design thoughthouse

i found this logo that i worked on as i was digging around in...

Mon, 20 May 2013 05:43:00 -0400

i found this logo that i worked on as i was digging around in the archives and thought it nice enough to share. it’s for condos in brooklyn, which is not the type of project i would particularly care to work on anymore, but hopefully this can be of some use for visual reference.

the wildest inventions you've ever seen

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:57:19 -0400

so, you all really REALLY need to go check out james benard’s inventions. they are something. below is my favorite, the ice urinal. yeah.

other inventions include peel-able hospital walls, a velcro head band to hold children’s heads in place when they fall asleep in the car and ear trumpets.

good design, bad cause

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:30:34 -0400

the refrain goes something like this, “i know the client/service/product isn’t very good, but at least i got to do good design for it, right?” wrong.

good design is, well, good. and that’s what makes it all the more harmful when it’s applied to a harmful product/service. i’ve heard this line of thinking applied to unhealthy foods, culture crushing mega-retailers, deceptively marketed cosmetic products, lower-income family fleecing lottery games and more. all good design applied to harmful products/services does is make the deception that much more convincing. how is that virtuous?

i’m not saying don’t do design for fast food per se, but don’t make it look like something that it isn’t. mcdonald’s isn’t just saying “buy hamburgers a couple times a year” with their ads. they are very much selling a lifestyle. cool people, sitting around the table, laughing, having a good time, maybe even eating a salad, when in reality a lifestyle of mickey d’s will probably lead to obesity and acne.

one of the the new york lottery’s most recent ad campaigns had the slogan “yeah, that kind of rich.” how many people that play the ny lotto become “that kind of rich?” well, the odds are 195,200,000 says bookofodds.com which adds, “to put it in perspective, the odds are better that a randomly chosen american male happens to be george clooney.” becoming “that kind of rich” is furthest thing from what you should actually expect when you play the lotto.

still, maybe it seems super-benign to use good graphic design for the lotto, so let me blow this way out of proportion. imagine you’re at the latest AIGA event talking to this hip young designer who says to you, “yeah, i know it’s the nazi party, but man, they’re giving me such creative control and i’m gonna use what they’re paying me to fund my projects that really matter…”

previously i’ve written, albeit briefly, that graphic design is a language. and with graphic design, as with any other language, we can tell a beautiful (or ugly) truth, or we can tell a beautiful (or ugly) lie. (and perhaps someone would interject at this point about truth mixed with lies to which i respond, if it’s not the whole truth, it’s not the truth.)

so designer, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be a beautiful truth-teller.

"if an amateur activist with a felt-tip pen, a pot of paste and the most rudimentary graphic skills..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:21:04 -0400

“if an amateur activist with a felt-tip pen, a pot of paste and the most rudimentary graphic skills can make you pause, what might a more professionally conceived form of graphic activism accomplish?”

- Rick Poyner in Obey the Giant

manifest beauty

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:31:41 -0400

sometime ago i wrote a few essays on beauty and posted them on what was, at the time, my website. that site is defunct now, but i do think there is some worth to these writings, so i’ll post them here. following is the first;

any idea is only as good as the best manifestation of it. it is in fruition that we are able to see most clearly what someone had in mind. what their vision was.

on the other hand, it is not the object that is the idea, or that is the source of the beauty, in other words. rather it is the mind that conceived of the thing that holds the seeds of beauty. a beautiful logo or type treatment is not the source of the beauty we see in it, but rather a conduit to manifest to the viewers the beauty that is conceived in the mind of the designer who created it.

i’ll turn here again to c.s. lewis;

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself…”

THIS IS NOT MY WORK. perusing the portfolio site of the...

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:01:19 -0400

THIS IS NOT MY WORK. perusing the portfolio site of the over-talented and underrated designer cindy rodriguez and found this striking type work for a group show in miami called “amateurs.”

i developed these illustrations for a project which is...

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:12:33 -0400

i developed these illustrations for a project which is undisclosed to the public as of yet, but i thought it might be nice (and i have permission from the client) to give these components some air. enjoy.

belief, grief, passion and vulnerability

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:01:15 -0400

based on general observances, our culture mostly seeks to avoid sorrow and grief at all costs. there are exceptions of course, but this to me seems to be the rule. everyone wants to be happy, naturally, but happiness cannot be achieved by heaping product after comfort-creating product into our lives. the absence of pain is not equal to happiness experienced. detached passivity from people and our communities in an effort not to be hurt by others will not afford happiness either.

the possibility of exultant happiness and enduring joy must be accompanied by the risk and really, inevitable presence of pain. the pain of the failure of a passionate pursuit. or the pain of loss of or absence of someone whom you have loved deeply. a detached passivity from one’s loved ones is boring and selfish really. it says, i don’t want to hurt, so i will not feel passion for another. there are some people that you will be around that you will believe that you are a better person from being around them. and in moments when you can’t be around them, you will feel a profound sense of loss. do it. feel it. let it wash over you like a wave of the ocean. believe you are better with them. believe it and let it make you sad when you are not with them.

become vulnerable. put yourself in a position to feel terrible pain, so that you may know the unspeakable joy of a profound and unspeakable love. in feeling the absence of your beloved you will love their presence more.

our delight in the warmth and renewal of spring is heightened by having experienced winter. we know and understand light because we see it set against darkness and shadows. so we will relish true happiness by allowing ourselves to experience pain and sorrow.

graphic design is a language

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:01:10 -0400

almost just like english, spanish, italian, chinese, arabic or sanskrit. it’s a way to organize forms in order to communicate a message, and, as such, graphic design is (or should be) more often than not the medium or vehicle, and not the end in itself.

recently a friend confessed to me that he was kinda tired of graphic design. it had gotten old to him. and i get what he means. he was tired of graphic design about graphic design. it seems to me that graphic design as an industry has a tendency to be self-referencing more than most industries, except for the art scene. if we think of design as a language and compare that to the english language, it would be like using english only to talk about the english language, or to put it another way, perpetual grammar class. that does get boring, fast.

but, and this may seem obvious, think of all the other things that we can use english to communicate. we can use it to communicate about… that’s right, anything. so it is with design. you can use it as a language to communicate whatever you want. yes, the better you know the language the more skilled you will be at communicating with it. so you have to think about it directly for a while before you can let it be a passive vehicle for another message.

but, if you’re bored with graphic design, find a message about which you are passionate. use graphic design to communicate that message. i believe you’ll find your sense of excitement and purpose renewed.

sumayya alsenan’s new hand-stamped biz card is fresh. so...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:01:56 -0400

sumayya alsenan’s new hand-stamped biz card is fresh. so fresh in fact that that smudge on the “sum” is my personal contribution to the design.

methinks this looks pretty awesome. lockstepstudio: a little...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:02:42 -0400

methinks this looks pretty awesome.

lockstepstudio:

a little lockstep treatment with type inspired by this manhole cover and vintage map assets from the big map blog. locations of the maps are panama, nashville and memphis (tennessee, not egypt).

mother’s day is coming up. there are an assortment of...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:01:05 -0400

mother’s day is coming up. there are an assortment of items in the live from bklyn etsy shop that put our “mother of a mother” motif to great use. hand-printed in our brooklyn studio, naturally.

allyoucaneatpress: Our very first publication, the New York...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:47:46 -0400

allyoucaneatpress:

Our very first publication, the New York Doughnut Map, has just come back from the printer! Includes a brief history of doughnuts, and features 35 favorite New York doughnut shops. Grab one before you head out on a Doughnut Mission.

CLICK HERE TO BUY ONE!

poster concept for the new york blood services. indulging my...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:19:00 -0400

poster concept for the new york blood services. indulging my interest in both good citizenship and provocation.

we have notebooks in our etsy shop now. get some.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:17:12 -0400

we have notebooks in our etsy shop now. get some.

i dig this submission for the sketchbook project’s print...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:30:14 -0400

i dig this submission for the sketchbook project’s print exchange by lockstep studio;

lockstepstudio:

lockstep studio is participating in the sketchbook project’s print exchange 2013. the theme is “the drive home.” we decided to use roadside signage as our motif with the phrase “i know it well,” which captures the familiarity that many people have with their particular drive home.

our medium is linocut. we began by digitally rendering the art and then transferring it to the linoleum, cutting it, then printing it.

we’ll be shipping these off to the sketchbook project next week.

healthy, happy

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:17:14 -0400

as a nation, and really, the whole western world, we have some funny (read, “erroneous”) ideas about what health is, and what is going to make us happy. i’ve come to believe that health, both the health of the body and of the mind, and happiness are directly proportional.

there are a good many products available today promising us happiness, but few of them deliver, especially long term. there’s even a name for it; “buyer’s remorse.”

as designers, we’ve often had a good lot to do with displaying products to consumers in a way that is geared toward getting them to “buy, buy, buy,” regardless of whether it is going to help them, or be healthy for them, or whether the product is even intrinsically good.

so, how can we as a design community and as individual designers actively pursue using design to promote healthier communities? how can we can we cause a paradigm shift in our culture; a shift from consumption to health, holistic health?

brand identity work that i did for doban architecture, a...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:43:48 -0400

brand identity work that i did for doban architecture, a brooklyn-based firm.

a bit of lettering i did for a teacher example at Shillington.

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:36:00 -0400

a bit of lettering i did for a teacher example at Shillington.

my friend adam wrote this poem called “the good...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:51:27 -0400

my friend adam wrote this poem called “the good forever.” i took the poem and illustrated it, incorporating the text of the poem into the art. it was then produced as a booklet.