Aphro Sheen

Another stab at the Aphrodite drawing.

As close as a star to the moon

More from ArtWorks and more from me doing examples to hash things out as far as figuring out timetable, potential challenges, fixes, ect, this time with the trifold mailer layout. 

It also gave me the opportunity to take elements we didn't go with as a group and see what they would have been like taken to conclusion.

In Brightest Day, In Darkest Night

Making examples for class fulfills a number of purposes. It let's me know how much time the project could take, it let's me know what sort of challenges students might run into and how to fix them, it let's me know if what I'm asking is even reasonable to expect, and it let's me get some of the urge to control the process and the results out of my system. I don't need for their work to be my work because I already did my work, so their creations can be different and with pleasant surprises.

One of those pleasant surprises was the background to this image.

One of the students wanted to make something resembling the 2012 ArtPrize lantern launch. I helped her put together some of the elements and I think she had a very creative idea which turned out pretty awesome. Unfortunately it wasn't the direction the rest of the group wanted to go, opting instead for a more painterly approach. I still really liked it and hated to see it become a dead end, so I used it as the starting point for my examples.

Below is a version formatted for mass e-mail using one of the example logos I whipped up.

The orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us

One of the more difficult aspects of doing a collaborative group project with students is ceding some control of the results and at times even the process to allow the students to learn, to make and correct their own mistakes and ultimately let what gets created be their work and not your own. You want to guide the work, not dictate it. And that's really hard.

An area in our project I where I found this exceedingly difficult was in the lightbulb logo.

Partly it was because I didn't feel we had spent enough time on logo design, text and font design, or the overall importance of logos to branding and marketing. It felt as though the most important, iconic aspect of the work was being sidelined and we were proceeding into the final with a rough placeholder. Partly also it was that I felt going with the rough first draft as the final is fine, but only if it's after you've already tried and exhausted a bunch of other options and decided that the first was the best. 

To that end I wanted to present an alternative, not only to show that there were other options to consider and kickstart them to making some of their own, but also to show what could very easily be accomplished in Illustrator with vectors rather than trying to paint something in Photoshop.

Ultimately the students still wanted the rougher original, which was fine, but at least with these mock ups they could see some options. 

What they drew at work today

Typically this blog is what I drew at work today (hence the name), but today, it's what they drew at work today. My students that is. Or former students I should say as they received their completion certificates today. 

Today was the last day of the ArtWorks Program at UICA and this is the final product they created.

It's a trifold pamphlet for The Green Light Project, an awareness campaign for youth homelessness and runaways. 

We had a real client who chose to participate with a bunch of high school students rather than going with their usual design firm. We went through multiple pitches, multiple critiques, numerous variations, and a slew of final tweaks until we arrived at a final product the students and the client were pleased with. 

Not all the creative choices were ones I would have made, but that's kind of the point and I couldn't be prouder of the group or the work they did.

So instead of my work, here's theirs.

Angry Kitty

A new T-shirt design for school. Our mascot is a panther, or as it appears here, an angry kitty. I made it in Illustrator CS6.

You WILL have a Merry Christmas

This is a Christmas Card I made a couple years ago.

Mystery Science Theater Five Thousand

This is a map I made a few years back for K College's annual 5K race. I understand that K stands for one thousand, but one thousand what? Miles? If so this thing isn't remotely to scale.

Brought to you by the letter C

Do they call him Biscuit Monster in the U.K.?

Be cool

In response to the heat wave we've been experiencing, here's a picture of a polar bear.

Boys vs Girls

For many people in today's society, gender is a very malleable concept. There remains I think, however, some cases in which the differences are immutably and unarguably distinguishable.

But I'm Allergic to Synonyms!

People who are unfamiliar with language may wonder why we have synonyms. After all, if the words essentially mean the same thing, then isn't it redundant to have more than one? Like say, lady and woman?

April Showers Bring May Flowers, Mayflowers Bring Pilgrims, Pilgrims bring Smallpox

Anybody throwing a baby shower and need an invitation design? Well, help yourself because I apparently missed my deadline for this one and have no use for it, so it's all yours, copyright free.

Vector Pepper

Yet another Illustrator experiment, this one using the Gradient Mesh tool. It's a pepper. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too? It looks kind of cool and is infinitely scalable, but vector stuff is hard while Photoshop is easy.

Bill Ding

Another Illustrator experiment. It's a building!

Hex Prize

Here's the final product. Like I said, I streamlined some stuff just to make it easier or in some cases better looking when I took the template and turned it into an Illustrator piece. I ultimately liked it and think I prefer using a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator best rather than either one on its own, as each has its strengths. The finished product wound up in an area show for Kalamazoo too, so that was nice.