pretty stoked

Okay, this is the first time (!) I have ever been able to enroll in all of my first choice classes at once.

Highlights include: Experimental Lettering with Ken Barber and Screenprinting with Nick Karvounis

I've always been a big fan of House Ind, so it's going to be really great to have a class with one of their people as my professor.

Fink Fonts & Tiki Type have always been favorites, I can't wait for that class!

Hatch Show Prints

Recently I was lucky enough to get attend a lecture on Hatch Show Prints by Jim Sherraden. It was amazing to see the history of the shop, which is still the oldest working letterpress shop in the United States. The woodtype itself is so incredibly beautiful, it was really awesome to see these and crafted typefaces be preserved and still utilized today. Letterpress is awesome. It is just flat out awesome. I love when design becomes a tangible thing, and letterpress yields marvelously tactile results. Hopefully, I'll get an opportunity to take a class in the near future. I had the opportunity to meet Jim before the lecture and he was a really warm charismatic guy. He came to MICA earlier in the day to pull a few posters in our press (sadly I had class) and I heard it was a great experience. I'd really like to visit the shop down in Nashville, road trip anyone?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

busy week
will turn into a busy weekend
and another busy week after that

i'm real excited about a lot of upcoming projects


stay tuned ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Parra

Lately, I've been really interested in the idea of integrating hand-lettering into illustrative design, I love how Parra accomplishes this.

I really dig his color pallet and and variation of forms. For whatever reason I find them to be really relatable.
Fecal Face visited his studio awhile back, it's always interesting to see how other designers work, especailly when they're awesome, established, and their work is everywhere.
Rockwell Clothing

This video is interesting.

I should really go to Europe.

never not working

I'm selling a few monoprints at the MICA art market this weekend. This is one in a series of five.



They're collagraph prints with a view hand embellishments, including but not limited to "shin-cole" (I am spelling it phonetically but it's when you adhere bits of paper onto your print before applying ink) and sewing.

I'm happy to sell them. If I didn't they'd just be rotting away in a drawer somewhere. They're certainly not an embodiment of my aesthetic by any means, but they were a good means of growth through experimentation.


Mom came down, and we spent the day together which was very nice.
She brought all sorts of treats from home, including but not limited to EMPANADAS (!!!), my nameplate necklace, and assorted bath products.

I spoke about design at department function today and that was a great experience.


I'll be going to Manhattan next weekend (finally), after of course, Treasure Fingers & Blackstarr on Friday.

BARBARA KRUGER IS FROM NEWARK!

In addition to all sorts of really wonderful conclusions I've come to recently, the most exciting, my realization of how much I love design.

I just want to get better at design. I want to learn more about design. I want to continue making beautiful things, become more innovative, continue to outdo my self with each project, or at least attempt to. What's really exciting about all that, is that I'm making a career out of it. And that rules.

I got this Barbara Kruger book today at the library, I'm really excited to read it.



I've always had an interest in her use of type, but really haven't looked much further into her work. I had more of an appreciation Supreme ads after I first saw her work. Surprisingly enough, homegirl was born in NEWARK!

I'm really hyped on the type II project I've been working on, in addition to this thievery corporation thing, even though it's caused Lebonese Blonde to be stuck in my head (thanks Zach Braff) for the past two weeks.

Jenna just sent me this, I had to LOL.

I really love type.

In my TypeOne class, we had to develop a book that highlighted five fonts we were particularly drawn to in a unified manner. I'm proud of my final solution.

They're inkjet prints on a slightly textured bright salmon colored paper. The binding is a heavy weight black paper with a subtle speckled pattern.

Avant Garde and Lubalin Graph are amazing.

But anyway, here are the photos. I'm going to post my type final in the near future, stay tuned!

More Albers

A couple of weeks ago I went with Andrew to a lecture on Albers and his teaching given by Fred Horowitz, who recently wrote a book on the subject called Josef Albers: To Open Eyes. The lecture was really wonderful because Fred not only described the work of Albers but also how his main goal as an instructor at the Bauhaus (which also fascinates me) and at Black Mountain College was to teach how to see and how to think. 

I really am drawn to the ideas of learning through doing, "pitching through the unknown", and having the ability to take risks. Albers emphasized all of these things in his teaching. My parents are both educators, and I grew up in city where there was a emphasis on the importance of arts in education.  I have a particular fondness for it. The lecture really peeked my interest, and I look forward to reading the book. 

these are a few of my favorite things

My roommate Claire loves the New York Times Style Supplement and Magazine. From time to time, I'll come back to the apartment to find something ripped out from the aforementioned publications on my desk that remind her of me. 

Yesterday while I was writing, she delivered this: 

Hermès produces most beautiful, special, rich things. I've been using Eau Des Merveilles for the past four years, and probably will continue doing such for a long while. The scarf is so beautiful, and so is the packaging. The production of the scarf was limited to 200, thus making it even more precious. SeeSaw Designs has a nice little blog about it.

I love Josef Albers. He is one of my two favorite painters (Hopper is the other). I am fascinated by his use of color and reductive approach to design. 

Since everyone is already decorating

Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For you is my favorite Christmas album. It's perfect. 

Not only chock full of Ronettes, the Crystals and sonic enlightenment, but in a beautiful package! I'm familiar with the christmas gift album art but I absolutely love the minimal double album.

Sometimes I struggle with the idea of Graphic Design and being a Graphic Designer.

But as I discovered over thanksgiving break, album art always brings me back to understanding why I love design.

There is just something really great about it. It's such an undertaking to make a physical representation of something so intangible as song, it's fascinating. I love the minimal repetition and clean shapes of albums from the 50s and 60s, mostly the instrumental ones as the shapes often mimic the rhythm and syncopation of the music. I've been collecting records/album art for as long as I can remember, it's awesome to be able to appreciate them now with a new understanding of design. 

Rem Koolhaas

I've always been fascinated with the mechanics of 20th century architecture.
Walking around Manhattan as a little kid and seeing, I don't know what to call them, "Buildings of the Future", or something; where beams don't touch what they're holding up, or undulating waves are created by bent glass walls of windows, was a wonderful experience.
It's just so compelling to know that human beings daily lives interact with these mammoth works of art.
There's an exhibition at the MoMA now through March 2009 called Dreamland: Architectural Experiments since the 1970s that addresses these Buildings of the Future. I'd really like to go over Thanksgiving break.

I've been researching Rem Koolhaas.
I love the angularity of his buildings and use of repetition of form in many of them. Not only do I like these elements from a design standpoint, but because they help reinforce the idea of strength. Koolhaas's use of light within this angular buildings is particularly engaging. I am most interested in the Seattle Public Library. I hope I get to visit it soon!












I found this to be particularly interesting

Mr. Koolhaas believes in the idea of social progress. The pace of global change leaves him unfazed and optimistic. His work eagerly reforges the broken link between technology and progress. He revels in the unexpected rather than passively anticipating agony. Perhaps as a Dutchman, imprinted with his country's role as an international trading center, he has fewer problems with global change than might someone of another nationality. The Dutch, a nation of traders, have not surprisingly spawned an architect whose work responds to the silent, nanosecond transnational flows of money and ideas.

Mr. Koolhaas also notes the Dutch pride in the national trait of economy and thrift. He actually likes "the integration of the notion of cheapness to create sublime conditions" and is philosophical about "the client as chaos." "Chaos simply happens. You cannot aspire to chaos; you can only be an instrument of it."

— from "Rem Koolhaas, Post-Nationalist Architect", The New York Times, September 11, 1994.

found here

Well Deserved Lubalin Post

Since I embarked upon my venture into Graphic Design, I've been predisposed to use Lubalin Graph Book Oblique, for everything.
It's my default font, my baby.



Recently for my Typography I class we've been given the opportunity to research five specific font families.
Perplexed as to which typefaces to choose, I automatically turned to Lubalin Graph. My second choice, was Avant Garde Gothic.
I was surprised to learn that both fonts were designed by Herb Lubalin, one of the founders of the ITC [International Typeface Corporation] and that Lubalin Graph was based off Avant Garde Gothic.

Herb Lubalin did a lot of really interesting design work and art direction in addition type work in the 70s. I was really excited to learn that he made the PBS and Thirteen logos, both of which I've always been thrilled by.
This Tyopgabor has a ton of his work up.

Here are a few things I really love.

recent-ish work

These aren't fully developed pieces so much as they are working to be part of a whole.

Primarily, my work focuses on the interaction of color and pattern.
Enjoy working methodically to create these forms
especially through the retractive process of cutting away from paper.
I strive to find a rhythm within the pattern to further expand upon.


More Work Soon!