My friends Brittney and Jonathan are adopting [and pretty awesome] and they have this great blog where you can donate or buy a shirt to support them, and get a glimpse at the adoption process. Check it out!

ogrusha:

the great Tove Jansson

marc johns

(via herewecollide)

Incredible under water photography. Wow.

photojojo:

These black and white photos of free divers are worth an audible gasp.

Free Divers by Kanoa Zimmerman

via wnycradiolab;darksilenceinsuburbia

stylesight:

Beth Höeckel

(via brookehatfield)

nevver:

Put a fire under it

nevver:

The Bread of the Rich

kari-shma:

Books suspended above an entrance to the Istanbul modern art museum by Hanif Shoaei

(via fairtradegothic)

Individual Voice Project

My final semester in school has arrived, and the time has come to supplement my portfolio with some more independently driven projects. I’ve looked at my portfolio and have decided that I’d like to add an Identity system to it. I would like it to be print-heavy. It will have to include a logo, of course, and letterhead/stationary/biz cards (the usual), but I also want to include a couple of other print pieces. Maybe a map, a brochure, menu, journal, or package design. A plus to this would be that it would wet my feet for creating my own stationary.

I would like to do either a park/tourist experience, a restaurant or coffee shop, or a festival/conference event. I’m not sure if I’ll need to make up my own client, mock-brand a real client, or actually contact someone and work with them, which I’d rather not do because time is of the essence, and I’d like this piece to be a reflection of my personal design style.

Here are a couple of examples along the lines of what I’d like to do:

Fast Eddies by Richard Arthur Stewart

Olympic Provisions by Official Mfg Co

Purity by Heydays (their design work is awesome. They are in norway)

Stockholm Cultural Festival by Snask Creative

Music video inspiration & music choices

inspirations:

Psychedelic, geometric, bold

A bit of soul, heritage/historical

(this style might not fit my one choices as well, but they are great to look at anyways)

This one is to inspire the hard core animators  

———

My Music Choices:

Have it narrowed down, sort of. I love these songs. My gut reaction was to do something older, but I’m unsure now. We’ll see how it pans out.

Mark Rothko Cookies

(Source: nevver)

The Color of a Colorless Soul by ~Pockypuu

(Source: wm-artstuff, via deliciousnoms)

Interesting post on the Creative Review: The making of a Coca-Cola neon sign, 1954 

(via Creative Review - The making of a Coca-Cola neon sign, 1954)

The beast of the semester: The HLN project

This semester, my Advertising through Graphic Design class worked with Turner Broadcasting’s HLN (formerly known as CNN’s Headline News) on a possible initiative for the year in review. Toni Rogers and I worked as partners on this project.

Our HLN initiative was called “I Remember When… 2011”. The goal of the campaign was to create a personal experience which resonates with HLN fans and new viewers alike that will create a buzz around HLN. We pitched that the initiative would be based around a nationwide contest in which users created content that will be shared on Facebook, Twitter and featured on television. Fans would upload a video on HLNtv.com featuring themselves completing the sentence: “I Remember When…”. In their video, fans will tell their story of their experience of or reaction to a top story of 2011.  We also pitched that HLN’s television personalities would also relay candid accounts of their own personal experience of the year’s top stories to be shown on air.

We created an example of how the television stories would look (I wanted to post the video, but I’ve reached my weekly limit for vimeo), as well as a website concept, and social media concepts.

This project was very different than anything that I have ever done. We spent countless hours brain storming and strategizing, making lists (so many lists!), and concepting before we even felt ready to begin designing. We had to had to create the big idea, and I think that we were successful.

Some snippets of lists:

We presented our project in our class to special guests from HLN, and then, on a later date, presented a synopsis of our idea at CNN center to more HLN and CNN staff members.

This photo (courtesy of Stan) is of our class (I love these guys) after the presentation with a couple of the HLN guys.

And this is Toni and I in action presenting at CNN center. (I think this pic. was Stan’s too)

Looking back: Henry & Co. field trip

While I’m looking back at field trips from the year, I couldn’t forget about Henry and Company, which my class went to on October 5th.

Henry and Company is a high end printer in Chamblee whose forte is specialty printing. We got to see the printing process and were able to see lots of examples of their work. It was also really interesting to see the machinery that they were using as well as some old wood block letters.

That place was a letterpress heaven. Seriously. They gave us so many take-home items that you’d be green with jealousy, so I will not brag. One of the pieces that they gave us was the following piece. I originally saw this photo of this piece printed for French Paper on their flickr and assumed it was a business card size. But no, it’s a poster. Did you hear that? A. POSTER. Eleven by seventeen inches of foil and embossed goodness. I want to frame it.