Inspiration: Anneke Jacobs

Anneke Jacobs is amazing!

From the series of sketches "Undesigning"

From the series of sketches "Undesigning"

"Sketches" 2008

"Chiquita Chandelier" made out of recycled banana boxes. Anneke even includes the directions to build your own here (click on "tekst"). This caught my eye on Craftzine.

"Lampekapjes" 2004

Fun custom invitations

I was approached by a client seeking unique & fun invitations for her father's retirement party, in a small quantity (25). She was looking for a tongue-in-cheek tribute to her father's years of work, between law enforcement and a famous food manufacturer. Although it took hours of brainstorming, back & forth, sketching & illustration, and of course, the printing, I'm very proud of the final result. Thirteen hours, three plates, three colors and some hand cropping later we arrived at some beautiful invites. These invitations were printed on Crane's 110# Lettra paper with matching envelopes in Natural White. As a note, I've used dummy text for the illustration and blacked out the names, dates & places on the photographed final.

The illustration was done using a photograph I took of a can of tomato soup. It is paired with some Helvetica Black I mapped around a (3-D) cylinder in Illustrator and then traced by hand (for the "Bureau Shapes") and hand-drawn icon noodle shapes for the fedora, badge & gun. Text around the outside is dummy text but layout is the same as in the project.

Close up of the finished product. In the original Illustrator file I tried hard to make the text on the can look sketchy, but in the finished product it ends up with a more refined smooth look.

Another close up. Note the trapping I used to make sure all the colors overlap with no white showing. It's much more noticeable in this picture than it is with the final product in your hands.

The whole final product. I did black out the information along the edge but the text of the invitation runs around the outside black border in white (much like the illustration).

Chip Kidd: The Learners

I was intrigued by the New York Times' review of book jacket designer & obviously also book-writer Chip Kidd's latest novel The Learners. It wasn't a stunning review, but the premise of the novel is interesting & excerpts I've read seem entertaining & well written. It's still on my list to read.

As per Amazon & the Times, the book details the experiences of a recent graphic design graduate in the "real-world" of office work and his unexpected involvement with the experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. The name may not ring a bell, but I'm sure you've heard of the experiments in which participants were coaxed by a "Teacher" to give "Learners" what they believed were dangerously high electric shocks.

The following is part of the New York Times article:

"...The Learners is a funny novel, if one that doesn’t always do grief as convincingly as comedy or succeed in evoking both at once. For an Image guy, Kidd has infectious fun with words. “Some people spoke volumes,” Happy says of Tip, his glib co-worker. “Tip spoke leaflets.” Sometimes Kidd strains too hard, but he’s set his novel among advertising people, who strain too hard with words for a living. One of them waxes about the transformational power of the suffix in a cereal brand, Crispy Cornies: “By adding three letters to the word ‘corn,’ it’s no longer made by God, it’s made by man. Amazing.”

But Kidd’s use and explication of graphic design — Happy’s means of expressing himself — is what’s most striking here. “Typography,” he writes, “is truly the invisible art of the last 100 years.” It’s ubiquitous, influential and too often ignored. (Especially, as Happy quickly learns, by the damn Word people: “Make it bigger.” “Make it smaller.” “Cut some of the copy? You’re joking.”) In several digressions — sometimes enlightening, sometimes pedantic — ”Content” gets monologues to describe how it can appear as deception, irony, metaphor and so on. On one tour-de-force spread, Happy gets an assignment to design a small newspaper ad — for the Milgram experiment — and breaks down the mundane-looking block of text to annotate the subtle messages of every typeface, punctuation mark and column grouping. These digressions don’t always successfully connect with the story, but when they do, they poignantly show Happy trying to find the words — and the typeface — to adequately express his emotions."

You can read the whole New York Times review "The Medium and the Message" by James Poniewozik here.

You can also listen to the recent interview with Chip on Minnesota Public Radio here (accessible through Real Player & Windows Media Player only unfortunately).

Or go to purchase The Learners or his first book in the series, The Cheese Monkeys, on Amazon.com here.

You can browse Chip's latest work and learn more about him on his website http://www.goodisdead.com.

Blue Iris #18-3943, Pantone Color of 2008

Maybe like me you read the New York Times late December article "Pantone's Color of the Year is..." And maybe you weren't moved by Leatrice Eiseman's quote that Blue Iris "brings together the dependable aspects of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic.”

If you felt that the color spotted on frocks on Milan runways really had more depth & heart, you'll be pleased. A recent "interview" on the Colour Lovers blog with 2008's forecasted trendy color brings the mysterious personality of Blue Iris out of the shadows, with hilarious results.

Click here to read the interview.

What is graphic design?

I just wanted to share with you a few of the winners from Veerle's recent "What is Graphic Design?" poster competition. You can see all 15 of the winners here on her latest blog entry, or even check out the whole Flickr pool of entrants here.

The following poster entries are my favorites:


Above: The winning entry by Juanma & Gabriele. This one is tied for my favorite with the following entry.


Above: Second place entry by Gravitymachine. Tied for first place in my heart.


Above: This entry didn't place but I enjoy its tongue-in-cheek response to the "What is design?" question. You can see this entry as part of the Flickr pool for the competition or on designer Jay Faircloth's photostream here.

I hope you enjoyed these. They definitely inspired me!

Letterpress Step 2: Prepping Files for Photopolymer Plates

In the first post of this series we turned a regular photo into a two-color computer illustration. For the next step, we need to get this image ready for printmaking. For those of you familiar with prepping files for offset printing some parts of this process will come naturally and others will be counterintuitive.

Most of today's letterpress printing of images/illustrations is done using photopolymer plates. Photopolymer plates are light sensitive plates onto which light "burns" a negative of your desired image. The area that light touches remains raised and the rest is washed away, leaving you with a surface akin to linoleum or wood carvings (in the sense that the raised part represents a flipped image). I'll talk about the process of making plates a little in my next post.

I think it's safe to say that most letterpress printers do not have access to plate-making equipment, but rather order their plates. One of the most notable photopolymer plate-makers is Boxcar Press here in New York state. Other businesses who offer letterpress parts & supplies sometimes process plates as well, like NA Graphics in Colorado.

Let's get our illustrations ready for new plates!





Step 1: When deciding on an illustration to use for letterpress, you need to make sure that it fits the limitations that letterpress presents. If you are designing your first project for letterpress, take a look at Boxcar Press' "Seven Easy Steps to Photopolymer Perfection" for some tips. I've outlined a few of their more general tips above.

The major reason that letterpress printers ask you to use Pantone colors is because letterpress printing doesn't work in the way that offset printing does – a 4-color [layered] process using CMYK cannot be applied the same way. Pantone inks used in offset printing can also be used for letterpress printing, so custom printers will have them on hand. They can often find your ink color on their shelves or get it mixed for you. An unspecified color would have to be matched to a Pantone color or in some cases, hand-mixed. Each different color, even different screens of Pantone colors that you would consider a single color in offset printing, are a unique pass through the letterpress. This leads us to the next step...




Step 2: Looking at my illustration of the holly, I have two distinct colors Pantone 1805 (the red) and Pantone 4625 (the brown). If I had originally had more colors than this, this could have been the time to simplify the illustration. An example of simplification could be changing Pantone screens into 100% color or white to eliminate the need for more colors. Each distinct color requires its own photopolmer plate & a unique pass through the letterpress, so the fewer colors the better.

Getting the files ready for making plates takes a little bit of pre-press work. In off-set printing many of the following decisions are made for you by the printer's pre-press department, but when you're making plates you need to decide how to treat your files. Registration (or the alignment of multiple colors) is tough in letterpress & takes a lot of time to get right. That's why you'll see many designs that avoid perfect registration by not having objects overlapping or intersecting. I designed this illustration early on and hadn't considered the difficulty of printing it.

The following are some pre-press methods for separating your colors....


Knockout: Knockout creates a white hole underneath the object on top. This way colors that appear to the eye to be overlapping are both being printed directly on the paper rather than one on top of the other, each showing its truest possible color.



Knockout Problems: The problem with knockout is that it doesn't give you any margin of error in registration. If registration is the slightest bit off then white space will show up between the two objects that are supposed to appear to be overlapping. This problem was inescapable for me with the Christmas cards since I chose this method of preparation. In the end, I really enjoyed the off-kilter effect, but that's not to say you will in your work.



Overprint: Overprinting can create some really cool effects in letterpress (which I look forward to exploring myself in the future), although it's not always fun if you don't mean for it to happen. Rather than creating a white space beneath the top object, overprinting does exactly what it sounds like it'd do: one pass of ink goes right over the other. Click on the picture above for more detail and you'll see the darkened areas that result on the berries because of the red ink combining with the brown ink.


Trapping: Trapping can sometimes combine the best of both worlds by creating a margin of error for the knockout method. By slightly increasing the size of the object on top, it is able to move slightly from perfect registration without exposing any white below. At the same time, you'll have a tiny bit of overprint effect on the edges where the colors overlap (overprinting is exaggerated above for visibility).


Step 3: For my image, I've decided this time to overprint the brown ends on the berry and use trapping to make sure branches & berries meet. Step 3 involves separating the two colors. What I do is draw an outlining box or create crop marks to remind myself later how the two images align (this can be very important when trying to get things lined up on the press). Sometimes it's even required by plate-makers or letterpress printers who'll be using your custom artwork for printing.

Once you have an outline around the whole image you can copy & paste so you have two identical images. I chose one image to represent the plate that will have the brown ink, so I convert all the red berries in that image to white. Then I did the opposite with the "red plate" image. Now I have two images that represent the two plates I'll need to "reassemble" for the final letterpress product.


Step 4: Aside from the color separations & initial considerations for your image, getting your files to your printer or plate-maker doesn't differ greatly from what you need to do for offset printing. Each printer may ask for different things, but I've put a few common requests above. If you're a letterpress printer looking to make plates for home, or if you're just curious about the process, check out Boxcar Press' tips on preparing your files (including an elaboration of some of the tips in Step 1) or their pricing & turnaround info here.

If anything needs clarification or correction, please let me know!

To celebrate the second printing of my Hazel cards, I've compiled some of my favorite pieces from Etsy that feature man's best friend. Click on any of the pictures for a closer view and see below for direct links to the items in their respective shops.

Title Banner: "Amusing Dachshund Pillow" by Naked Decor

1. "Bulldog" Notecard by Small Screen Designs
2. "French Bulldog" Stuffie by Craftpaca
3. "Dachshund Dog" Wood Leash Holder by Art4MilkBones
4. "Petite" - a Yorkie in the Dog Series by Studio 1212
5. "Two Friends" Print by Kandi Shop
6. "Bruno" Bag by Kaching Design
7. "Blue Puppies" Card by Winifred Studios

I know I am not the first one in the world to discover these cute little kitchen gadgets, but I just thought they were worth sharing. Today at Target, amongst a wall of stainless steel corkscrews, spatulas & oven mitts were these super cute animal-themed kitchen tools.

Click for more detail...












Title banner) Octopus soap & scrubber
1) (My favorite!) Bird veggie/potato peeler
2) Toucan can opener
3) Starfish jar opener
4) Swordfish bread knife
5) Punk-u-pine scrubber
6) Shark bottle opener

The packaging for each product was great too, but I haven't been able to track down any pictures. :-(

See the whole collection online or shop for your favorites at Target.com.

Final designs chosen by Must Keep Knitting

I realized after trying to get everyone to weigh in on the different banner options I created for Must Keep Knitting, I never showed what her final choices were.

Etsy Banner
This is the banner she chose: dark brown knit pattern with light (almost teal) blue and pink (both by request). I think the colors work well together, although I wasn't sure at first.


Blog Banner
A slightly larger banner of the same style for her corresponding blog, Must Keep Knitting: The Blog.


Etsy Avatar
This is the final avatar that came about after some tweaking. For some reason Etsy cuts these square icons down unevenly so the outlined versions only worked at full size (in forums & other posting situations) and really nowhere else. So I just took away the border...

Header
A cute little header, with the same feeling, for patterns she will sell via Etsy. This will top off a printed piece of paper.


So all in all, making all these designs was lots of fun, however extremely time-consuming. There are a lot of very talented banner makers on Etsy who have banner-making down to an art, I'm sure. Maybe I will offer a custom designed package with options (like business card template, stickers, letterhead, etc.) or just the banner & avatar as a small thing once in a while. I'm less interested in the money and more interested in keeping my mind & skills sharp. I need to learn more about trading on Etsy, because that could be a fun option too.

In the meantime, check out Must Keep Knitting's shop on Etsy!

Banner design for a fellow Etsy seller

I haven't been doing a lot of designing or letterpressing lately so I happily volunteered to help out a fellow Etsy seller, Must Keep Knitting, with her banner & avatar. She was looking for something "girly", "country/farmy" and her favorite colors were blue & brown. She also needed something that represented her work: knit accessories, hand spun yarn & knitting supplies. After finding some solutions I was happy with, I'm thinking about redesigning my banner – hopefully I'm on the right track to something she'll be excited about too. Take a look and let me know if you have any favorites or ones you don't like at all. Click on each thumbnail for a larger view.

Banner options (760px x 100px)
I'm adding this 7th option because the contrast seems to be so low on #1 & #2.
Avatar options (75px x 75px)With a little feedback, some new ideas have been sparked. Using her favorite colors (which were a little lighter than I had started off with) we're off in a new & exciting direction... Oh yeah, I put an asterisk by my favorite – I almost said "an asterix", I can't spell!

Beware of the Design Police

I came across this at Veer this evening & just had to share. I know at least one person who'll appreciate this printable resource for designers brought to you by the clever minds at Design Police. Download these five pages of mini notes (containing gems like: "Helvetica was an unimaginative choice") that can be easily cut out (or better printed on stickers) and affixed wherever poor design needs to be flagged. Let me just make sure that I don't commit any design sins in this short paragraph. Just looking at all the possible pitfalls shouting at me in bright red, I feel nervous. Don't use up all your stickies on me! :-)

My favorites are by far:
"Comic Sans is illegal" (But, hey what about Papyrus?)
"Microsoft Word™ is not a design tool"
"This type has been bastardised!" (Yes, the design police seem to use British spelling)
"Do not use clip art!"
"Hire a copywriter"
"Turn off the CAPS LOCK"