Speed Test!

Currently I'm taking a class called Advanced Design, in this class we do these beginning of class design challenges, where we are assigned a idea and given 1 hour and 30 minutes to create something using that Idea or concept. I have found these design challenges to be pretty interesting, because they make me think in terms of speed and quality. There have been some really cool results, as well as some not so cool results. Over all though its been fun.

Here are some of the results from these challenges:

The challenge here was to listen to music you don't particularly like and design something based on what you feel or thinking about while you are listening to that genre. in this case I was listening to techno.

The challenge here was "Insects Attack!" we had to take something small and make it look huge. On this one I got done really fast so I added some extra elements to eat up some time and finalize my design a little more.

This challenge was to take images of hats and composite them onto images of people realistically. My instructor told us it would be easier to do 4 separate images, but I wanted more of a challenge so I told him I could do it with one image of multiple people. I also added in a logo to finalize the design a little more.

There were a couple more challenges but they had less than satisfactory results. so I didn't post them. Maybe I will in the future if I decide to show some of my bad designs.

Developing a Logo Personally...

Early in September 2009 I decided that I wanted to design a brand Identity for myself as a designer. In the beginning I kind of designed in a vacuum, I didn't do sketches and I didn't do any research online or in books. Very quickly I realized I was doing something wrong. So I talked to classmates and instructors about how I should go about this process. Everyone that I Talked to said, "Sketch it out." or "Go look at some logo books/websites and get some ideas."

Here is a couple coherent early pages from my sketchbook:

At first I was a little apprehensive towards the idea of looking at other logos and jeopardizing my chances of developing something original. Then I realized almost nothing is original anymore, Everything is just a mish mash of everything. So over the course of about 8 months any free time I found myself with I was sketching out logos and looking for new ideas in logo books and design websites. There was alot of flops and frustration, but in the end I found a couple ideas from a collection of all my resources and molded them together to create my current logo.

Here is a taste of what could have been:

Here is the idea that survived:

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice/critiques.

Seeds of Virtue

This week I got to write and illustrate a children's book for my Advanced Design class. I found some interesting challenges with this project. First I wasn't really sure how to write for children, I did a little bit of research online and at my local library. Online I found a bunch of interviews with writers of children's books, the consensus between the 5 different videos I watch was that kids don't want to be talked down to. At the library I found a gigantic selection of examples, I thumbed through a couple of them and made the decision to do more of an abstract style with a simple "if you can dream it, you can do it" story.

Now for this project we were required to do 10 pages including the cover. I had a little trouble writing for only 10 pages so I went a little crazy and ended up with 22 pages plus a front and back cover.

Give it a read and let me know what you think
Grow Big and Strong