Oh, like I don’t love it. I mean, look at how I’m dressed!
Illustration by LunchBreath:
Archive for the 'work' Category
29
Jan
This post made me happy
via Bookshelves of Doom, gorgeous cover art by Jason Chan — BoD theorized that with art this gorgeous, this author is likely to begin garnering the fans her writing deserves…and she’s right – I’d buy this, likely for the art alone.
I found this post particularly heartening in a very selfish way. Illustrating book covers is pretty high up on my list of What I Really Want To Do, but lately, I have been seeing the trends go more and more in this direction:
A lot of photos, mostly cropped human bodies. A lot of girls with historically inaccurate ‘period’ clothing. Some of them are even very appropriate and nicely done…but I have ALWAYS loved illustrated work on book covers…especially if the story is set in a time or place that photography wasn’t really an option (a Victorian boarding school, for example) , a photo cover seems somehow wrong to me…but even for contemporary story lines, nine times out of ten I would rather see an illustration than a photo.
So, it does my heart good to see such a beautiful piece of cover art getting some decent recognition (and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason for the prevalence of photos for covers was due to some of the truly sub-par illustration that was out there as well…maybe this cover will remind the publishing world that an illustrated cover CAN be done well?)
13
Aug
Corporate ID
*Edit: For some reason, when you click to make the images full size, most of them are opening really big. I’m not sure why (if someone knows and would like to tell me, that’s cool) but all you have to do is click ‘back’ and it’ll take you back to my blog. Sorry.
Just thought I’d share my first project from my Corporate ID class…if you aren’t interested, feel free to skip this blog.
The project:
We had to choose a company (small, preferably — well-known logos are hard to redesign) to rebrand…or alternately, if we had a friend or family member in need of logo design, we could do that. As it turns out, my mom’s friend Lynn has a music production company that needed a logo.
I spoke with him to find out what kind of feel he was trying to give his customers to work out what the logo should ’say’. What he wanted to portray is that music is a healing force…something that can turn a key inside a listener and open them to joy or peace or euphoria.
The first step of the project was doing a bunch of sketches for the ’wordmarks’ and ‘lettermarks’ (basically the full name of the company and the initials or initial):
(click on any image to view it full sized)
We chose in class the three of each set that everyone felt really fulfilled the needs outlined before, and so the next step was to vectorize the chosen word and lettermarks. Also, we had to do sketches for the ‘pictoral marks’ and ‘abstract marks’ (just what it sounds like):
Pictoral Marks–
Abstract marks:
Refined lettermarks and wordmarks:
Next, of course, I had to refine the pictoral and abstract marks in the same way:
The next step was to finalize all four designs.
The Lettermark:
The wordmark:
The images still needed a little fiddling with…I needed to try them out different way, mix in some colors, otherwise see how I could make them really work.
The abstract marks — Lynn really liked the sound file idea, and my teacher liked the concept a lot too…it is simple and clean, but still expressive. Pretty much everyone liked the other one:
As for the pictoral mark…I had a bit of a problem…I honestly didn’t like ANY of the ideas I’d developed. I’ll be honest…the week we looked them over in class we had a substitute and he was, well, shit. He was in a huge rush to get through everyone’s work and didn’t seem to have a great grasp on what we were doing. That being so, I spoke to my teacher and we looked over the thumbnails again, and the one that she specifically liked was one I had a fondness for as well…something that got across the message without being blatant or ostentatious or looking like an advertisement for a birthday-party magician:
(if you can’t quite tell, it’s an owl carrying a flute)
Hurray! Everyone I showed responded to this picture…a vast improvement over the previous choices!
So, with Briggs’ help, I narrowed it down to 6 choices of image (we decided that, while nice-ish, the sound file just didn’t have the same appeal as the other abstract) and I posted them so my mom could look at them and help me choose two final pictures (ideally, yes, I would have talked to Lynn…but he has no internet, and as this was a school project that needed to get done, and she’s familiar with his company AND has a good eye for design, she was the best choice.)
The six:
In the end, simplicity won out — the final abstract and pictoral marks:
annnnddd…. a couple where I played with mixing the images with the word and letter marks:
The end!
How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier:
Charlie (Charolette Adele Donna Seto Steele) lives in New Avalon where a 
healthy portion of the population have fairies. No one knows exactly what fairies are, as they are entirely invisible, but their existence is fairly well proven by the effects that they have on their humans. Fairies act as…well, much like an item in Dungeons and Dragons that gives the user special skills or strength or luck in a certain area. Charlie’s best friend has a Shopping fairy (a thrilling match for a teenage girl) that lets her find great deals on cute clothes. Sort of a +5 to shopping. A boy from her school has a Sleep fairy, so that no matter how little sleep he gets, he will be perky and alert the following day. Her classmate Fiorenze has an All The Boys Will Like You fairy, which Charlie considers highly unfair — especially when her new crush starts spending all his school hours holding hands with Fiorenze.
Charlie also has a fairy. Charlie has a Parking fairy, which ensures that any car she is in will find a great parking spot. Charlie is 14 years old and doesn’t have a license. Charlie hates cars, hates the way cars smell and above all hates getting ‘borrowed’ by friends and family any time they are driving somewhere that is likely to have limited parking options. Charlie hates her fairy and is determined to get rid of it — preferably replacing it with a better one.
There were a number of things I liked about this book. The first couple of (super short) chapters didn’t really grab me but by mid-story I was pretty hooked. First of all, the world is not only unique in it’s customs, beliefs, slang and so on, but the characters are incredibly comfortable in it…they will make passing references that leave the reader rather lost, as is normal when visiting a foreign land. This bit of verisimilitude is saved from being incredibly frustrating, or alternately, explained in a clumsy and artless way, by the character of an in-plot visitor from a foreign land — Steffi, Charlie’s new crush that just moved to New Avalon from the west coast and often has to have bits of culture explained to him. The strong universe actually reminded me strongly of Scott Westerfield’s ‘Uglies’ series and of how after reading it I kept finding myself wanting to use ‘bubbly’ and ‘brain-missing’ in conversation. (I found out why once I finished the book and read the back flap. Larbalstier is married to Westerfield.)
Second, the plot is not without charm–there are teen-friendly lessons about 
judging people without getting to know them and watching what you wish for, and as the plot develops, all kinds of interesting tidbits are dropped about New Avalon, rules and fairies.
Now here’s where the book lost it, at least for me. Unless there is a book coming out to follow this one (and I haven’t been able to find any evidence of any sequels yet) then the ending of HtDYF was much less than satisfying. The central story was, in all honesty, a little on the shallow side. Yes, it had life lessons cunningly told, but overall it was about a whiny teenager that feels like life isn’t fair. Those interesting tidbits I mentioned were keeping my attention at LEAST as much as the story, if not more. For example–Steffi, the new boy, is amazed by the self-obsessed nature of the residents of New Avalon, who firmly believe their city to be the center of the universe and quite honestly the best of everything. Where he comes from, NA is sort of laughed at for that attitude, something that at first angers Charlie, then confuses her and by the end of the book has made her a little curious. And Fairies! No one knows what they are! They’re invisible, and at one point it is hinted that they might be parasitic. That’s INTERESTING! Tell me more! There are a number of places throughout the book where the author could have chosen to explore further into either one or both of these topics, but they are both kind of set aside as the happy ending draws nigh and the characters athletically avoid getting their feet tangled in countless loose ends.
I understand that the abandoned subjects could simply be catty social commentary, but I feel that Larbalestier really fell short if she intends to simply leave this book as a stand-alone piece. Her world really felt like it had a more sinister underbelly that was worth an expidition or two.
