Narrow Victory

Here are five selected works that I believe allowed me to sliver into the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Graphic Design at Georgia State:

1. Branding for Fantasyland Records (GRD 3200)

2. Typography (GRD 3150)

3. Event Poster (GRD 3000)

4. Book Cover (GRD 3000)

5. Packaging (GRD 3000)

Don't Hire Me

Revised my current resume and cleaned it up to the bare minimum things I felt were needed. Here's the old, terrible one:

And hey, here's some new crap I threw together that's probably worse?????? Yeah, definitely. Don't hire me.

The Long Anticipated Blog Update

I think when Spring semester ended, I just neglected this thing entirely. That's probably not a great idea considering this is the one place where most of my work is right now aside from my hard drive. Anyway, I got into the graphic design BFA program at State. I turned 21. 

Here was my final project for the semester, a specialty item for Fantasyland Records:

A full-sized, hand-crafted, wooden, alphabetical record divider set. Yes, you read correctly, I cut a bunch of wood sheets down and sanded them and used a wood burner to burn the letters in the tabs, as well as doing a modified acetone image transfer from a laser print onto the center of each board. Here's some photos of the finished product. 

It was one of the hardest projects I've ever worked on, both physically and mentally, it wore me out. Finishing this and then getting my portfolio together for application was extremely difficult. Here's a couple of projects that got some revisions before application day:

Packaging, from Intro to Graphic Design

Direct Mailer, from Intermediate Graphic Design

Always Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Street

Happy Easter, everyone. This is most likely one of the only times I'll ever post something while it's in progress, but I actually would like some feedback this time, especially considering I have little to no direction here. I'll post two of the designs I've been working on for my Earth Day poster. I'm fully open to and encourage any comments, ideas, or suggestions on what I should do from here. I just want them to be simple. I can't be pulling any all-nighters over this thing, so if it's an afterthought, so be it.

I attempted to tie in my brand, too. I'm not sure if it works or not. 

Fantasyland Records: Advertisements

These, contrary to my feelings about stationary, were my favorite project of the semester so far. I love copywriting, matching and fitting text to image, and creating striking posters and print pieces. If I were asked what my strongest area is in design, I'd certainly have to say poster design and advertising. For some reason, this is where I feel the least constrained and able to put forth a more tangible sequence of ideas that usually works for me. I had never done any full illustrations for a project before, and I pulled an all-nighter, nine hours straight just for digital illustration time to finish this, but I'm actually somewhat proud of the work I've done this time. For a non-illustrator without any fancy Wacom tablet (did this completely on a macbook trackpad with the pen-tool in illustrator), they're good enough for me:

Since they fit so strangely on the page, I just made them small thumbnails, so click to enlarge. The idea behind these was to replicate retro-style travel ads and equate them with musical "fantasylands." Each ad fits a specific pair of genres, just some of my favorites that fit into the settings well. I need to do some slight tweaking with them, but overall I'm pretty satisfied, especially for my first large illustrations.

Fantasyland Records: Stationary

I honestly just realized I never uploaded my stationary for Fantasyland. I mean, it's nothing special, but it's the most basic building blocks of my branding so far. I'm going to be re-creating my direct mailer, and hopefully I'll just be able to put photos of it on here afterwards. I'll follow up this post with my print advertisements.

The stationary set included a letterhead (with blue reverse-side print), envelope (with blue reverse lining), and a business card. I'm hoping to refine this stuff a little as well come portfolio time, but this project might get the short end of that. I felt this was one of my most bland projects so far, but, what can I say, it's just stationary.

All Music is Bad and You Shouldn't Listen to Any of It

This blog has completely escaped me. Or perhaps I haven't been posting simply because I'm not entirely proud of my recent work. But we'll see. I have tons of revising to do over the next two weeks if I'm going to have anything to show for myself come portfolio review time. Stress is rising, time is fleeting, and the concept of getting a full night's sleep has become a distant figment of my crumbling past.

But things aren't all bad. I'm going to see some cool bands tonight at WRASfest, a show that I honestly wish my band could have been a part of. Unfortunately, by the time I asked, the lineup was full and set. It's still going to be a great show. HOWEVER, I am playing a show TOMORROW NIGHT at Georgia Tech's Under the Couch venue. It's cheap and should be fun considering the bands we're playing with, especially Omingnome, a Savannah psychedelic band that literally has songs about gnomes and uses crazy projections while playing their set. I'm super excited, and I hope anyone who can join us there will. Here's the flyer I made for the show, with two color versions for some interesting physical reversal:

I'll get some more recent work up here soon enough. Au revoir.