A Truly Vicious Blog

I've had my blog here at blogger since the summer of 2008 and have recently decided on not just a redesign but a restructuring. I've noticed recently that apps like Gowalla and Hipstamatic which I love to play with have integrated an option for posting to Tumblr. Well after a little perusing I found Tumblr's code to be much more friendly to play with. Not to mention when I initially made this blog I had no clue what I was doing with code, I've come quite a ways. :) I even decided with this redesign to create a secondary version of my logo that could handle areas that are not so horizontal. So for future blog posts you can visit me at http://theviciouscircus.tumblr.com/ Enjoy!

Great Graphic Design

So half way through this last quarter I shared this formula of mine with a class of my students and was asked about it recently. I've never really shared this with anyone else before but here is how it goes. This scrawl from above is the first page in my moleskin and is usually redrawn at the beginning of every sketchbook I make.

While I was in graduate school I was constantly picking apart what design is (or for that matter what makes up Great Graphic Design). I see it as a system almost of checks and balances between three major parts. The Concept, The Content and The Application. I went on further to create this venn diagram of my formula, mainly because I have this odd obsession with venn diagrams.

I think the only confusion for some would be that I use Concept and Idea as separate entities. This is because a concept may be a theme, a word, a sentence, some ambiguous thing floating in the ether until it is combined with content to create an idea. An example would be my holiday cards for this season, the concept was to be able to interchange words to create new ones but I could have done that with any set of words. When combined with the Content of different holidays it became the Idea for my Holiday cards (the cards were the application of the Idea to create Great Fucking Design).

Pirates, Vikings, Wampas & More!

I love Christmas and the Holidays, I always have (I think especially since my birthday is in late December as well)! Well a couple of years ago I went off to Savannah, GA to go to grad school at SCAD. I had this nice place with a huge mantle and when the holidays came around I didn't really have any money to decorate. So I improvised by building my own decorations out of LEGO. Hence my annual LEGO Xmas town was born. Each year it grows and grows :) You can see more shots of this years over at Flickr. Enjoy!

Happy Holidays 2010

I love designing a holiday card every year and this years was quite a feat. I wanted to do more than just the ambiguous "Happy Holidays" but somehow still create a card for everyone. So I put together Festivus, Christmas, Hanukkah, Navidad, and Holidays each with their own positive expression and then cut the words up so the illustrations in the card could be mixed and matched. The result is you can celebrate everything! They are 4-color process on 65# Cover French's Parchtone Mist with A7 French's Poptone Blue Rasberry envelopes! Only 50 cards were made so if you got one Enjoy!

U is for U-Bend!

U is up at Alphabattle!

Arsenic & Old Lace

A new poster design on my site! :) A mixture of whimsical typography and clean illustration, which make up much of my personal style are used to create this poster for the play Arsenic & Old Lace. Arsenic & Old Lace is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. This is not a client project but is my interpretation of how it could be done and was developed for a series of samples I'll be sending to art directors.

T is for Time

T is for Time :) Now up for Alphabattle!

SWARM Sans!

Thanks to Brain Carroll over on Dribbble I heard about Design*Sponge's Design Your Own Alphabet Contest. I however heard about it about 24 hours before the deadline so I came up with an entry of my own with SWARM Sans. Which honestly I think may be much stronger than the original serif version I designed. Look for a full typeface of it sometime in 2011 (I've got a pretty full plate right now).



You can see Brian's Icarus entry up on Dribbble. Awesome work Bri!

R & S

With my work on my Halloween costume I fell a bit behind on my lettering and missed out on R. I went ahead with it since it felt odd to not do so. So here is R and S. You can see all the others over at Alphabattle!


R is for Ribbon!


S is for Smoke!

My lettering is getting more and more narrative as this goes on, that is something I'm really enjoying! :)

Halloween

So Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I also see it as a chance to try my hand at something new. As in the case of last years There's Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself. So this year I ended up running down to the wire and decided to push myself even more. You see the Sunday before Halloween I bought a sewing machine. Having no clue how to use one I taught myself that evening. On Monday I cut fabric from a pattern I bought (which honestly figuring out the pattern instructions was more cryptic than the DaVinci Code and harder than learning to use the machine). Wednesday and Friday I put together the pirate coat and vest. The shirt and pants I had from another costume years ago. And Viola! Now I'm set for Renn Faire next year as well :)




I used this story as a parable to my freshman students that you can never think that you can't do something. Just fucking do it!

Q

Q is for the Queen of Hearts! :) Check out the rest of the letters over at Alphabattle!

Alice in Wonderland

I'm a big fan of Alice in Wonderland and felt it would make a great addition to a pitch of samples for art directors. This is not a client project and never took place but is my interpretation of how it could be done. It is 2 posters, the program cover, and a shirt design for the staff. I set this fictitious project with the Port Tobacco Players, they are an awesome local theater of volunteers that do great work.

TERCIO!

Tercio is a pastiche slab-serif of wood & metal tendencies. Originally construction was to create a slab-serif version of Camisado, but as the design progressed so many changes took place that Tercio became its own font. The steampunk inspired print is 12.5" x 19" four color process with a silk-screen overprint of metallic gold ink on French's 65# Cover Parchtone Aged. Download Tercio for free here. Enjoy!

P is for Pen

P is up at LetterCult. Enjoy!

Hello Kitty Commander!

So a couple of days ago I came across an illustration I did years ago and laughed my ass off. I called it Hello Kitty Commander and it may be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever drawn :)



I posted it on Dribbble and it got everyone who saw it laughing, as well as, Ryan's request for a desktop background. Well I'm not one to shrug at a request for my work. :) So here is a list of every conceivable monitor resolution I could think of:

1024x768
1152x864
1280x800
1280x960
1280x1024
1440x900
1600x1050
1920x1080
1920x1200
2560x1440

iPhone3
iPhone4

Crap! I don't know my monitor resolution and don't feel like checking. Can I download all of them in one zip file? Yep! :)

Enjoy!

O

O is up at LetterCult. I was originally trying to go for something that looked like lace but in the end it felt more like porcelain.

A Lesson on Typography

Cruz Skateshop Sacramento

My Brother Gordon and his girlfriend Sandy are opening a second shop location in Sacramento and got featured in the Sacramento Press! And one of these days he'll get around to making the shirt I illustrated for the shop last summer HAHA

N is for kNot!

N is up over at LetterCult's Alphabattle. Enjoy!

Never Underestimate the Power of the Stache!

So for a few weeks I've had this image in my head as a rebound to Rogie King's This Isn't The Mustache You Were Looking For... that was Vader with the oldstyle villain handlebar mustache. So last Friday I went ahead and threw down my rebound, liked it so much I took part of my weekend to make a screen and print silver ink on a black tee.

Alphabattle L & M

Gotten a little bit behind on my blogging that should be remedied with my switch to FT freelancing and FT teaching. I know it sounds weird to leave a steady gig for 2 FT jobs and some how have more time but trust me it is true.



Light me up an L :)



Kept thinking of condiments :)

Suzanne Pfutzenreuter

Today's Awesome Award goes to Suzanne Pfutzenreuter! This Jenson book is absolutely beautiful. You can check out more of here work on her Behance site. Oh and you should follow her too!





For more information and past winners check here.

The Shiny Squirrel

A few weeks ago I got an email from Jessica Goldfond from Shiny Squirrel inviting me to guest blog on her blog for "a few things I love" You can check out my entry here.

K is Killer

K is up at LetterCult :) Check it out!

Rebecca Schley

Okay so I am a firm believer in Community over Competition, design is waaaaaay to competitive and it hamstrings most designers into not sharing ideas and especially not helping one another out. That being said earlier and at complete random I came upon the following works and I think these are awesome. I have no idea who Rebecca Schley is but I figured why not make this a great starting point to help promote designers and creative who's work I find awesome even if I don't even know them. So congratulations Rebecca you win the first ever Awesome Award!*





Owl-Themed Baby Shower Invitation by Rebecca Schley.

*I'll award people and post them as I find them but to be fair I'll only make them people I don't already know.

HELL YES!

An awesome web designer by the name of Amy Stoddard drafted me to dribbble last night. So awesome! You can find me here.

Marian Bantjes

She is as always inspirational and amazing. Thanks for the dedication and love Marian :)

J is for...

Bet you can't guess my inspiration...HAHA. Check out all the other cool J's over at LetterCult.

Give A Damn

I recently finished a run of my new Give A Damn posters which you can check out here. This poster was initially inspired by a statement I saw saying "Design like you give a damn." I thought of creating this poster so that each person could make it their own personalized motivational poster and put in what they give a damn about in the area above the words. It is custom lettering and my Atreyu typeface below. Silk screened with gunmetal metallic ink on 65# Cover French's Pop-Tone Lemon Drop.

I, i captain!

i is up over at LetterCult's AlphaBattle :) Check it out.

Art School Cliches

This is absolutely true and hilarious. I especially love "Did you know? 98% of infographics are 100% pointless. See pie chart for details." :) You can download a pdf here.

Rory Sutherland is amazing and inspiring

Atreyu Nibbble

So in lieu of not having a Dribbble account I call these Nibbble's (Not Dribbble or just a cute variation since it is a nibble of what is to come). Atreyu is my newest typeface creation, it is still in the works but here is a preview. The typeface was used on the "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Win" shirt I illustrated but only in all caps. The finished Atreyu Grotesque will be a free font available hopefully by the end of July.

Atreyu is going to be a long experiment in typeface design. It began actually as a blackletter (and still exists as one), out of which the grotesque (sans-serif) was born. I plan on taking this typeface and creating a super family consisting of blackletter, grotesque, serif and slab-serif versions. In doing so it will be the neverending typeface, which is partly where the name came from (that and I listen to a lot of music while I work in my studio and usually make it bands that I feel fit what I'm working on and the band Atreyu just goes great with this, that and I love their music too. Enjoy!

On My Mark Unleash H!

H is up on AlphaBattle! Check it out at LetterCult

Dribbble Dis

So I love the idea of Dribbble. Especially since it plays upon my idea that design needs to be more about community over competition, sharing ideas and inspirations rather than worrying about others stealing them. As an educator I find it to be really bad in the heart of design education so I encourage my students to share and share alike. It doesn't matter it someone has the same idea as you, they won't execute it the same way as you because they are NOT you. That being said I decided to dribbble here a bit, since well...I don't have a dribbble account (you need to be invited, oh well someday maybe :] )


A new poster/shirt print illustration. Enjoy!

Camisado

Camisado Black is here! You can download this free font from my website here. Oh and if you choose to use this in a design send me a link or a pic and I'll make sure to put it up here with a link to your site :) Enjoy!

Nothing to Lose Shirt

My second shirt off the press. This is part of an on-going series of illustrations I'm working on called the "New Originals" which are reimagined illustrations from works I did around 10 years ago. I figure since my skills and means have improved why not take a second look and see how I would do these pieces now. I don't have my online store up and running yet but if you wish to order a shirt you can do so by dropping me an email I'll let you know cost with shipping and the turn around time, you can even pay via Paypal.

Oh and if you're curious about the font. It is a new typeface I'm working on called Atreyu, this is the sans version, there will also be a blackletter, slab and serif versions to this super family in the coming months. :)

Baltimore Web Design Guild

I recently joined Michael Aleo and the gang over at the Baltimore Web Design Guild. A non-profit dedicated to promoting local Baltimore talent. If you are a web designer and are in the Washington/Baltimore area I highly suggest dropping by and joining in.

F is FUN!

F is up on LetterCult! Go check out the cool and fun work from lots of different letter artists :)

ALPHABATTLE!

LetterCult has the E's up and running go check them out here. You can join in too :)

LEGOed, It's been a while :)

So it has been many moons since I've sat down and LEGOed some people. I've been busy being busy and needed a break tonight from all of my business, got that? good. Anywho, some of these you'll know and others you won't, unless of course you do then in fact you will know them. On with the show!


George W. Bush
(I was not a fan of W's but it does look like him HAHA)


Christopher Walken
Looks like him and creepy. Love everything the man does!


Chris Rogers
Long in the making on this one, female LEGO are hard to come by.


Jeremy Carbaugh
A friend and co-worker from Sunlight Labs!


Josh Ruihley, aka JRoo. A friend, co-worker and smoking buddy from Sunlight Labs!

and last but not least...


Tim Ball the source of my # tweets, shittimballsays! You can check out my #shittimballsays on Twitter :)