December 01, 2008

48-Hour T-Shirt #1



The first 48-Hour T-Shirt is now available. That’s the design, above: Three colors (metalic silver ink, black, flourescent green) on a gray American Apparel 4.3-ounce fine cotton athletic fit T. A summary of the research inspiring the design, below, is also available in PDF form, here.

This phrase was quoted in a recent paper by scholars researching the subject of mimicry and its role in the day-to-day marketplace.

One study, for instance, found that a waitress received larger tips when she “mimicked” customers by repeating orders verbatim, than when she paraphrased their orders. According to the researchers, being subtly mimicked “creates feelings of rapport, affiliation, and closeness toward the mimicker.”

The research was summarized in the April 2008 issue of The Journal of Consumer Research, in an article titled “Of Chameleons and Consumption,” which noted that prior studies suggested “that mimicry serves as an important communication tool, communicating to the person being mimicked that ‘I show how you feel.’” This newer research specifically explored “the effect of mimicry on consumption,” and how it might be used in, for instance, sales techniques.

Design by Derek Black, MFA candidate in the graphic design department of Savannah College of Art and Design (www.redneckillustrator.com).

PLACE YOUR ORDER NOW! While you still have time!

November 27, 2008

4 Months In The Making

So what have I been up to? A little of this and a little of that. I finished finals last week with all As, passed my 45-hour review, and have been working on my thesis (working title: Play and the Discovery of New Ideas). So I'm doing well. But my current venture is a bit out of left field and at the same time perfectly me.

Four months ago I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Rob Walker who wanted me to be part of an experiment of sorts. Rob is the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy And Who We Are



and is the New York Times Magazine "Consumed" columnist.

The project is called The 48-Hour T-Shirt (link for the pdf flyer), it is designed to prod consumers to think more about their own behavior, about how their are manipulated, and about how they manipulate themselves. (He does state that doing this by way of selling products is ironic and part of the point).

3 statements where created based on research Rob had done (found) the first is inspired by research regarding mimicry and the shirt is "I Show How You Feel." The design of this shirt is done by my friend and fellow Graphic Design MFA student Derek Black. The second is "We Have The Same Birthday," based on research relating to false consensus and designed by yours truly. The last is a fake placebo"Veladone-Rx, It's Worth The Extra Money. Really." based on research of placebos and pricing of drugs and designed by Advertising Design MFA student, Angie Smith.

The kicker is each shirt is released for the first 3 mondays in December and is ONLY for sale for the first 48-hours, after which it will not be made available again. Only the artist are making money in this venture [so show some love :) ], Rob is doing this as research for a future book that will include the three of us and this experiment. I've seen the work but can't tell you about it other than I think all of them are awesome (and mine is actually really cute). The shirts will sell through the Murketing.com site

It has already shown up in the online magazine Core77 (note: the days were listed wrong here).

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

October 29, 2008

LEGOedween

So I've got a few more from my diggings over the past couple weeks. Mainly just from my small amounts of down time.

Firstly,


A better version of Me

next from back home,


Boots!

from SCAD


Derek Black


Holly Schmidt

and some Comic inspired ones for the holiday


Spawn


Juggernaut from X-men 3

Happy LEGOedween!

September 28, 2008

LEGOed: The Legend Continues...

So I have a few more. First some additions to the Mortal Kombat edition.


Shang Tsung


Johnny Cage

Now some personal ones:


I'm really proud of this one because it is freaking perfect.
My Brother, Gordon Eckler


Seth Akkerman


SCAD Professor, Scott Boylston


and I'm am pretty proud of this one as well.
SCAD Professor, Rhonda Arntsen

September 19, 2008

The Empire Strikes Barack

I'm not one to usually for showing political views, mainly because a lot of the time it isn't worth arguing with someone about. This morning I was going through my almost endless list of emails from The Daily Heller when one on political satire had this video.



This is great!

September 07, 2008

LEGOed: Mortal Kombat Edition

About a month ago I was able to pick up Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. In this game you can play any character ever in the series to date (note that they are coming out with a Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe that just looks stunning, not to mention you can be The Joker!). So I decided one day to make a few characters LEGOed, this is what I came up with:


Liu Kang


Kung Lao


Reptile


Sektor


Raiden
This one was the beginning of this adventure and I am especially proud of him.


ROUND ONE. FIGHT.
This would be my officially first LEGO vignette. :D

September 05, 2008

Screw the Bahamas

Since last year's presentation by Joe Duffy and his son here at SCAD I've heard nothing but praise for Duffy & Partner's Bahamas logo



Well screw the Bahamas logo I think the logo that they did for Gander Mountain Tall Tales Restaurant is awesome.



a beautiful use of positive and negative space, something a lot of designers tend to forget about when creating a mark.

September 02, 2008

LEGOed

So in my little down time when I am looking to turn off my mind but up my creativity I have started with what I am calling LEGOed. I dig through my (currently) 180 LEGO minifigs and see if any pieces remind me of people I know. Here is what I have so far.


ME!


My Mom!
(and I swear to you this one comes like this, it is Umbridge from Harry Potter but it looks EXACTLY like my mom)


PING!


Scooter!


Bob Newman
(one of my professors here at SCAD.)

and who knows you might be next...that is if I find a piece that reminds me of you :D

August 28, 2008

Christvertising



Okay so I find this hilarious, some people won't but this guy has a genuine sense of humor and some guts, that I like to see. It is hard to distinguish if it is a joke or not until you start browsing around the site which you can do so at Christvertising.com

August 18, 2008

Teaching Graphic Design

So for the past month I have been hired by the Boys & Girls Club of Savannah to teach a workshop in Graphic Design. The summer camp for the kids ends this friday so I only had four weeks in which to teach kids ranging from grades 5th to 9th, graphic design. It has been fun to work with these kids on this but I did need to do a bit of reworking of the course once or twice to compensate for kids missing and needing to catch up and for computer problems. All in all the kids I feel got something out of it and understand graphic design to be more than the computer, which is good because I wanted them to realize that ideation is the most important point and that a computer is a tool not an answer. In this way if they cannot afford a computer they don't feel as if they cannot become graphic designers later. I had a friend in undergrad, Graham, that never owned a computer the entire time.

I taught the kids Brainstorming, Sketching, How to Make Type Feel, Drawing Symbols and from this we worked on Logos. I made them a deal, they can make the logo for whatever they want, a video game, a sports team, a restaurant, anything goes but I am giving them the word they must use for the name. Everybody got the word Vortex. A word I borrowed from Bob Newman's Logotype undergrad class here at SCAD. The results were interesting since most the kids didn't know what the word meant they didn't get hung up on making tornados and such. At about the second day into the project I decided to do the entire thing in 24 hours just to show the kids an example of exploration and sketching from my own work.

My favorite quote from this class came from one girl who said "And I thought school work was hard!"

Here are some samples:


An Online Community "Sims" Game by N'yeema Noble (5th grade)


A Cafe by Alexis Merritt (6th grade)


A Florist by Kristine Walker (7th grade), and honestly the best and most appropriate use of Curlz I have ever seen.


A Fast Food Chain by Monica Mayle (6th grade). Whenever a kid said their logo was done and showed it to me I told them to draw it again. Monica drew her logo over-and-over to cover 8 pages of her sketchbook, what she didn't know was I was counting on her getting tired of doing it so she began simplifying the mark to get done quicker, the more she did it the better it got.


A Shoe Company by Juwon Johnson (5th grade), this little one impressed me constantly, his mind is just in the right place when it comes to design and art. He was another that I had do his sketch over-and-over because he thought he had it down pat the first time but he needed to simplify it more. This kid could be amazing one day, but I swear he has a bigger ego than me!


A Skateboard Wheel Company by me.