max huber.

on the side bar (on the right) i have some of my favorite designers listed. as of right now that is a pretty small list because i just quickly wrote down my favorites - but eventually more will be added. anyway, i thought that i might do a post about each of the designers listed just so everyone can see why i like them so much!

the first designer that i am going to show is max huber. i owe my love of this designer to my professor j.k. since i was first introduced to him in my history of graphic design class. the main things that huber is known for are his designs for the famous italian car races (which are absolutely amazing) and the italian clothing company la Rinascente. i love the colors that he uses and his combination of shapes and images. one of the things that i find really amazing is that his logo for la Rinascente still looks very modern, even though it was created in 1950 (and is still used today). i think that definitely shows the quality of a designers work when it can stand the test of time.

i am using max huber as the subject for my animation project, so you will see more of him later. i had a really hard time finding images online and i am surprised by that, since he is pretty well known. since we had to have high res images for the animation projects i wasn't able to use any from online. i ended up having to go to the boston public library to find his book - which is really good by the way, but i am not willing to spend $80 on a book just to get the images for my class. but explain something to me. the library has a pretty large selection of art books thatttt you aren't allowed to take out of the library and they don't have scanners. so how are you supposed to use these books as a image resource? anyway just some of my thoughts...

these are just a few of the many that i love, but the do a good job representing the overall style of his work. the first one is my absolute favorite:

as i said, i haven't found a good website of his work - which is why i had to go take pictures of a book. but here is a link to his museum's website which is in switzerland. i think* that is would be cool to go, but from the website it is hard to tell if it is mainly his work or just a design museum that was founded by max huber - and i would prefer to see the first.

fire poi typography.

i found these on flickr the other day. i think these letters look so neat! as you will see below my friend m.s. and i tried to spell things while playing with sparklers last sumer - but they didn't turn out nearly as clear as these!

on the website they called this fire poi typography and i don't know if that is a made up name or not...but it is such a clever idea. i can't even imagine how long it would have taken to get each letter correct and photographed. and whatever they used to create the flame was definitely much larger than a teeny tiny sparkler!

i love typography and fonts, so it is really interesting to find different ways of creating letter forms and this is one of my favorites - i am sure it is partially because i am somewhat of a pyromaniac - but besides that i still really enjoy these!

this is actually one of me playing with the sparklers - i was trying to spell my whole name but i only really got the "m" and a partial "o", but i really like the style of this "m". when i was thinking about creating a logo for myself i thought about using this stylized letter as my logo...unfortunately the translation from image to graphic just didn't work out.

this is our horrible attempt to spell love - we thought it would be easy but to retrace your lines exactly while doing different movements with each hand is a little complicated...and m.s. had a pretty hard time with that "e" there on the end!

here is the website - you can look at each letter individually, but i thought it looked neater to show the whole alphabet!

early riser.

so it just occurred to me that the other day that when i was discussing my animation class i forgot about an assignment we had already completed. so i thought i would post that to show some more of my own work.

for the assignment we had to pick a sentence from a list our teacher gave us. i decided to pick the sentence about early risers because i had an idea for it...but then later realized that i picked the longest sentence possible from the list and that probably wasn't the best idea since the animation was only supposed to be 15 to 30 seconds - but my teacher told me mine could be longer because there was no way i was going to fit all of my sentence in 15 seconds! but anyway here it is:

overall i like my concept with the old fashioned clock (and i think the clock part turned out great!). but looking back animating each flip of the clock took an extremely long period of time to get all the layers in the correct order. so i just wish i had spent more time on the placement and animation of the other text because i definitely don't feel like they are as good as they could have been. but as you have probably seen...i can't spend as much time in the lab as i wish i was able to, so that played a role in it. and it is also hard to make sure the timing is correct when you have looked at the same sentence probably about a hundred times!

but i am pretty happy with how this turned out - i mean there are always things that can be tweaked and in the future i might spend time doing that eventually - if i ever get the chance!

city neighborhoods.

so these are just some fun things that i found to amuse myself for the afternoon - i was looking online for some typography inspiration and i found these.

typography is one of my favorite things in design and i am usually impressed by people who really know how to use it. thats why i found these city neighborhood maps really interesting. i like the idea of using type to create/fill an image. and they did a really nice job of doing that with these. its really fun if you know the cities to find where certain things are in the text - so i had fun playing around with that in the boston, manhattan (which i don't have posted but there is a link below) and d.c. maps.

these posters were created by ork inc. and here is the link to the original website - they have other cities as well. of course when i first found it i was all excited because they had philly listed. buttt when i clicked on it of course it said that they are currently working on it. but they are still really cool besides that small detail!

woolies.

man its been a long week.

currently i am taking an animation class. and while i absolutely love it, i also hate it at the same time. i have so much fun creating different things and working on each detail on the timeline. but it is also very frustrating because it takes me about 4 hours to animate 15 seconds. i don't know if i am just slow at it or it takes everyone that long but i just feel as though i never accomplish as much as i want.

plus it doesn't help that i have to go to the lab whenever i want to work on it and the lab hours are NOT at convenient times for me. i just recently bought adobe cs4 (!!) and i was excited because i figured we would be using flash - which i already knew and now had on my laptop. but what are we using...adobe aftereffects...uhhgggg. i am always happy to learn new programs - especially design ones - but it is just frustrating because i can't work on things when i want to.

our current project isn't due for a couple weeks...but i only have about 20 seconds of at least 90 seconds. sooo when i am done i will post it but you will have to wait a little bit longer!

anyway...i came across these little woolie creatures when i was looking at some graphic design portfolios online. i still don't quite understand how these are made...but they are kind of a creepy cute! this first one is my favorite.

Meg Hunt created these (she is mainly an illustrator but created these for fun) and here is a link to a few more pictures on her website.

movie titles.

i always thought that is would be so great to design the opening title sequences to movies. now i have no idea how you get into that kind of work and i would definitely have to improve my animation skills - but it is a dream of mine to one day do this for a movie...even if it is just one.

i have always been really interested in this, but the first time i became extremely inspired by it was with the opening titles of catch me if you can. i think that these opening credits are absolutely beautiful and are very creative and well done. i think it also helps that i absolutely love john william's theme - it provided great inspiration.

after seeing this, it made me look more closely at movie titles. there are so many out there that are really well done. so below i have posted some of my favorites - even though i could post a lot more, this is just a taste at some of the ones i find really good! enjoy!

this website has a lot of really good titles, with some of my other favorites including north by northwest, stranger than fiction (i love how they attach the type to his actions), and thank you for smoking.

idiots.

okay. so this is gonna be short.

this is something i came across while i was browsing the internet. i really like this guys work - he does some really interesting illustrations and i love his overall style. i thought this was a good quote - its funny but at the same time it is just so true.

The designer's name is Frank Chimero and this is his website - definitely check out his state collection - a really great idea!

christmas cards.

i thought i would take this opportunity to post some pictures of some work i did over the holidays.

my parentals asked me to hand make holiday cards for them this year (and they even offered to pay me). so i said yes, even though i had already decided that i was going to make cards for myself to send out - but whats a few more? one of my favorite parts of scrapbooking and making cards is going to the craft store to buy supplies! i like to see all the new things that they have each time which is why i try not to go too often or i would seriously be poor.

overall i made about 50 some cards in about a month (some for my m&d as well as a bunch for myself) - so let's just say i am glad christmas isn't for another 10 months!

hello.

since i finished my blog of my study abroad adventures, i realized that i have had the desire to do it again. it is actually quite enjoyable to share my thoughts, despite my hateful relationship with writing. but i came up with a compromise. i want to share my love of design.

this said, instead of mainly writing, i will be sharing interesting projects and ideas that are either mine or ones that i have come across online. i thought this might be a good idea for myself mainly to help to keep me up on design stuff. while i work with it every single day, i don't necessarily go searching for different designs etc. so if i try to find new things to post about i feel it will help keep me updated and connected to my field of work!

so we will see how this goes. i am pretty busy right now - saying that i thought of doing this while procrastinating from creating a new portfolio - its not that i don't want to work on it, there are just too many decisions to make. but anyway hopefully i can keep up with my entries.

to start, i want to share something that my friend m.s. passed along to me. after interning at a large corporate graphic design company this past semester, this is definitely something i can understand and appreciate. enjoy!