When people tell me that all design is going to be digital in the future, I start digging around the internet for examples that show the potential of print and paper when used creatively. It’s true that the majority of marketing and advertising is moving towards a digital/media dominated landscape; however, printed and non-printed paper design is also moving – towards deliberate and unique artistic applications.
I found the art of Jen Stark and was floored. The rich layering of colors, movement, and space within her sculpted paper compositions is absolutely stunning. Their three-dimensional and tactile nature give the brain playful fodder to contemplate within. Her work is so good, that back in 2008 Banana Republic stole some of it.
Here’s one of my favorites from Jen’s paper sculpture works:
Stark also dabbles in drawing, installation and animation. Go check out more of Stark’s mesmerizing work on her site. In addition, you can watch a video about her work here or dive straight into her Vimeo account and watch her paper sculptures animate to life.
Artists who make complex creative ideas out of paper really fascinate me, and I’ve begun to notice that a new wave of the paper-craft movement has started to pick up steam again recently. With a quick search, I found more than a dozen paper-crafters here for your additional browsing pleasure.
Well, the 40th poster collection has finally come to an end, and my fourth poster design contribution to the series is up on the microsite; it’s titled “#2 – Building Idea City.” For this poster concept, I hand-illustrated layers of pen work to create a rich and simple look.
To celebrate their 4th anniversary, Spruce is hosting a wonderful party on October 14th at their new store (which is next door to their first store)! I designed and illustrated a small invitation for them to promote the public party. If you’re in Austin, come join in the fun and celebrate this creative upholstery studio this Friday!
The concept for this invitation was to illustrate the new storefront which I also designed, and do add some elaborate typesetting for the party details on the back. I’ll post photography of the storefront soon.
Continuing my contributions to the poster microsite collection for GSD&M’s 40th anniversary, I illustrated two posters that are being released today.
Poster #27 – The Good to Great Client Event. The agency had Jim Collins come speak to clients, colleagues, and employees about the future of the business, so I wanted to emphasize the purpose of the gathering with a big, bold typographic treatment that would communicate greatness – aspirational diagonal angle included.
Here are some of the original sketches for #27:
#25 – Our Friends, Bill and Hillary Clinton. I decided to illustrate silhouettes of the former president, first lady, and two of the GSD&M founders. Their relationships started around the ’72 McGovern presidential campaign here in Austin, so I created a frame wall of memorabilia surrounding the time they spent together at the beginning of what is now a long, enduring friendship.
Recently, fires devastated Bastrop and other areas in central Texas. During the fires, I was glued to weather satellites and news channels as I tried to send over information to my mother-in-law who lives in the Bastrop area. Fortunately, her neighborhood were spared, but the overall devastation in the area (and other places in Texas) was alarming. I knew that I wanted to help in some capacity.
Local design agency AIRSHP put together a charity microsite that is selling designer shirts to raise relief for the victims of the fires. I contacted them and was able to contribute a design titled “Bootstraps” for the second batch release of shirts, which is happening today!
Order one now here!
Last meet-up, the kind gentlemen of Paravel asked me to plan the next ATX dribble meet-up by throwing up a shot. So… here it is!
The next official ATX DRIBBBLE MEETUP will be Thursday, September 29, 2011 @ 5:00PM at the Ginger Man.
I’m still hoping Dave will bring a small pink basketball to the occasion, so we can stupidly toss it at each other. Come on, Rupert. Make it happen.
There will be an undetermined number of free pitchers of tasty, seasonal beer purchased by me, courtesy of the recent release of Prova.
If you’re part of the Austin design community on Dribbble, I’d love to meet you and buy you a beer. Let us know if you’re planning to attend in the comments on the Dribble shot here.
UPDATE (Wed, Sept 21) – Thanks to some extra work by Phil Coffman, this Dribbble meet-up has joined forces with another pre-planned happy hour by the folks over at 5by5 Network. Check out the updated details here.
Here is the first poster I designed in the GSD&M 40th poster series, #33 – Over 1,000 Awards. I created a grid of icons that represent prominent awards the agency has won and anchored a vintage channel letter of the number one in the center as a self-proclamation of the agency’s success and legacy.
And, here’s the original sketch:
For GSD&M’s 40th anniversary celebration, the group creative directors tasked the design and creative teams with illustrating posters of “the 40 best things that we ever did.” To display this collection, I designed an interactive gallery microsite that uses responsive techniques to serve up the posters properly across desktop browsers, iPads, iPhones and the like. The development was done in-house by the talented Joel Parr, and the logo was designed by Simon Walker.
We used responsive techniques to display the gallery properly across the iPad and iPhone browsers, creating a seamless experience.
The home page is a gallery of thumbnails that have been cropped in interesting ways to encourage users to click into the details pages to see the entire posters; we used CSS3 to add a nice rollover effect. The posters are planned to release for 40 days leading up to the actual celebration date.
Detail pages allow users to move through the posters with an easy sub-navigation, and share their favorites on Facebook or Twitter.
I’m excited to announce today that Prova, my first typeface, is available for purchase here. I poured a lot of time, energy, and passion into this typeface, and learned so much so quickly. Now, it’s time for a proper nap.
The word PROVA means “test” in Italian and “proof” in Portuguese. It was chosen to commemorate this release as the first of many typefaces I hope to design. PROVA started from tight sketches and evolved into a full, international character set. The primary intention was to produce friendly, condensed letterforms that contained the occassional charming quirk, but function as a hand-drawn workhorse display font that could compliment illustration and interactive work.
Special thanks to my wife, who supported and encouraged me through one too many nights of tedious kerning and tweaking.
I hope you enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed creating it. If you make any work using Prova, please rebound the Dribbble release shot or send me a message so I can review your submission for possibly inclusion on the typeface release page. Cheers!
Last week, SXSW opened up the PanelPicker to voting and comments for proposed panels to SXSW interactive 2012. I submitted a panel titled Humanize the Web: Illustrating for Interactive, and talked my buddy Reagan Ray into co-presenting with me on this topic. I think it’s fair to say we both share a strong passion for adding hand-crafted illustrations to our interactive work and would love the opportunity to share on this topic.
Here is a partial list highlighting key themes that we’ll be researching if the panel is picked.
- Responsive Illustrations: balance the complexity of illustrations and imagery so that they scale well across multiple devices and browser.
- Custom Lettering: choose between styling live html type and custom image-based illustrated type to create a balanced, friendly user experience.
- Content Support: pair illustrations with content to encourage the viewer to continue reading or sum up lengthy articles in a single tasty visual.
- Style Choices: learn how to pick a style that compliments your brand and communicates a feeling that may inspire the user to take action.
- Framework Integration: evaluate the elements of your site’s user interface and choose which should be enhanced with optimized imagery or styled with code.
- Characters: use characters to energize the personality of your brand and keep the audience engaged throughout the site experience.
- Gridlock: break the grid with illustrations to create dynamic movement on the page and emphasize content.
- CSS3 Substitution: explore replicating parts of your custom illustration using the latest CSS3 techniques to create a leaner load time.
- Background: integrate repeating patterns and oversized, optimized illustrations to create a big visual impact on the page.
- Curiousity: use creative, playful html5 or animated gif implementations to encourage curiosity in users while maintaining a good user experience.
If this topic interests you, please head over to the PanelPicker and vote for it. Thanks!