), but the second class was cool. At first I was disappointed because there's no film or dark room involved, and I figured, eh, this will be a cinch. Tonite I sat down to make some stencils, and well, it is not a cinch. Anyone who is good at silkscreening will tell you that figuring out the negative and positive sections when using more than one ink ain't easy. Also, unlike popular belief, the screens are NOT made of silk. : )

I've included an image of what I'm attempting to print. We shall see how it goes....I will try to scan and post the final print.

Save the Date!

Friends of mine, Andy and Karen, are getting married this summer and requested I design their Save the Date announcements and wedding invitations. Here are the postcard announcements we created. It is raaather unfortunate that, thanks to the inept employees of FedEx Kinko's, they did not mail as soon as we would have liked. I know earlier in this blog I rave about the services of FedEx Office, but maaaaybe I take that back now. I felt like I was in a Chapelle episode when I called the office in Chicago about some printing issues. 

Sustainability Heros

AIGA Philadelphia's Campaign 2 Sustain Student Poster Exhibition (phew!) was a great success. For photos from the event, visit the AIGA Philly flickr gallery. You can also view some of the amazing, winning and runner-up designs, as well as the cutie-patootie student winners. And oh my, there's me! I have to say, I was uber impressed with the submissions. All the attendees were allowed to vote on their favorite. It was rather difficult due to the wide range of styles and concepts. Some utilized strong, detailed illustration, while others focused on the message and type. All in all, they kicked ass. 

I think I was mostly impressed with the designs by Tyler Graduate Student Bernardo Margulis. I'm not sure if he has them posted anywhere, but I will try to find them.  

The winners received various prizes, as well as an award-certificate designed by yours truly, with the assistance of Dave Copestakes. I went with a sustainability "hero" theme. I originally had two designs, one with "Sustainability Man" and his female counterpart. My fellow committee members wanted to go with something more "unisex," which I interpreted as "less sexy" and more "designer looking," so I came up with the skinny-hipster character with the funky glasses. Scrawny, but a hero none the less.

Also, the exhibition was placed in the Crane Arts building, home of GDloft, and one of the coolest gallery spaces I've seen. Woot!

Campaign 2 Sustain

AIGA Philadelphia has sponsored a Student Poster Design Competition focused on Sustainability practices. The closing reception is this Friday, Jan. 30. The winners of the competition will be announced, as well as refreshments and a DJ. Hope to see you there!

For more info, click here.

Quizzo Champs!

My friends and I won Quizzo at Good Dog Bar last Thursday! Thanks to Johnny Goodtimes for a titillating game. He keeps us on our toes. And thank god John (on the left, red hat) is a librarian and a random-trivia genius. We couldn't have done it without him (he pretty much carries the rest of us)! I've also noticed that the teams at Good Dog score significantly less points then other bars around the city.....hmmmm. I have come to the logical conclusion that we are just slower here in Center City. What does this say about your patrons, Good Dog? Please replace all the pictures of cute puppies with excerpts from Shakespear and maybe some big vocabulary words. 

Ad

Here is an ad I created today for the boss.

Flip Video

Soooo, I received a Flip Mino for Xmas from work. This thing is so great! We actually purchased one for my brother for Xmas, the HD version, but he never reads this so no worries. I think he will love it though. It is pocket size, super durable, and quickly and easily records video. Then you upload it to computer by pushing a button and the USB drive "flips" out. There is both Mac and PC software included directly in the drive. So very easy to use. Its perfect for YouTube nuts who like to upload video.

I included a short video. The quality of the video is pretty impressive considering the size of this thing. Enjoy!

Ecount Holiday Tradition

Every year during the Holiday season, Ecount compiles a mixed CD from the favorite songs of the Ecount employees. This year's was a great 2-disc mix of holiday tunes, some oldies and some goodies and a couple randoms (Matt!). I designed this funky cover. Once again FedEx Office saved our asses and print and cut the CD covers for us.

I will see if its possible to share some of the tunes over the net. I have no idea how to do that, or if it is legal. Any suggestions?

My pick was White Winter Hymnal, by Fleet Foxes.

Seasons E-greetings!

This year, my office decided we would send out an e-mail holiday greeting instead of a printed card. According to rumor, the printed greeting usually gets sent out post-holiday, and there is always a surplus. They decided to, once again, be green and send out an electronic greeting to all clients/partners AND donate funds to a charity and notify all our clients/partners that we had done so in their name. We chose the NFF. You can click on the image to see my original photoshop design of the e-greeting, and click here to see how it looks in HTML. I had never designed using in-line CSS before, but it was really very easy. Just a few small changes. Although, I've been told that e-mail clients sometimes don't pick up everything you want them to,  you need to keep the code very lean. I also discovered that MailChimp will send out e-greetings for free!(to an extent)(you can't just send them from your hotmail : / boo.) Maybe I will send out some holiday greetings of my own....

I'm freakin famous!

Yes! My hand made it to 160/90's blog. I was quite the social butterfly last nite at Philly Creative Guide's 2008 Creative Mega Social at NorthBowl in Northern Liberties. The event was so great, excellent food, bowling, drinks and a great crowd. I got to mingle with a variety of creatives in the area, and met a whole group from 160. I think I kinda look like a monk in that shirt. Kelly seems pretty cool. They seem to have a pretty close-knit agency there. Check out the pics!! Oh yeah, and it was all for a good cause.

yes, Fun!

Here are some of the files from the rebrand for your viewing pleasure!

Morph into a giant Corporation

So I was put in charge of rebranding the conference rooms (no one else wanted to do it) in our building to conform to Citi branding. I think there is a new sign out front, but we also had to rebrand our mission statement, and the company values, as well as some of the meeting rules in the various conference rooms. It turned out to be fun. Citi branding is pretty strict (bland), but I was able to get a little creative. I got some ideas from this site for use of the red arch. Once everything was printed, framed and up (refer to pics) I think it looked pretty sharp. Sorry the pictures are so craptastic, I really need a new digital camera. But you get the idea. We went to FedEx Office for the quick print job because we had a tight turn around time. I just uploaded the files to their site, and we picked it up the next day. The people on the phone were very helpful too. Maybe they can get some kudos at their next production staff meeting (puke). My friend Michelle said she used to get her resume printed their when she was looking for jobs and without printer (a.k.a. broke).