The Photo Booth of Wonder

I am in the middle of orientating a slew of new students at MICA this week, and therefor am completely exhausted. As part of tomorrow night’s DIY fair (an evening activity during the orientation program), I will be doing live, green screened photo-manipulations of new students. I know, it isn’t really DIY at all, but I still think it’s going to work out pretty nicely. I have set up a Tumblr to showcase the results of these live photo-manipulations, with the students’ permission, of course. You can check out all the action tonight at 9:30pm EST at photoboothofwonder.tumblr.com.

Andy Boy Brand

I have my friends and coworkers at MICA‘s Student Activities Office to thank for this awesome find. Been working hard there all week to get ready for new student orientation, which will be consuming all of my time next week.

I wish I could develop a self-brand with this much character, I just don’t quite know what my unique character is yet.

Specialists vs. Extremists

Some thoughts on extremists vs. specialists, with a few little diagrams.

I will now make up a person for the purposes of illustrating what has been bouncing around my head for the past couple of days.

There is this guy I know named Jerry. Jerry is a very passionate person, especially about one subject in particular: lighting fixtures. Jerry’s job is to sell and install lighting fixtures, in his spare time he reads his favorite lamp blogs, and he surrounds himself with other lighting enthusiasts. By all quantifiable measures, it would seem that Jerry is an expert in lighting: the guy you would want to have around when making lighting decisions in your own home. However, for the sake of this story at least, Jerry is an extremist. Though he may know all there is to know about these fixtures themselves, he has no interest in your family, your home, or your specific lighting needs. When you ask him a question about lamps, his answer is so full of jargon and the snobbery that all to often comes with expertise that he is no help to you. Despite all of his knowledge, he is useless and irrelevant to you and your lighting woes.

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Geometry & Minimalism in Book Covers

One of my favorite resources in Baltimore is The Book Thing, which is just an awesome place where one can go one weekends and get free books of all types. Though most of them are unfortunately designed, every time I go I manage to find a few gems. These are some of my books from my last two trips to the book thing. The Practical English guide and “Geometry: Plane & Solid” are definitely two of my favorite book covers ever. I would love the opportunity to design a textbook cover!

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do, and you can find bigger versions of the pictures on Flickr

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Unlikely Inspiration: Sports Logos

I recently watched Field of Dreams for the first time in a very long time; and while I felt the movie was a bit overdramatic and sentimental, I was captivated by the White Sox logo that “Shoeless” Joe Jackson sports on his old school jersey. This prompted me to dig into some other vintage sports logos, and I was surprised by how many are truly beautiful. I wish more modern day teams would use marks with as much character as the old school ones. I have collected some of my favorites, all from www.sportslogos.net, to share with you here. Enjoy!

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The Action Upscale Cultural Community Thrift Store: Philanthropic Design Fail

This past semester I was really digging on my lettering course, but also feeling compelled to connect more directly with my community, and maybe even help somebody with my work. So, for my final, I decided to try and unite my aesthetic, passionate interest in lettering with philanthropy and community focused design. I set out to create an old-fashioned hand painted sign, for one of the many well meaning organizations in Baltimore with less than wonderful signage. After some research, I decided on “The Action Upscale Cultural Community Thrift Store,” a secondhand store nearby my apartment, run by volunteers, that puts on programs for “women, youth, young adults, and the elderly”.

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Old Ways of Making Books in Santa, Idaho

I had the privilege of spending the month of June completely off the grid (no electricity, cell phone service, internet or running water) studying materials and gothic bookbinding structures with Jim Croft at his home in Santa, Idaho. It was a big decision for me to spend such a large chunk of time, so late in my design education, doing something not directly related to my professional pursuits, but I feel that I learned more living in a tree in Idaho for a month than I would have pushing pixels and pulling beziers back in Baltimore. I expected to learn tons about gothic bookbinding, a field in which Jim is a world-renowned expert, but I did not expect to learn so much about homesteading and sustainable living.

View all the photos from my trip

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New Website Up & Running!

After much delay, my new website is finally up and running! Please have a look around, check out the new work, and be sure to shoot me an email if you have any comments or find any bugs. I have some more content to push out later today, so stay tuned.