Someone wrote this awesome postscript for a dodecahedron calendar and made it available on http://www.ii.uib.no/~arntzen/kalender/. You can customize it a bit, download it, print and fold for a fun desk calendar. Having access to a laser cutter, I was able to quickly cut and score a bunch and then screenprint them for my Mom to give as gifts this year. They come flatpacked in an envelope with instructions and the recipient does the folding and gluing themselves. It’s easy and fun. Lookout, you may be getting one for Christmas this year!

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As Mother’s Day approaches, I was pressed for time so I did a quick digital collage, where I googled three words I associated with my Mother and then instinctively picked from the results; layering, cutting and pasting as I went. The three phrases I chose were dogwood, horse, and woman in the woods- they just popped into my head. The whole point was not to obsess too much over the images or their meaning. The card was done in about 20 min. About the time you would spend walking to the hallmark store and throwing down $4 on a cheesy greeting card. A good exercise for anyone who needs to loosen up their graphic composition skills.

-Roussa

My approach was the same, but I had a specific vision in mind. Besides being raised in the desert, my mother also spent the early days of her marriage galavanting through the brush and the arid basins of the Nevada desert with my father. They navigated by map and trust as my father prospected the endless ranges in a 60′s Jeep much like the one pictured below.

I don’t remember much of Las Vegas, aside from stories and photographs, but my mom always seemed ready to move back even though our family spent the last 30 years on the West side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I thought I would try and give her a some desert for Mother’s Day. Googled photos, Photoshop filters and a simple message was all I needed to bring my mom back to the heat and open expanses of Nevada desert. I printed mine out on a laser printer, glued it to a thicker card stock and popped it in the mail. Done!

-peaker

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I love the Bicycle Commuter Contest.  I love seeing people out on the road, riding in groups, wearing neon orange and yellow jackets, zipping around town in blur of caution and warning.  I like the fact that the bike shops always seem slightly under staffed in April as flocks people come and go with either smiles, or looks of uncertainty as they prepare themselves for a month of riding.

For those unfamiliar with the Thurston County Bicycle Commuter Contest, the BCC is a Intercity Transit sponsored event that takes place during the month of May and is designed to encourage area residents to commute by bicycle to work or on errands. Cyclists record their miles as individuals and as a team in an effort to earn prizes, but more importantly, the data is compiled to demonstrate the positive effects on the environment, individual health and traffic reduction. If you’re interested, read more about the Bicycle Commuter Contest.

This is my third year participating in the BCC and with Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters’ Chain Gang team. Generally, each team that participates in the BCC creates a team shirt and since I’m designing our team’s shirt this year, I thought I would try and lay it out by hand.  Below is a draft of the design I decided to stick with.

The design is heavily influenced by one of my favorite designers, Jay Ryan and his 2000 poster titled Everlasting The Way. (View the original design here.) Obviously, I modified my design to represent a cyclist and I tried working with two different hand drawn type styles. The first is my own take on a uppercase italicized Helvetica, with noticeable alterations done to the characters C and G. The bottom text is my version of the architype Tschichold, which was designed by Jan Tschichold in 1929 though never put into production.

After a few iterations, I finally ditched the hand drawn type for “CHAIN GANG” in exchange for digital type (Trade Gothic Standard). I wanted the hand drawn version to work, but it wasn’t and after redrawing it three or four times, it still looked forced and unskilled. Not everyone can be like Mr. Jay Ryan.  

I will post photos of the screen printed version in a week or so when they are finished. In the meantime, go ride your bike because it’s fun and it’s good for you and your fellow Olympians.

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Wisdom Teeth Wisdom Teef EP

I’ve been playing in a band called Wisdom Teeth for three years now.  We recorded eleven new songs in January 2009, of which five of the songs were released March 2010. After one whole year of hee-haaing around about how we would pay for this one package or that one design, we finally we were at a point where we had shows, but nothing physically new in hand to promote. Instead of showing up empty handed, I asked the other members if they were cool with me designing the package by hand, sans computer, so we could have something to sell.

Originally we planned on screen printing blank Arigato Packs, which you can buy directly from Stumptown Printers of Portland.  Arigato Packs are thick pieces of cardstock made from 100% recycled chipboard that are pre-cut and scored so that you can easily fold them up into a small box that has the same dimensions as a CD case. Think plastic CD jewel case meets the classic Chinese take-out box. When you buy a case of Arigatos – cases can be as small as twenty –  they arrive flat and unfolded. I have seen the Arigato in only two forms, a greyish color with one side coated white (used below) or natural brown with both sides uncoated. We decided to go with the grey/white option and flip it inside-out. This provided the sterile look we were going for and the grey would also contrast nicely with the black ink and white paint.   The uncoated grey side also provided a better surface for the inks to adhere to.

Add a little ink and acrylic paint.

After designing the outside, we needed to add a few other tidbits to make the release “official”.  This required including the label release number, date of release and minor shout outs. I added these with pen, but we also included a stamp indicating the print series.

Arigato's like to be stamped too.

One final little flourish we added was to emboss one of the label’s logos (Radio is Down) onto the back, which added a very nice, yet subtle touch. You can get an embosser with your own custom designed plates for pretty cheap these days. I would start looking here.

An embossed Arigato Pack.

Now that you are excited about doing your own hand packaging design, please allow us to provide one suggestion, keep it simple, quick and cheap.  Even though this particular design uses four different forms of media, each step can be done very quickly because the detail is minimal.  Each Arigato can be completed in just under ten minutes. Yes, this includes writing Wisdom Teef 43 times on each piece.

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Marcel Duchamp

The idea of a gallery in a suitcase is not a new one, as evidenced by Marcel Duchamp’s Box in a Suitcase (1935-1940), a portable miniature monograph including sixty-nine reproductions of the artist’s own work. Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a boite en valise of my own, based on an interpretation of a passage from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. While the initial idea was to curate a series of discrete objects into a box that represents the city; my background in art, with a strong penchant toward visual media has taken over,  and it is morphing into more of a diorama (just much less figurative). Though really, who doesn’t love a good diorama?

But suddenly these curious cabinets are turning up everywhere! Just last week, at the White Box gallery in Portland, there appeared some fantastic shipping crates carefully designed to unfold in marvelous ways. The traveling exhibit is called 4 Salvaged Boxes, designed by wHY Architecture, from materials salvaged during the construction of the Grand Rapids Art Museum.  Upon opening, the boxes unfold to reveal their contents, materials and information about sustainable design.

wHY Architecture

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My niece and nephew both have birthdays in the beginning of February. For the last two years it been difficult getting them gifts, so this year I just made them something.  Recently, I have been influenced by Mark Weaver and Making Something Cool Every Day. Choosing to make things by hand, I created the simple pieces below. They took about 1-2 hours each.

Moo-Man Walks On Birthday

The piece above I created for my nephew Nicholas. Acrylic paint, pencil and pen mixed together with scraps of an old 2003 Strength skateboard magazine featuring Russ Pope. The bull is Russ Pope’s work.

Below is another collage piece from a number of different magazines, but the main image of the woman is from a recent Anthropologie catalog. Grid systems and the use of “activators” to enhance negative space interests me. In this piece I am using the light mint circle to create a point of interest between the circle and the two short horizontal bars.

I hope you like the flowers.

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