Some Dude on the Internet

I finished it!

This font, Hobo,

is the new Comic Sans or Papyrus.

No, seriously. It's everywhere, because people think it's 'fun.'

Stop it! Use a better font in a way that makes it say 'fun,' don't try to use a quirky font that is so immediately recognizable to shortcut it.

Hobo is wide and awkward and ungainly and its default kerning does not work well. Like any typeface, it can have its appropriate uses, but I find it hard to believe that it is the best choice for any situation. Much like its annoying Comic Sans and Papyrus brethren.

Seriously. Hobo is one to avoid.

Today is the first day that I am officially binder-free.

( 2 weeks post-op )

My surgery is this time tomorrow.

Edwin came up last night, he's taking Joshua and me down to the bay this morning for my pre-op appointment, then my mom is coming in at the airport in the afternoon.

So much going on....!

The Brief
The logo is for this- http://www.futurefoundationsacramento.org/ And you can pretty much see that their current logo is awful.

The foundation provides mentorship and funding to a small but growing group of college-bound students. They are pretty unique in that they don't only provide scholarship money to fill the gap between what the students receive through grants and other scholarships to pay for their college of choice, but they also choose their recipient students during their Sophomore year in high school, providing them with three years of one-on-one mentorship to realize their aspirations.

The design firm that is doing this is inFuze Marketing, whose tagline is 'creating impact without noise'. Our concept design teacher brought in the owner of the firm and one of her designers to talk to us and give us the project.

The design actually needs to appeal primarily to funders. They hold gala events and golf tournaments and the like to bring in money and donors. The logo will be embroidered onto golf shirts and high-quality tchotchkes.


My Approach
As part of the identity design, I'm wanting to make a personal connection from the students to the contributors. Reinforce that these are SPECIFIC people with dreams and aspirations. The pencil-tool 'my' at the bottom of futurefaces.jpg is a placeholder. My idea is that there could be small sections of the personal stories of FF students, with a picture. The students are taking posession of the foundation, calling it "My Future; My Future Foundation".

I feel like making it more personal like that will speak more directly to the contributors. Rather than being a faceless 'random high school student' that their money helps, they will see the type of people that are being supported, learn a little about their stories, and maybe even see a reflection of their younger selves in the students, causing them to remember the ways they might have been helped up the ladder as they grew, and recognizing themselves in a position to help these individuals in turn.


My Work



( Read more... )
As for the actual execution... I'm not sure if I like the disjointed bottom half of the face treatment. That might not be the best way to do it, but I feel like that leaves me at a bit of a loss to what to do instead. I still like the logo direction itself- the hand-drawn font for future speaks to fresh growth, while the solid slabs of foundation gives that growth a sturdy medium for growth. I'm looking at bold, fresh colors as well, which feels like the right direction, though I have no idea whether that will appeal to the older, more conservative financial contributors.

Any help is appreciated!

Has anyone here played with Muse at all? It's Adobe's new web design software, still in Beta, and free for now. I wouldn't have heard of it if it wasn't for one of my classes, but it seems pretty neat. I've messed with it for about 20 minutes so far and at least placing content on the page seems pretty straightforward. It seems similar, though not as versatile as InDesign, but for something that is made to be exported to html, it seems pretty awesome.

http://muse.adobe.com/index.html

Let me know what you think!

Busy isn't even the word. I've entered a state where I'm doing hours of homework a day, and if I'm doing less than four or five hours in a single day I start getting really anxious about it.

Surgery in three weeks, two days. I'd say I was really nervous about it, and when I give myself time to think, of course I am. But this is week 9 now, of an 11-week school quarter, and maybe having no room to think is not such a terrible thing.

I signed up for classes next quarter. Only two, instead of three. I had to jump through some paperwork hoops to not take the full load my financial aid allows, but not as many as I'd thought, and the people I talked to were really understanding. There's only a one-week break between quarters, and my surgery is on the wednesday.

Then I have a follow-up appointment (in SF) on monday, a class (in Sac) on tuesday, a secondary follow-up (SF) on wednesday, and a class (Sac) on thursday. Not entirely sure how that's going to work. If I'm absolutely not feeling up to classes, it is better for me to drop for the quarter than to do too poorly in the classes.

But one of my closest friends is a chinese med student. He has magical healing herbs that he claims will cut my recovery time in half, most likely. Which sounds pretty awesome. He gave the same stuff to our mutual friend when he got his wisdom teeth out, and he was up and about within about two days. Maybe I'll be so lucky. But I'll still need to be really careful with what I do with my arms to avoid bad scarring. I'm going to miss riding my bike for that month or so.

Anyway. I need to get back to work. I'm sorry I've been so quiet. I want to be more social, I really do, it just takes time, and time is what I do not have in much quantity. >_

Sorry I've been quiet lately, school has been eating my face.

Finished a project today, really pleased with it. Portfolio for one of my classmates - all art is his except the logo in the top corner. I did all the layout and design stuff.

The web version doesn't have interactivity, but the version I turned in has working links that allow navigation from page to page. Maybe if you download it and open it with Acrobat it'll work.

PDF HERE

Let me know what you think! I worked hard on this! Oh, there's a process book, too, that I can upload if anyone is interested!

I could say a lot about 2011 -

It was a good year, despite occasional rollercoasterness.

If I had to give it a title, 2011 was the year of
"How I learned to stop worrying and love myself"
more than any year up to this point.

And that's pretty cool.

I got back into art, accidentally started myself on a new career path and am LOVING it, started fooling around with comic art, and rediscovered my love for illustration. And learned a LOT about time management.

And got suckerpunched in the jaw with a corkboard about 60 seconds before the new year. Gravity doesn't pull punches, I will tell you that much. XD

Here's to an even better 2012

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been posting much. I've had a lovely christmas day and a productive few days surrounding it, but to be perfectly honest I'm in a pretty rough spot financially. Last month my unemployment benefits got cut off unexpectedly. I still have a tiny bit of hope that they'll get turned back on, but it seems like it's becoming less and less likely.

I'm getting over my fear of commissions- I think something in my head had been a huge block to getting them done in any kind of consistent manner, but I guess some of the things I've had to learn to keep up with my graphic design schoolwork have really just made me go, 'okay, commissions are FUN, not painful, duh' lol

So with that said, if anyone has any interest in getting art from me- either illustration or design, I would love to work for you.

I don't have a system in place for accepting new commissions. I'm not exactly expecting to be gangrushed on them, so taking care of new commissions on an individual basis should work.

Once school starts back up I'm going to be in the career services dept a couple times a week until I have a job, but EDD kind of screwed me with the timing- yanking the carpet out from under me without warning and right before the holidays. -__-