Tagged: design

July 5, 2012

Welcome to Pug: Introduction

One day Ben and I were at Target, and in the home decorating section there was an 8 foot tall image of a pug that said “Welcome home.” We thought that the poster was indicating that the pug was saying “welcome home” so we started talking in a German accent, saying all the things we thought the pug would say. Eventually this morphed into me narrating a fashion/lifestyle show hosted by an aggressively German pug. Thus: Welcome to Pug was born.

Sometime between conception and production, Pug became more French than German, but whatever. Here’s the first (and maybe the only) episode of Welcome to Pug, a fashion/lifestyle show dedicated to your betterment.

Your response may or may not have some influence on whether or not I make more episodes. This was actually kind of labor intensive.

October 13, 2011

Twitter Design Challenge: KATG’s Hottest

At about 5:00 p.m. this evening, I put the word out on twitter that I was accepting Design Challenges. At 7:20 p.m., having no other challengers, Keith and The Girl‘s own programmer extraordinaire, Doug won with his request that I do something in honor of the Annual KATG Hottest Contest, in which male and female fans of the show compete to be named Hottest Fan.

So, I started with a little plotting and some sketching. Pretty quickly, I set on a theme that I liked.

And, a short 3 and a half hours after I accepted the challenge, 20 and a half hours ahead of my 24 hour turn-around promise, my design challenge is complete.

Click on the image to see it full size.

I feel like it’s missing some snappy copy there at the bottom, and I even left some space for it if I can think of anything. It should say something like “stand out” without actually saying something as over-used as “stand out.”

I decided not to use the Keith and the Girl logo for two reasons. One being that I didn’t want to use it without their permission, and the other that I felt like it would complicate the simple themes of the piece.

What do you think? Like it? Hate it? Seen it before? Let me know in the comments.

June 7, 2011

Twitter Design Challenge: Dog

So my last twitter design concept was “breakdancing robot dog.”

The concept was a little cluttered, and I had no immediate thoughts, but I started sketching and ended up with 3 pages, all of them of dogs or robots. Or dog robots.

Based on one of the drawings on Page 3, I made my robot dog. As you can tell, I was thinking about k-9 from Doctor Who.

But I still struggled with the break dancing aspect. I thought of trying to make .gif where the tail moved, but I don’t actually know how to make a gif. And, although this would be a fun project to learn, and it still may be one in the future, I don’t have time today.

So, in an effort to make the dog a break dancing accessory, rather than a breakdancer, I posterized an image of a boom box and stuck it on his side like a control panel. I wasn’t fond of it. The style of the boom box vs. the style of the dog clashed and annoyed me.

I used the pen tool to imitate the basic shapes of the original boom box, and came out with a dob/boom box combo that I felt clashed less.

Overall, I liked the plain old dog better myself, but the last dog with boom box was the most fitting with the original concept. If this was actually a client of mine, I would encourage them to lose the “break-dancing” aspect of their concept, since movement is extremely hard to intone in a logo.

June 3, 2011

Twitter Design Challenge: Things I Learned

After the latest and first ever Twitter Design Challenge, I learned some things.

First of all, sucking so much is definitely painful, make no mistake. But I think that this has to be done, and as long as it has to be done, I might as well do it with you watching and commenting.

This is like the “What I Wore” series in that, no matter what happens, even though it might be a little crappy at times, I’ll come to a greater understanding of my subject in a real way that will change my eye and affect my choices down the line.

In the future, I’m going to need a time limit. It took me almost 3 days to produce the last design challenge, and that’s a turn-around I’m not happy with. I’m also going to have to stick to one concept at a time. Trying to do two separate assignments and then blog about them both felt scattered and I didn’t give either one the attention it deserved. If people are going to be nice enough to help me out with design ideas, I should honor their request with my full attention. I should treat each concept with as much seriousness and effort as I treat my assignments at work, or that I would treat a freelance job were I to ever get one. This is something that’s going to be on my blog in perpetuity, which means that, more than just content, this may be an illustration of my working style over time.

In real life, I ask for as much time as possible to research and outline the work I do, so the finished product can be the best quality I’m able to produce. But when it comes to the blog, I frequently have other things going on that take presidence. So, the time limit is there to ensure that content gets produced in a timely manner, without taking up too much of my real life and without yoking my twitter followers to the plow of anticipation.

The problem with the inaugural Design Challenge was that I didn’t treat the requests seriously, not that I didn’t have enough time. I understand that the whole point is to get the shitty work behind me, but there’s no reason to be cute about it. It’s going to be crap without me making it crappier by preemptively holding back effort on that account.

So, in the interest of self-improvement, the next Twitter design challenge will follow these rules:

1 tweet.
1 concept.
24 hours.
Everything goes up, all work is shown.

So I’m extending the challenge, here and on twitter: Tweet or comment a concept to me, I’ll pick one of them, and 24 hours after I announce the one I pick, I’ll post the results on this blog for all to see.

May 28, 2011

Twitter Design Challenge Parrot and Glasses

By now every creative person on the internet has read or heard that quote from Ira Glass about wading your way through shit work in order to make something good. In the interest of getting more crappy work behind me, I put this out to twitter yesterday: “Experiment. The first person to give me a noun, an adjective and a color can be my first Twitter Design blog. This may end badly.”

Fairy_Princess_Holly replied first with her request of ” Parrot. Sparkling. Purple.”

And AldoMcGee won second place with his request for “Sunglasses, fierce, white.”

Holly’s was the most challenging one. Sparkling parrots are a difficult concept. Parrots in general are a difficult concept. I ended up doing a lot of little doodles to try and figure out my plan of attack;

a page full of line drawings of parrots

Eventually I settled on a sketch I liked, and I picked an image that I had been looking at for my sketches and used it for shapes. I kind of think this might be cheating, but the shapes felt so much more organic than if I would have tried to freehand them.

a picture of a parrot

Then I used the pen tool to assemble the parrot.

parrot

Yeah, the purple sparkle is a lazy second thought, but the parrot is really my favorite.

Aldo’s request was a breeze. In fact, I did it before Holly’s because it was so easy. I just thought of Lady Gaga and how she is pretty fierce, and she loves the lightening bolt right now.

sunglasses

I hope you guys liked my first design challenge. I feel a little strange calling it a design challenge. I don’t consider myself to be a designer, I don’t really consider this design, but there’s not really a better word.

I’d love to hear your feedback. What did you think about the designs, do you think that my use of the parrot image is cheating? What do you want to see next?

I think in the future, I’m only going to take one challenge at a time. Doing two caused too much of a lag.

October 9, 2010

What I Wore: Neverending Scarf

If I don’t look as friendly as usual here it’s because it is the late end to a long and mostly stressful day. Today I worked on some design work, which is my absolute favorite thing right now. But I felt so buried by the avalanche of other things I had to get done that I let work I didn’t like go out just because I knew I didn’t have the time to do it right. And things that should have been done today are sitting in my hard drive unfinished because I didn’t have the heart to send it off. Nothing’s overdue, but my slowness is bothering me.

Neverending scarf knitted by me
Grey cable-knit sweater from Target
Maroon sweater vest from Target
Black T from The Gap
Pencil skirt by Style & Co. from Macy’s
Leg warmers from Target
Grey ankle socks from Target (in the dollar sock bin!)
Shoes are Merrells from R.E.I.

And speaking of The Gap, I know it’s been said everywhere on the Internet, but I hate their new logo! Their rep claims that this is a sign of a new beginning for them. Does that mean that they’re finally going to start carrying size 18 in the store? I figure if they let that uggo of a logo hang around, why not a fat fatty like myself?

Don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about? Click here.