Nice return to campus of a very talented graphic design alum – Toby Grubb for our April 23rd Visual Voices guest talk. Formerly at Burton Snowboards and currently at Instrument in Portland. Should be a fun ‘catch up’ and entertaining lecture.
Working on a new print piece
Invited to show a piece in a group show in early summer. I didn’t want to submit any thing old, but I also have a lot of pieces to prepare and frame for my solo exhibit also coming up in late August, so I decided to create one new composition (24″ wide x 9″ tall) based on an interesting quote I came across that really resonated with me….
“Seen clearly, life without hope is Hell, but Hell without fear is a fairground attraction”
By Matthijs Van Boxsel.
Only just started to cut and gouge, so a long way to go yet, but should be a cool piece when it’s printed out (black and white).
I’ll keep adding images to this post as it progresses.
“All The World’s A Stage”
Final theatre production of the 2014/15 season, and possibly the most fun to design for. “As You Like It” – popular Shakespeare but in this case with a twist as our director is setting it in and around 1940’s/50’s California. With the backdrop of the redwoods. Zoot suits, wrestlers… and sheep!
As always a wonderful line of creative thought process between myself and the Theatre Chair:
Sculpture Walk Peoria
Really great team brief. As usual, the teams were picked out of a hat rather than letting everyone work with their Bff’s!
This exciting new arts event/organization coming out of the Warehouse District required a complete branding as well as some thoughts on how to make the target audience(s) aware.
Presentations were held at the organizations headquarters, to a committee – so nothing intimidating for the students!
Overall, everyone did a great job, with some really strong brand ideas. The one suggestion/observation that came out of it was that while the level of work was excellent, the students themselves need to try to inject more passion and enthusiasm into their delivery. I think nerves got the better of many of them. Never the less – a great way to head off into the Spring break.
And congratulations to Erin, Adan and Kaitlyn – the days overall winning team.
Resumé Experience
Pdf’s, jpg’s, website url’s, dropbox links, emails… all methods of getting your name out there in front of the CD or Studio Manager of the company you desperately want to intern with. But what if something landed on their desk which was so creative, so beautiful crafted and executed. A tactile experience that no digital version can offer. How can they resist opening it and exploring the contents? That is the aim of the ‘Resumé Experience – A cover letter/introduction, a resumé and a handful of ‘teasers’ demonstrating your creative ability (not a portfolio though!). If done well, it can be an instant door opener. But if done badly – and this could be anything from bad construction, to a horrible choice of typeface, or any sort of grammatical mistake – it would sign your death warrant at that particular company.
Here are a majority of the resumé packages created this time around. Several still need working on for a variety of reasons (a spelling mistake or orphan here and there, or poor execution etc.) but for the most part – a nice selection.
The Concept Book
Always a fun way to /push’ creativity beyond the cliché answers and, at the same time, develop the level of pre-computer execution and rendering (you don’t always have a laptop at hand – just a sharpie and a napkin!).
Choose 12 short sharp design problems from 30 and in words and images – creatively solve 🙂
The Mountaintop
The latest theatre production – The Mountaintop. As always, I tried to veer away from the obvious visuals (actually wanted to avoid images of MLK jnr. completely), but this would be a problem for those not familiar with the play/script. So here are a few of the transitions for the poster:
And the final version…
Until Next Time
So, another London trip over. The students who I was privileged enough to have on my course had an experience that will probably stay with them forever. It’s nearly impossible to teach a semesters worth of an upper level course inside of two and a half weeks, but hopefully, they have learned some additional creative tools and skills that will help them well into their careers. I also hope that the places I took them as a group (Design Companies, the Brand Museum and of course Harry Potter!) were interesting, fun, insightful. It takes months to set up a syllabus and itinerary that will work in such a unique environment and time span – but is so worth it.
Finally, many thanks to all the amazing hard work the Study Abroad people do to ensure it runs as smoothly as it does.
