For this assignment, we drew randomly from an assortment of ugly advertising brochures and postcards. There were some pretty funny selections, including a llama farm. I drew a postcard for Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. Our task was to design a completely new advertisement using the techniques we’d been learning. The project dimensions and the name of the business were really the only requirements.

In representing Hell’s Kitchen, I wanted to stay away from cliché symbols like devils and pitchforks. The problem with that, as we’ve learned, is that the obvious symbols are usually the best. The challenge I gave myself was to tread the line between obvious and obscure in a way that would still communicate the idea. My mind went to "that weird bird thing" in the Heironymous Bosch painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony. I thought that the hellish characters and scenes in Bosch’s paintings would be a perfect source of non-cliché symbolism.

Rather than duplicate Bosch’s style (okay—I lack the necessary painting skills…), I thought I’d lighten things up and use a vector art approach. I chose colors from a typical Art Deco palette (according to books and internet resources), and cast characters from various Bosch paintings. The famous "bird thing" already has a funnel on its head! How perfect is that? It is Hell’s Kitchen after all. I merely substituted the letter in its beak for a dollar bill and depicted an exchange for a colander, another wonderful kitchen accessory! (Afterthought: I price tag would have been a nice touch.)

Of course, I got carried away and put a lot more detail in this project than you actually see when viewing the printed product. I’ll zoom in on a few details here because they’re actually quite fun. If you look at several of Bosch’s paintings, you’ll see that they usually depict the foreground all the way to the horizon. The Garden of Earthly Delights is his most famous work, and has fanciful buildings in the distance. I tried to capture these receding depths in my card, even if very crudely. The main characters are the focus, working back to a stylized city skyline in the background. The middle was supposed to be a bustling flea market scene, however, I got bogged down in the meticulous detail and ended up taking shortcuts to finish the work. The table in my piece was lifted from this scene in The Temptation of Saint Anthony:

I redressed the characters (except Mr. Giant Plum guy on the cellphone at the bottom) and put items on the table that were similar those shown on the original card. The bottle was from my earlier assignment Magic With Cards. In the interest of saving time, I left out various hands and arms. I did sooo want to put the owl on the pig guy’s head…oh well:

I figured fitting to include Heironymous Bosch in the flea market scene. Here’s what he looked like, according to himself:

You can barely see him in the final design. My Heironymous Bosch portrait turned into somewhat of a side project. I changed his hat into a beach hat. I’m sure he would have worn one. I was going to have him opening his coat to display watches for sale or probably some more diabolic trinkets. Instead, it looks like he’s flashing. Well, these details are all lost in the final product anyhow:

I ended up throwing in a few pitchforks. There’s a whole table of space heaters and cauldrons and oil lanterns and coal, all under the watchful eye of the giraffe from The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Was it a successful design? The professor seemed to like it, but didn’t think most people would recognize the reference. Only a handful of classmates were familiar with Bosch’s work. However, my goal wasn’t to have people recognize the artwork, but to interpret a hellish (yet inviting) scene. I think it works, but I cannot be objective after having spent so much time on this. What do you think?

Check out Stefan’s account at Introducing: The Flame-O-Phone!.

We sold out the joint and made a lot of friends. It was definitely a party. A word about The Puck. It’s a really awesome venue. They are super nice there and take really good care of the performers. And my favorite part is they have a wide variety of non-alcoholic drinks like Izze soda, Jones juices, and Honest Tea. How often do you see that at a bar? Never. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it in a venue like this. Best of all, they had my favorite drink of all time: Honest Tea Peach Oo-La-Long!

On a technical note… I tried several open-source video editors in Linux (Ubuntu 9.04), including OpenShot, LiVES, Cinelerra and PiTiVi. However, the only one I could get to work was Kino. Basic, but splices and dices nicely.

Gigs are always listed on my Upcoming Performances page.

Gigs are always listed on my Upcoming Performances page.

Well, turns out that our homework assignment was to then build a pair of the glasses we imagined!  This was our first three-dimensional assignment.  At first, it may not seem like graphic design, but this assignment involved merging symbols, which we’ve been learning is critical to effective graphic design.  The fabrication aspect of this homework was also important, because graphic artists aren’t always working in two dimensions.  Many graphics wrap around physical objects (from packages to the ads they shrinkwrap on buses!), and you never know when a job will require you to mock up a prototype of some sort.

I did have the option of thinking of an easier project, but this was such a good idea and I didn’t want to back down.  So I sketched out some designs in my notebook on the way home and hit the art stores the next day for supplies.  Here are the materials I used:

1 large smoke-tint triangle (for the 0.10" polystyrene)
black and white Premo polymer clay
liquid polymer clay glue
polymer clay gloss
Marblex clay (to stamp the grill)
2 steel eraser shields (for the thin sheet metal)
6 tiny machine screws and nuts
4 poultry lacers
laser printer transparencies
clear laser mailing labels
plastic tags for hanging file folders
acrylic paint

Here are the tools I used:

Dremel
various Dremel bits including diamond wheel and tile cutting
tiny drill bits
aluminum foil
self-healing cutting mat
X-acto knife blades and handles
screwdrivers
scissors
baking sheet
paint brushes
paint palette
paper towel
assorted files (large and small)
2 needle-nose pliers
Sharpie pen
sandpaper
clay sculpting tools
stainless steel ruler
assorted binder clips
masonite boards
sheet glass
large putty knife
acetone
epoxy
various other glues
Inkscape and Photoshop software
large metal washers
oven thermometer
baking sheet
oven

Just to be clear, this is not intended as a step-by-step tutorial.  It took many hours to complete this, and I improvised and backtracked at many points along the way.  I wasn’t very good at photo-documenting every step, especially when my hands were messy with polymer clay.  Also, if you think that I think you’d actually try to do this yourself, then we’ve arrived at a rather curious misunderstanding…

I used Inkscape (a lovely open-source vector graphics application) to design templates for the frame, arms, grill design, and hinge brackets.  Not all beforehand, but as I went along.  The core of my concept was to use the transparent polystyrene of the triangle as the frame of my glasses and attach everything else to that.  This way, the lenses and the frame could be one and the same, thereby simplifying fabrication.  I used my own glasses as a guide to get the frame dimensions right.  In Inkscape, I designed a frame template where each lens would be the bottom of the grill.

Etching the frame design onto the polystyrene

Above, you see my frame template.  I traced the outer border onto my polystyrene triangle to etch the design onto the plastic.  This made a nice guide to cut around.  Oh, and the cutting…let me tell you…time consuming!  Probably the longest phase of project.

Dremel on stun!

Speaking of phase, my Dremel looks like a cool retro Star Trek phaser!

The rough cut

I cut around my etched guide, leaving a slight margin, with the tile cutting bit.  It was a very slow process, mainly because the polystyrene would gum up the bit every half inch or so.  I used a slow setting so that I wouldn’t burn the plastic, but it melted as I went along and would reform in the teeth of my bit until it wound around like thread on a spool.  If it built up too much, I had to soak the bit in acetone to dissolve the plastic.

After the rough cut, I carefully filed, sanded, and Dremeled the edges to a smooth finish.

Grill stamp made of Marblex clay

I used Marblex clay to create a stamp that I’d use to make the grill surfaces with raised grill lines.  (I should have made it thicker…it broke while I was stamping!)  I sculpted on glass using two peices of masonite on either side of the clay to regulate the thickness, pressing down with glass and masonite on the top.  I also used the Marblex to practice sculpting the grill before moving forward with the polymer clay.  This was how I worked out the techniques and shape for the grill tops.

Sculpted grill tops of white Premo

I had considered building a mold for the grill tops, but decided that experimenting with molding techniques would be a waste of time for just two grill tops.  They didn’t need to be exact clones to get the point across, nor was any single peice I sculpted going to be symmetrical enough to be worthy of cloning.  So I crafted two near-duplicates in white Premo using the method I developed while practicing in Marblex.  Basically, I created flat slabs using masonite and glass, sloping from 5mm in the back to 3mm in the front.  Then I traced the grill dimensions using an open paper template and cut away the excess with an X-acto knife.  The ridge in the back and the handle in the front were added as separate peices and sculpted with the X-acto knife.  I got the nice curve of the ridge by rolling the metal handle against the clay.

Grill bottoms in black Premo

I formed the grill bottoms for the lids in black Premo.  I used the stamp I made of Marblex to impress the grill design into the clay.  Unfortunately, the stamp broke during the first impression, so I had to do the second one with shattered pieces.

Grill lids set with hinges

I used metal poultry lacers from the local dollar store to fabricate rods for the hinges.  These bent at fairly neat right angles using two needle-nose pliers and a hard table surface to fold against.  The diamond cutting bit lopped off excess steel.  I designed a template for the hinges in Inkscape so that I could replicate the dimensions.  I also determined the proper hinge distance so that the lids would align properly with the frame.   I sandwiched the hinges into the lid tops and bottoms using liquid polymer clay glue.  Then I baked the lids according to the directions on the Premo clay.  At this point, I had no idea how I was going to attach the hinges to the frame.

Glasses arms ready to bake

I decided to make the arms look like bacon.  I’m sure George Foreman marketing would be quick to point out that the grill can cook lots of healthy things like asparagus.  But bacon’s funnier.  I formed the arms of my glasses using black and white Premo mixed to grey.  I made a template for these, too, so that they’d be symmetrical.  I embedded hinges in the arms and used large metal washers so that they’d bake with the proper curve around the ears.

Poorly painted bacon

Alas, I am not a painter.  Perhaps, I’ll take an acrylics class at SVA in the future.

With most of the fabrication complete, and my Premo components painted and glossed up nicely, I had to address the hinge problem.  I wanted these glasses to be wearable, and I was pretty sure no glue on earth would hold the hinges to the frames strongly enough.  Then it dawned on me, remembering what the polystrene was like to carve, that I might just be able to drill into it.

Frame with drilled holes

I practiced on scraps of polystyrene with tiny drill bits rigged to my Dremel.  (They didn’t fit properly, so I rather unsafely wrapped them in aluminum foil until they did.)  As it turned out, the polystyrene was drillable, as long as I was very careful.  The slightest torsion would cause a split, and the melting plastic would gum up the bit and easily cause said slightest torsion.  After some practice, I drilled my six required holes just fine.  It took some experimenting to find the right hole size for the screws I used.  Just big enough so that the screws would catch the plastic firmly, but not cause cracks.

Partly assembled

I used scissors to snip out thin sheets of steel from eraser shields.  This provided a strong hinge attachments for the arms of the glasses.  As you can see above, the sheet metal folded around the frame is bolted through with a tiny screw.  For the lids, I used thin plastic from hanging file folder tags instead of metal.  There just wasn’t enough usable material on the eraser shields for the larger hinges.

Close-up of a hinge

My original idea, even back at the chalkboard, was for the grill lids to be spring loaded.  They should open and close freely, but also stay open by default so that you can see.  The screwed-on hinge design provided an opportunistic method for spring loading the lids.  I simply took some narrow sheet metal strips and bolted them on the back of the hinges.  The springs flex back and forth with the lids, and keeps the lids open normally.

Spring loaded design

For the final touches, I laser-printed a grill pattern on transparencies for each lens.  I don’t have a detail photo, but you can see the grill pattern in the final photo below.  Also, printed the logo for each grill so that they would look like the real deal!

Authentic logos

I first printed the logos on laser transparencies (pictured above), but they wouldn’t stay glued due to the curved contour of the lids.  So I printed on clear laser mailing labels instead.

Workspace aftermath

This is my project table after I was done.  If it’s not messy, is it art?

So stylish!

Naturally, this was a very entertaining project for me! As much fun as it was to work on my own design, it was great to see what albums other people chose, and to listen to a wide range of music. The funniest cover someone chose was the Beach Boys Pet Sounds. It’s a picture of the Beach Boys feeding a bunch of goats. Quite terrible. A classic album of all time, though. Influenced by the Beatles Rubber Soul, only to then influence Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Another album someone did was Paul Simon’s Graceland, which I love. I do like the album art, but I suppose the meaning is a bit obscure. …that makes it sound like I know what it means. I do not know what it means!

I immediately wanted to accomplish two things with this project: redesign a 1960’s Blue Note album, and redesign a Jackie McLean album. This era is also when Jackie really found his own voice, breaking free of imitating Charlie Parker, exploring the avante-garde, and brilliantly applying his cutting tone to lots of wonderful sessions. The album I chose It’s Time was part of my Complete Blue Note Sessions 1964-1966 box set that lived in my CD changer for six months straight in the spring of 1995. Blue Note album covers are practically a genre of their own. There’s even a book of them. This Jackie McLean album is NOT a prime example. It’s basically exclamation marks with a markedly unflattering picture of Jackie:

The assignment had us focus on how the music makes us feel. Having studied with Jackie for four years, I can’t even begin to explain how his music feels, let alone capture it in a 12cm x 12cm piece of art. Instead, I focused on his sound. Jackie’s voice on the alto saxophone is instantly recognizable, perhaps because he plays it like a tenor with fire and passion. There’s a sense of urgency, and a feeling that his horn is about to burst at the seams. I chose to capture this urgency by rendering "It’s Time!" as a saxophone time bomb:

With the second hand only a tick away, it’s definitely time! From what I gather, the actual meaning of this album has to do with the fact that it was recorded just after Jackie had served a six-month sentence for a narcotics offense. So "It’s Time!" meant jail time. In a sense, I felt like the time bomb also symbolizes Jackie’s addiction, which would have cut his life short had he not gotten clean a few years later. In a roundabout way, that hints back to the original concept. I would have loved to ask Jackie himself about this album, among many other things had I realized It’s Time!

P.S. Yes, it’s that time of year…

This class focuses on the creative process more than anything else, which is great because creativity can apply to pretty much anything. We don’t get bogged down in technique; some people bring in their work done up in markers and pencil and it’s okay as long as the ideas are sound. This is exactly what I wanted, because later I’ll take some classes that deal more with technique, but right now I want to learn to formulate solid ideas.

For our second homework assignment, we had to design three covers for the classic card trick book Magic with Cards by Garcia and Schindler. We worked from the original memo specifying the cover design. Each design would elaborate on different cover copy (title, author, and subtitle) using creative techniques taught in class.

Subtitle

This was a very exciting project, especially compared to our first assignment of bank loan pamphlets (boooring!). I got two of my ideas sitting in class as the professor explained the assignment. The following cover together, however, was a last minute effort that I threw together three hours before class. Using the subtitle for inspiration, I interpreted "miracles" as "turning water into cards". I took a photo of my "ordinary" kitchen faucet, a photo of cards taped to black poster board, and Photoshopped it into this image of water transforming into playing cards:

We spend an hour or so during each 3-hour session presenting our work to the class. The professor thought my idea was fun, but he thought it was conceptually a bit "left-of-center". (What can I do? That’s me. All my ideas are left-of-center!) Also, as was true for about 95% of the examples, the professor criticized this for "dividing the page". He marked it up how he thought it could be improved. Luckily, we don’t submit our work officially til the end of the semester, so I can make these revisions. If I were to spend more time on this, I’d probably reshoot it at a better angle, perhaps with a pitcher instead of a faucet…but I don’t have time for that.

Author

This idea made me laugh just thinking about it, and even more so creating it. I made the authors Garcia and Schindler two rabbits performing a classic act of magic: sawing the lady in half. I transformed a Queen of Hearts into a sexy magician’s assistant. In a way, this drew inspiration from all three cover copy elements, symbolizing card magic and the miracle of rabbits using tools! Given the obvious Alice In Wonderland overtones, I styled this piece as one of those soft-cover publications we all had to read in high school:

Unfortunately, my styling inspiration also mimicked bad layout, and I was ripped for "dividing the page" again. The professor got a good laugh from the illustration. At some point, I’ll "remix" the layout. I’ve got some ideas, but I need to let it rest and come back to it later.

Title

For the title Magic with Cards, I decided to symbolize magic with potion bottles and cards with the suits labelled on the bottles. I couldn’t bear to use any of the cliché symbols for magic out there, wands, magician hats, white gloves, etc. I thought of Harry Potter and Snape’s office, and that led me to the idea of potions:

I spent a good 18 hours on this, including shopping for the bottles, creating the labels, improvising softboxes for lighting, photoshopping in smoke, and whatnot. After all that, the professor was rather ho-hum about it. Again, he thought I was "left-of-center". There was a quiet chorus of shrugs when he asked the class if anybody understood that the bottles symbolized magic. He also didn’t understand the labels and said that they didn’t look like they were on the bottles. I thought I’d at least get credit for "closing in on the action", which he tries to get everyone to do. Oh well.

First Edition

Here’s what the actual first edition cover looks like. (I borrowed an image from someone who has copies for sale and hope he doesn’t mind in exchange for a link back!) This was made according to the same memo specifications we used for our assignment:

Which cover would you choose?

http://www.michaelbreckerliverecordings.com/transcriptions.html

Check out the whole site, maintained by saxophonist Louis Gerrits, obviously fanatic enough to build this wonderful catalogue.

I miss Michael Brecker. It’s not right that he’s gone.