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

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 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

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

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

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

As most, or all, of you know I am a teacher and every year when we get our new classes there is a waiting game that happens. We have to wiat and see if the classes we are going to teach get enough students in them for them to run. IF they don’t we have to cancel them; the students hate it and WE hate it as well.

This semester was no exception. After looking at how many students where in each class I updated my status on facebook to say “David wishes that more students signed up for his classes….or they will be canceled:(” after that i received over 40 comments about it! that is the most i have ever received for a status update. That made me start to think!

What if we had a group, or something, in facebook where we could post our registration numbers and what classes are good and what classes need more students. I don’t know if it would be a group or create a user….I don’t know. But what I do know is that I think the students would check it and the word would spread. Almost every student checks there FB account the first thing when the walk into my classes.

ANY THOUGHTS?

~dzob