Thoughts and Favorites

Yee-Haw Industries woodblock type

2009-09-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

Yee-Haw Industries Process

Yee-Haw Industries Homepage

and their blog

Yuken Teruya

2009-02-19T17:27:00.000-08:00

He makes beautiful art out of the most ordinary things!! It's amazing! and i love the layout and design of his website!

The "I can read movies" series.

2009-02-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

Great old school design approach for these covers for books...that are also movies. Very simple and clean, i like.

Layer Tennis??

2009-02-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

Stumbled upon something that I thought was pretty interesting...to designers anyway. It's called Layer Tennis, see for yourself.

Bad Advertising

2009-02-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

I think this may be one of the WORST advertisments I've ever seen. That is all.

Laptop Battle

2009-02-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

So apparently there's an event in New Zealand called the "Laptop Battle." I don't really know what it is, but I dig the advertisement. The designer is a guy named Markus Hofko.

2009-02-09T20:38:00.000-08:00

Bonnaroo's (art and music festival) webiste is amazing! very well done. Check it out!

Erik Spiekermann

2009-02-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

Erik Spiekermann is an architect, type designer, and author of books and articles on type and typography. He was the founder of MetaDesign, Germany’s largest design firm. In 1988, he and his wife Joan Spiekermann started Fontshop, a company for production and distribution of electronic fonts. He left MetaDesign in 2001 and now runs SpiekermannPartners. He is also a professor at the University of the Arts Bremen. As viewer’s can see in the documentary film, Helvetica, Spiekermann is a proud hater of the typeface that gave the film its name. He has designed many of his own typefaces. Three of them include Berliner Grotesk, FF Meta, and ITC Officina.
Spiekermann’s typeface, Berliner Grotesk (image A), is a san serif typeface. He tends to favor san serifs. It is based on Berthold’s 1913 Berliner, designed by Hausschnitt. Spiekermann redesigned and digitized it for his foundry. All of the strokes are evenly weighted, with few variances. The design is very distinctive, especially the miniscule “g” and the majuscule “R.” All of the letterforms have a high x-height, short descenders, and rough edges. This makes it appropriate for advertising, displays, and short blocks of text. It would work well for book titles and because of its bold weight, it could also work well for some headlines. Although double-story miniscule “g’s” are usually used in serif typefaces, Spiekermann utilizes this kind of “g” in Berliner Grotesk. Berliner Grotesk also gives off an “outdoorsy” feel, so it would be great for the logo and brand identity for an outdoor company. This typeface catches the viewer’s attention in a playful way while still being able to get a serious point across. It is a typeface that one would not get easily bored with.
FF Meta (image B) is the most famous and influential out of all of Erik Spiekermann’s typefaces. In the FF Meta family, there is what seems to be an endless amount of weights and/or styles. It is a very modern typeface that would be very appropriate for advertisements having to do with technology. It would be a great typeface for a computer company to use. It is very clean, simple and it gives off a professional feel. All of the strokes are evenly weighted throughout the typeface, with little to no variances. The dots above the miniscule letters “j” and “i” seem to be larger than those of other typefaces. Just like Spiekermann’s other typeface, Berliner Grotesk, FF Meta also has a miniscule “g” with double stories. Because FF Meta is easy to read, it can require either loose or tight kerning, as long as it is not done to the extreme either way. This makes it very versatile. It is a good alternative to “overused” typefaces such as Helvetica. It is a great typeface that fits in well with the twenty-first century.
A third typeface that was designed by Erik Spiekerman is called ITC Officina (image C). It is a san serif typeface, but the miniscule “i” and “j” and the majuscule “J” have slight serifs on the top of them that sit towards the left. This typeface requires looser kerning and tracking because tighter kerning would make it harder to read. ITC Officina can also be used in many different styles and weights. It is said to be a typeface of the 1990’s and was created for contemporary offices. It was made so it could be read even if the room is not well lit and it is slightly condensed to accommodate more information on a page. Because it is so easy to read, it would also be a perfect typeface for body texts of magazines. It also gives off a professional, serious feel, so it would be good to use for a formal letter or pamphlet. Unlike the other two typefaces by Spiekermann that have been mentioned, ITC Officina does not have a double-story miniscule “g.” It is also the most boring of the three typefaces, which makes it the perfect typeface for all of those boring offices out there.
While Berliner Grotesk, FF Meta, and ITC Officina are only three of Erik Spiekermann’s typefaces, they show his versatility and creativity as a typographer. They also show that his work is always changing as time progresses. All three give off a different feel to the viewer, but each can be used in multiple ways. They are also great alternatives for the mundane typefaces that we seem to see people using everyday. As you can see through his work, Spiekermann is out to make great typefaces so others can see that there’s more to type than just Helvetica.

References
http://www.identifont.com/show?3MV
http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/downloads/itc/itc_officina_pro_complete_vp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Spiekermann
http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/designer/erik_spiekermann/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/berthold/berliner-grotesk-bq/familytree.html

Erik Spiekermann's Typefaces

2009-02-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

(Image A)- Berliner Grotesk

(Image B)-FF Meta

(Image C)-ITC Officina

2009-01-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

Fountain

The way the "Fountain" logo changes with each typeface you click on is very creative. Also, the way they show multiple words as examples for each typeface is very helpful because it allows you to see how the type looks with different words and sentences.

2009-01-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

Psy/ops

Because you can just drag the mouse over the type to see the typefaces, instead of clicking everywhere, it makes it easy to see all of the different options. Also, the thin, clean lines don't make it seem to busy or cluttered.

2009-01-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

soundofdesign

The way the website showed different parts and angles of each piece worked very well. Also, each series was different from the one before it, which showed the artist's diversity.

Colour Lovers

2008-11-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

Purple Limes

Yeti Mountain

Strawberry

Soft Blue and Green

Situations

Retrobot villian

Peppertini

Peppers

My Name is Torgo

Martini Olive

Lemonless

Kona

Hawaiian Vacation

Bright Whisper

1947

Fleeting Interest

Diver Crush

Commericals

2008-10-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

motion graphics

2008-10-01T15:54:00.000-07:00

Print Ads

2008-10-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Website Links

2008-10-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

http://w ww.pepsi.com/

http://www.thehushsound.com/

http://www.freepeople.com/

http://www.theclothingwarehouse.com/

http://thedarkknight.warnerbros.com/

Magazine Cover

2008-10-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

colors, just heads of band

uses "O" as part of the picture, typography

Symbol Designs

2008-10-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

water, sky, and grass on recycling symbol

person times alcohol plus driving equals jail, black and white plus one

Book Jacket

2008-10-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

love how books fit together, lower opacity letters

CD sleeves

2008-10-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

Power palette, Shepard Fairey

Spread out type, color type on black, splash of color, coordinates with title

Logos

2008-10-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

2 quicksilver symbols put together, wave and mountain

2 different type faces, vw buss, slogan

typography, black and yellow

typography, palm tree symbol

Who are your favorite graphic designers and why?

2008-08-25T18:36:00.001-07:00

Honestly, I did not know of any famous graphic designers, much less have a favorite one, but after I did some research I came across a few whose work really caught my eye. One of them was Saul Bass. One thing he is most famous for are his designs for movie posters. Some of which include West side Story, The Shining, Love in the Afternoon, The man with the Golden Arm, and Spartacus. He also designed the movie poster for Vertigo, which is one of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies. I like his designs because they are interesting, but their not intricate and outstanding pieces of art. They are simple, yet they get the point across. This gives me hope because I'm not a great drawer, but his designs show me that I can still design something interesting that people would want to look at. Sadly, Saul Bass passed away in 1996.

Another graphic designer that caught my eye was David Carson. I like his designs because no two were the same, they all were completely different. I love all of the bright colors and how everything is all over the page, yet they still make since. They were definitely my style; something I would love to model my own designs after. He designs for The Surfer's Journal, which is also something I find really cool. Something else I found on his personal website was his design for a surf board. It was amazing! Other famous companies that he has worked for are Pepsi, Ray Ban, Budweiser, and Quicksilver, just to name a few. Another thing I liked about David Carson is that he has a studio in Charleston, SC, which is about two and a half hours from Greenville, SC, where I'm from.

I also like the designs of Scrojo. He does a lot of posters for many different bands and music artists. He's the main designer for The Belly Up Taverns and he has done over 1000 posters advertising the different artists that play there. He is very versatile, creating posters for rap, rock, and everything in between. I like that he can continually change up his style, while still maintaining his own personal touch in every piece.

Another graphic designer that I admire is Rob Janoff. He created the Apple logo in 1977. It's a simple design, consisting of an apple with a bite taken out of it. The Early logo also consisted of many different colors. This logo has stood the test of time, and now it's more popular than ever. If you can create something that simple and it stay popular for that many years, you know you're a great designer.

Bo Lundberg is also a great graphic designer. His designs are very bright and engaging with a retro feel to them. He uses a variety of different shapes to make up larger shapes which has your eye constantly moving across the page to take in all of the different things that are going on. He does everything from glassware to play posters to decorative envelopes. All of his designs are very playful and child-like.

Why are you a graphic design major?

2008-08-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

I chose to major in graphic design because it seemed like the major that could give me a job that I would actually not get bored with. Although I do not know much about art, nor am I very skilled in it, I find it fun to create my own designs. I think that by becoming a graphic designer I can constantly get better at it and like it more and more, rather than slowly starting to get tired of it and eventually hating my job. I realize that work is not always going to be fun and that there will be times that I want to quit, but hopefully I can learn to love graphic design so I will have the desire to get better at it and to stick with it for a while.

Who would you design a CD sleeve for and why?

2008-08-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

There are many artists I would love to design a CD sleeve for but if I could only choose one I think it would be Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson lived in Hawaii, so the way he dresses, his hobbies, and most importantly; the style of his music, are all reflections of the island. I visited Hawaii a few years ago and I absolutely fell in love with it. I feel that I would be able to portray the Hawaiian style that Jack Johnson would like to have on the cover of his CD. I think that it would be a really fun job for me because I love the Hawaiian culture so much. It would be a way for me to bring something I love into my work.