This is while I was on vacation. You don’t know all the strange looks I received while writing this and taking a photo of this. I actually wrote the whole alphabet.  I would like to see Photoshop make type look like this, SO BRING IT ON!!!

Some of this stuff is new, some is revamped. Enjoy

How Inspiration Works

can you read this

think of us

Here are some new brushes! Here is a sample of what they look like as well as a design that i created with these brushes only! let me know what you think as well as how you use them.

Here is the sample of what i created with the brushes

Here are the brushes

I don’t usually post someone else’s work, but this was too amazing not to share. It is a new video by blu. Check it out and let me know what you think.

BIG BAG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I have this new fascination with turning people into brushes, so i was playing around the other day and this is what i have come up with so far. Let me know what you think!!

I want to comment on the state of graphic design. I am not talking about getting jobs I am talking about what I am seeing that graphic designers are doing. From Magazines, movie poster, flyers, etc. It seems that graphic design has been confused with layout artist or template followers. WHEN did this happen and WHY? The WHY I can tell you; Because it is easy. It is easy to follow a template and just layout in copy and text, but takes true skill to think of a concept. Any one can put words on color, but it is the designer that makes it come to life.

I have seen too much of the template designs and it is driving me crazy!!! COME ON DESIGNERS stand up for what is right and challenge us! I would bet money that if magazines where more DESIGNED and less LAYED OUT more people would buy them and keep them and share them.

So, that being said….Colleen, another contributor on this site, and I were talking and she suggested the idea of a REAL TO LIFE layout. So we take our normal 16” x 10” design and make it 16 feet x 10 feet and have to create elements NOT using the computer. SO if you wanted type you would have to draw it or recreate it or even print in out but then put it on your real life spread. If you wanted people in your spread you would have to have people lay in your spread.

The idea of this makes me feel alive and want to try this out. I was thinking of doing a test run and posting photos of what happens. Imagine the possibilities!!

~dzob

Very good points. With the fire one my general idea was to have the pole be the only thing that was not damaged. However I did try it crooked. I will post with my results. Here are my results from Ryan’s Comments. See I can listen:)

I have not decided if this is for digital imaging 1 or 2. I took a road see below and destroyed it. I did two version; 1 with some pot holes and other destroyed roads, the other was war destroyed as you will see. Comments. Still kind of working.

I don’t know how convinced I am about the walk sign. Still maybe looking

Below is the war destroyed image:) I think the walk sign looks better in this one.

~dzob

Look at this picture and tell me if this is interesting or lame. I am thinking about showing it in the digital imaging 2 class.

I wanted to post something that was more design related ans less rant related. So, this is something new that I have been working on. It is for my digital imagining 1 class, for the text as texture lecture. I wanted to have words, but not have the message lost in the words, so why not have it be in french? What do you think?!?!

I was talking about layout in one of my classes this week and someone raised their hand and asked me, are there any magazines that you think has good design? And I really had to think about it because there are so many bad designed magazines out their. I have been thinking about this question for a long time and the answer that I keep coming back to is NO. There is not a magazine that i read that has good design.

the last magazine that i saw with really good design was a magazine called “raygun” that was designed by David Carson, one of my graphic design idols. That magazine was created in the 1990’s, so i have not seen one that has the same emotional design as raygun had. I was thinking why that was and I figured it out while i was driving into school. David Carson was not a formally trained designer, so he took risks that a trained graphic designer back then would not take. He distorted and destroyed copy and challenged the reader.

Today’s magazine there is NO regard for the type. It is all just placed in the page and the headlines are not considered a design element. EVERYTHING is a template of what and where things are placed. I am not saying that all the type needs to be unreadable, but it needs to be considered a part of the design and not an after thought. The cover is important, but does not need to be what they spend all the time one.

COME ON MAGAZINES!

~dzob

So my site was hacked:(

I think the site was hacked because of its awesomeness, but none the less hacked, so i have been off trying to figure out what to do. So in the end what i did was just replace the site with a backup version something i should have done from the beginning. What would happen is that every time i would try and comment it would bring me to another site.

So i contacted my host provider and told them the problem and they said there was no problem. They said to clear the cache and that fixed it on there end. So what they suggested to me was to clear MY cache of MY browser and that should fix the problem. What kind of advice is that. SO i am supposed to tell the people who visit the site (all 3 of you) to clear your browser cache every time you visit the site….that is redonkulous.

that is not help. Find out what hacked my site and suggest to fix it…..this is not what i was going to post about, but it annoyed me and had to be said. My original post is to come

~dzob

This is a new series that i am starting. I hope to have all of the letters of the alphabet done. Here is the letter a and g

I recently posted a comment on facebook about how hollywood is the death of all good design and I thought I would post something here. I started this thought when i saw the avatar poster and it used papyrus! Really! Who was paid to do that poster. You have this nice artwork in the background and then you throw papyrus on it with a glow and a shadow and viola……hollywood poster!

It is not jsut the avatar poster it is a lot of posters that come out of Hollywood. I don’t understand. They are so over the top and mediocre it drives me crazy. There are so many movie posters that use Trajan as their typeface, it is plane laziness.

Take some originality and start to think what the type means and what the poster is supposed to say, not ” what “cool” effect i can put on it. As I was stewing about this I was watching some photoshop tutorials and i don’t get what is going on with design and photoshop. It is like any effect and cool trick is being used and it is seen as good design. it makes me sad:( and more ready to teach good typography and have people not create crap design.

~dzob

These are some photo manipulations that i have been working on. Some video of how they where created are coming.

This is  out of brushes

this one I added all the splashes of water to the drums

say hello to the first Lebra ( I put zebra strips on a lion)

Look at colleen’s post below. It is a perfect example of why magazine design needs to change, why it needs to be better, and why we as designers need to change it.

I hate that colleen came to the conclusion that all magazine’s use template, because it can be deflating to realize that. I understand using grids, but template driven design is NO GOOD. EVER EVER EVER. It even goes further than magazines. Other design is going the template route as well…wait what. It is true. Look at target’s new brand up and up. It is completly sterile, lacks personalitiy, and is totally based off of a temple.

Lets stop this and start designing. This goes out to all the designers out there. We need to stop relying on templates and gimics in photoshop (drop shadow, inner glow, bevel, metallic, shine, etc) AND START DESIGNING.

I am not saying that it all needs to be in my style, but there needs to be some style.

Here is what I have gone with or at least what i am thinking about

Option 1:

Click here to read the rest…

Here is something that I am working on.

In my typography class I was showing how you could create a design in photoshop only using type and various brushes created out of the type, so i thought i would make a video of it and post it here.

Below is the finished tutorial and click here to download the psd file if you are interested in seeing how it was done.

Here is the video:

This was for my typography class, but just in case you forgot or never had it here it is. It is a real simple intro on how to slice type and basic movements in illustrator. Linked is also the template that i used. enjoy

~dzob

I gave my self a 20 minute challenge. I took 1 picture and had to create a design ONLY using this one picture. I would love to see someone else take the challenge of taking one picture and working it into a design/art whatever you want. Only take 20 minutes and only one picture. Even if you don’t take this challenge at least look at what I did, please comment:)

Original Image

Combined Image

So I was creating some brushes the other day and I thought that many people don’t know what goes into creating brushes, so I thought I would share.

Here are some of the materials that where being used. The first shot is of a $.99 spray bottle filled with regular house paint. NO WATER ADDED.

Here is part of the set up as well as the can of black house paint.

I pored the house paint into the bottle and set up a close line with close pins, where i hung sheets of paper. I than sprayed the paper with the pain to create…..well you will see

This is a sample of what some looked like. I used different approaches to create this brushes. I stood close up, far away, at an angle, etc.

results:

In the end i created ab out 50+ sheets of paper. Now not all of them i turned into brushes, but i did end up with 31 brushes.

Here is a link to a sample of the brushes. Enjoy:) I am not giving you all of them….I have to hold something for my self.

I know i hacve not posted in a while, but I am creating a new way that I do post. Each post will have a graphic or spread design with it, so it will take me longer to post, but it will be worth the wait. Unless al of this just takes to much time:) we will see!

The full article is below and the design article is above. This is the first idea for this article more to come. Let me know as always

Today I ran my fastest mile pace ever. It was 7:53 for about 5 miles, so that I ran 5 miles in 44 minutes and 25 seconds. That is really fast for me and was very excited about it and had to share it! Even though that my regular pace is about 8 minutes per mile this pace seemed to make me extremely tired and I so exhausted when I finished and came home. 7 seconds does not seem like that big of a difference, but it was!!

What made me push my self and keep going was the music i was listening to. My high school coach, Mr. Link, told us never to listen to music as it will alter our pace and make it inconsistent, or something like that. That is in the back of my head every time a strap on my ipod and put on those headphones.

The music that really helped was some songs by the white stripes (ickey thump and Blue Orchid), Run DMC (Raising Hell (this I listed to 3 times) and Peter Piper) and Bad Religion (21st century digital boy). SO i wanted to thank the music….you guys really helped me through the tough hill at the end. When i said this is enough i must start walking RUN DMC said “king from queens from queens come kings we are raising hell in the class when the lunch bell rings….so loud like a cloud of thunder and lightning so proud to the crowd it is somewhat frightening……and bad religion said…..”i don’t believe it the way you look sometimes……the things you are offering me…… i am a 21st century boy, i don’t know how to read but i got a lot of toys, my daddy is a lazy middle class intellectual my mommy’s on Valium so ineffectual….and the white stripes said “white Americans, what? nothing better to do? why don’t you kick your self out, you are an immigrant to!”

SO thanks you!

~dzob

Here are the other comps

Here is the video tutorial for the typography brush thing that i posted last week. I am getting together a step by step tutorial, but that takes some time, so it will come a little later. Below is the video and a link for the brush file.

Brush Files: brush_turorial4.zip

Here is a new design. It started from a gift that I gave a friend recently. I changed it to say typography. I am goign to try to do more because i really like what is going on with it and everything that went into it. Later i will post the individual layers and how it was created. Let me know what you think

In this tutorial I take a text treatment and make it using masking, etc and turn it into a brush and than make a design out of that. It is amazing what you can achieve with brushes!

Here is an article that I wrote. Below are some spreads that i designed to go along with this article. If you are taking my type class you will see some of these again. Some are better than other. Let me know what you think:)

good typography is becoming extinct and bad typography is the disease. how many times have you seen bad typography win over good typography and do nothing about it? this has to stop! corporation and average joe are taking over the design and creative industry and we have to stop it from spreading. corporations do not want to try anything that is interesting or creative. why? FEAR! they are all afraid that they will fade away and nobody will remember them. they are afraid to make the average person confused. because of this they never will push the idea of design. to them it is making their boring ideas “pretty” or “have some pizazz” or making it “sexy”… and if i hear one more person tell the designer to “make it pop” i will go insane!

The reason that logos are so annoyingly big are not because the designer wants them that way it is because the client (who doesn’t know any better) says “can you make it bigger.” and every designer or creative director rolls their eyes and says sure! in the heads of most designers they are saying, sure, you without the formal training or the knowledge that if i make your logo bigger than all the type has to change and be re kerned so that it all fits together. the person who knows the best about the subject is being turned into a technician.

Designer start to become immune to this disease and start making the logo bigger to start with and than the type becomes bigger and soon they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. we need to re-train the designers and owners of design firms to stand up to this disease if we ever want to cure it.

There are so many reasons why people and designers are perpetuating this disease and adobe is the main cause. Yes that is right i said adobe! they added drop shadows, inner glow, outer glow, bevel/emboss, and all the other pointless over done and over worked cheesy gimmicks. If they were never there we would not have this disease running ramped through our society.

I was asked the other day in one of my classes, “Did i make the same mistakes as us, did you also have this handle on design and type, etc” and the anwer is no! I was not always as crazy as I am now. I made the same mistakes, I even used papyrus. That is right i said it, I used it. I am not proud of it and I am currently seeking counsling.

The reason I harp so much about type and design and really forcing my students is because no body gave me that advice or direction till I was at graduate school. Being at pratt institute really changed my whole portfolio and design view. My portfolio went from disaster to master….well maybe not master, but a lot better. I don’t have the old files before pratt, but I do have my pratt stuff that i will post. I would even change some of that work, now if I had the chance.

Also living and working in NYC really made a difference. It is really influenced how I look at design and what I do with design. I don’t have a clean approach anymore and never want to again. I did clean for corporations for 10 years, now when i design it is beyond that, texture, crazy type, etc. One last thought; pratt really drilled type into my head and that is what all designers need.

I will post some of the pratt files later. I have to find where they are:)

~dzob

I just got a new Digital SLR and Love it! Here are some pictures I took with it. It is a Sony A-350. It is a middle of the road camera, but love it!

Click here to read the rest…

This is a great website, www.typeisart.com. It deals with creating art from different parts of typography. When you get there hit begin and start placing the differet parts. You can scale and rotate the type. It really is cleaver. You can also save it and look art what other have done. Try it out!

Today i was buying new running shoes. New Balence in black, they look cool, anyway…and I went up to the counter to pay, because that is what you do at the counter. I swipe my debit/credit card and it asks for debit or credit and i push credit (because M&T will charge me if I use debit) *****Pause***

Lets talk a little about the debit credit machines at the stores, I wish they would some how standardize them. each one is different and each one has you do something different for credit and “yes” and “no”. Some you hit the green yes, so you select from a menu….WHICH IS IT!!!!! it drives me crazy.  *****end pause***

Than after I hit credit it says debit or cancel….in my head I am saying to my self “self. I don’t want debit, but i also don’t want to cancel the transaction and have to swipe it again because the 40 people behind me would not like that”. So I end up having to ask the clerk “Do I want to cancel?”…THEY need to rename it from “cancel” to “skip”.

That is an interface that is not intuitive and could use a designer to think of how to solve that problem…or maybe I am the only one having problems with this?

~dzob

I have a bad case of the bad design disease. It can be contagious, so you might want to stay away. Let me explain: Recently I have been preparing for one of my classes and I have started collecting designs that I see around town or where ever I am. I started out collecting brochures to critique in my class, than it was taking pictures of posters, than it was magazines, now I cannot stop.It started out taking one brochure, now I walk away with a stack of badly designed material.

It is affecting my life!! I cannot go anywhere without seeing bad design and having an urge to take it, taking a picture of it, or steal it. I need help. Every website, brochure, ads in magazines, magazines, they are all out to make me crazy with their bad design.

They are out to get me….oh great now it is making me paranoid. Does anyone have a cure or the same disease? HELP!!! BUT…MAYBE I don’t want help….if I get cured, how will I know when something is a bad design.

This is a new design that I have been working on. Just thought I would post it too see if anyone has any comments:) This is for nothing. It is desgin for design sake.

Here is a great way to get ride of anything. In this case the patch tool works really well with pimples and real simple blemishes to very complex image editing as you will see when you watch it!

This year was the first year I had to put together toys for my son, and any who has done this know what i am about to say! If you have never done it before, thank your parents right NOW, it is hard work.

First of all I feel the instructions and parts that they give you are all part of a big joke on people. Why else would the instruction be so dumb and the parts not intuative. I was putting together a workbench for my son and it took me 2 1/2 hours. it took me 1 1/2 houres to get through step 2! My wife finally needed to help me because I needed three hands, or as it turns out four hands and two heads.

I also feel it is a test for any parents Patience. Thank goodness for my wife, i would have thrown parts if it was not for her.

and lastly i need a word with the work bench, so stop reading and let me have some words. WTF how hard could you be…it is a work bench for little kids, you bolts and other weird parts can kiss off! Maybe if you where not so worried about how you look you could have told me when I put the part in wrong and there was no other way to put it in, or that one of your parts was manufactured wrong. Instead you let me belive that I was doing a great job and would finish soon…..thanks a lot:(

I am done. I feel better with that off of my mind.

~dzob

For those of you who have not seen this 99 designs is a place to go for short term freelance work. It is almost like a craigslist for designers. They will post a design contests that is for a logo and they will pay X amount of money. Anyway can submit designs, This is great!

I found this at my gym and it made me stop because it was so bad. See how many design rules this breaks, in a bad way.ENJOY!

I had technical difficulty, but here is a new tutorial on how to make your own photoshop brushes. I hope you enjoy. there will be more photoshop tutorials to come.

This was sent to me by a fellow teacher. It is wonderful. See below

On this post i would like people to post design that they have worked on that use just typography and color. I would love and explanation of why you did what you did.

This is a video post about using brushes within photoshop. I will post another video about how to use them.

Apparently they are changing the typeface on some highway signs to clearview. They are also changing the way the type is being displayed from upper case to lower case. We will see how it looks. Below is a sample taken from http://typographica.org/000931.php#000931

I don’t know how i feel about this look. I would have to see it while i am driving. I am concerned about it being in lower case and not in uppercase while i am driving. I like the typeface in general.

What do you think?

I was in Cold Stone the other day, An ice cream place, and I was noticing that they do not say what the topping are anywhere in the store. Unless you have been there before you would not know what to do. If i wanted fresh strawberries on my ice cream i would not know they have them. I thought this was an extreme oversite on thier part. They have signs all over the place, but nothing saying what thier toppings or ice creams are untill you get up to the counter.

This makes me very nervous because I am what you call a nervous orderer. I flip flop back and forth and i need ample time to decide… THis did not make it any easier. I don’t like being put on the spot to order, To much pressure. I get gun shy and order items that maybe i don’t want.

Misprintedtype.com is a great website for inspiration, brushes, and typefaces run by Eduardo Recife a talented designer. I ahve been a fan of his style for a very long time and thought it was time to pay tribute. I tell all my students to visit his site and now i am telling all of you to as well. The below image was created using only his brushes and typefaces. Thank you Eduardo!

MTV has a show that is going to be on this Monday that is a reality design show!!! I had heard about this over the summer and was thinking of applying, but the application made it seem like they where looking for more multi media people. If you look at the teams there is only one graphic designer out of 16 people. Regardless it looks really good and will be fun to watch, I hope. The show is called engine room and premires in two days.

Anyone can also add portfolios on the site as well. All you have to do is sign up and they let you put up to 10 examples. They can be designs or multi media design. Another way to get your name out there!

~david

I was recently in a poster contest and designed a piece that was pretty challenging to read and was more artistic. I received comments that it was to hard to read and I should think about reworking it to make more “understandable”. These comments and other like it inspired me to write this post.

As designers we need to stop being so conservative and “safe” if we as the designer never pushes the ideas of creative thought, readability, legibility, concept, photography and different thinking than design will never evolve and will stay where it is. This is the reason that drop shadows and inner glows, strokes, and all other cheesy effects are considered “cool”.

Don’t get me wrong I do like really clean and minimalist design, but there is a difference between clean minimal and stagnant and stale design. These people who do not want to move design forward and are the same people that would have objected to technology moving forward. We need to keep thinking of ways to make design better and more involved.

If you design a poster, lets say, and 80% of the people cannot read it and they tell someone that they don’t like and can’t read it and it is awful, it is a successful design. It is a success because people are talking about it, they are interacting with it, and it is bringing out emotion. That is what design should be doing. Yes I know design is about selling a product in the end, but it should still be powerful.

~david

I was driving in Baltimore the other day and I realized than unless you live in the city there are certain roads and customs that one does not know.  For example, I was going down president street toward the harbor and all of a sudden the lane I was in turned into side street parking. There was no sign that told me that, thank goodness I saw the cars, but I made the lady in the Lexus mad because I cut her off. There should be more signage around the city telling people who are not familiar with the city what to do. That not only goes for sign on the road but parking as well.

I have recieved two parking tickets because the parking sign where not clear. Maybe I should fight the tickets and tell the judges that because of the inefficient sign and the poor placement and the bad design I was not able to park correctly.

I got to thinking about local street customs. For example are there certain streets where people have certain rules that non local’s would know. For example there is this street by me where there are two lanes and both go straight, but it crosses a major road, so the right lane is kept clear for people turning on that road. Anybody who does not pay attention to this rule usually has many mad drivers behind them.

Does that happen anywhere else?

I have been seeing a lot of new trends in graphic design that I don’t know if I like. A lot of these trends, I think, are because of this new web 2.0 look and feel of websites. for a while print was making it’s way into graphic design, but now web is making it’s way into graphic design.

There are a lot of space age looking design with Victorian-ish (if that is a word) swirls. It is almost like this look is a template for new graphic design. I really feel like with this look and other trends that are coming out today it is diminishing design and creativity. Anybody now with photoshop and access to online tutorials are graphic designers. Trends are fine, but i am getting tired of seeing them. The one recently that I was was the typeface that has a slanted a, MTV is using it, bands are using it, contemporary designers are using it. It is not original anymore.  What’s next?

I am having a thought about this web 2.0 thing. This space theme that is running through the culture facenates me. Everything is swirly and spacy.

~dzobel