New Work for a Good Cause

This is a poster design I did last weekend for the non-profit group ecofficiency.org that I am involved with. With a quick turnaround time of 48 hours I took some inspiration/influence from the Hatch posters that where used by many of the big country acts in the 50s and 60s and are making a comeback.

The Event should be a fun one and the money raised is going to help purchase water purification systems and send two of our members to Haiti to help distribute the systems to some of the poorest areas near Haiti's capitol Port-au-Prince. The team members will be departing on December 20th and return on the 29th.

Please help make this event a success by showing up and donating to this very worthy cause. This is our groups second event to help Haiti, our first event raised over $2000 which went directly to Doctors Without Borders.

More info about the event, donating, and ecofficiency.org can be found here.

Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend

R.I.P. Jessica 2.0, you were my trusty brushed aluminum G5 Mac tower, you died looking just as beautiful and majestic as the day you came into my life. You worked tirelessly moving huge PS files around with ease, while running inDesign in the background and playing my favorite songs on iTunes. You were impervious to viruses and other internet threats, you held your ground against huge FTP uploads and downloads. You worked well with all your peripherals and you and your graphics card especially liked your good buddy the Mac Cinema Display. You worked hard rarely giving me an ounce of trouble, sure you may have hiccuped a time or two but then you never gave me problems like those evil PCs give to their owners. We not only worked together but played together… you streaming funny videos to make me laugh and music to fill my ears but also beating me time and again in chess.

Just before the end you gave me a sign, a warning maybe of your coming demise, to back you up one last time. I tried to save you with a new hard drive, zeroing you out and reinstalling your original OS. You tried but it was just not to be.

In the end it was your core, your heart that failed. What time and age could not take from you on your outside even your firewall could not protect you from on the inside. So go quietly into that good nite my old and trusty friend, you will be missed.

Haitian Relief Benefit, Feb 11th at Detroit Bar

Please join Ecofficiency.org for Communities Helping Communities: Hope for Haiti, a benefit concert and art auction to bring relief to the people of Haiti. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to Doctors Without Borders. Entrance is only $15 and includes live performances by some of OC's best bands, an art auction, and complimentary Haitian hors d'oevres. Please come out and show your support Thursday, February 11th at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. Looking forward to seeing you there!


The poster design was done by me for the event very quickly and I scraped my initial concept which was a bit to labor and time intensive since I only had a day or two from concept to completion. This design is a bit simpler and straightforward, it uses the colors of the Haitian flag over a crumbled background, with the seismic element which can also be thought of as the life meter beeping thing in hospitals. The star of life is a widely recognized symbol and also used by the organization Doctors Without Borders.

Forever and a Day or Two

So it has been a few months since the last post, and I know my legions of loyal readers have been holding their breath and perhaps (according to my google analytics page) have possibly held it for a bit to long and passed or or worse.

Another summer has come and gone here in the great coastal city of Newport Beach and once again the beach is peacefully quiet, I have kept fairly busy with work and such and a few other projects. One project has been my involvement with a upstart group called Ecofficiency.org. At this point my help has mainly consisted of lending my design and web skills to the group such as maintaining and updating the website. Recently though the group held a fundraiser in which I had the very fun task of designing the poster for. The event was a success and the poster can be seen below. While I may not be the most active activists it does feel good to be able help out and give back a little to a worthy cause.

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On another front here is this posts sketch. Since Halloween was this past weekend I felt this sketch was an appropriate one. I can not remember when I sketched this or what inspired me but have the feeling it was again another late niter and I do remember there was a very light ink drawing of the shoe on this page originally though. I hope you enjoy.
The sketch as usual was done fairly quickly and loosely using a dip pen, brush and ink, and some watercolor in a Moleskine sketchbook.

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Price of Fame

So this sketch was done late night after a bunch of Amstel lights (shameless plug for Amstel, if you guys are reading this please send a case over) and listening to Jane's Addiction. The sketch as always done fairly quick, is of a stock photo of an older style camera and the face is a washed out black and white photo of a girl in a hoodie I found on David Carson's site. I then came back and scanned the sketch then brought it into Photoshop for a little manipulation. I copied and pasted the one original camera (the center large one) a few times and added a little color to them as well as to the girls face, a bit of white to somewhat look like a flash and a red box behind the text. As always comments or cracks are welcome.
Dip pen, brush, ink and Photoshop.

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A new sketch finally!

So it has been almost 4 months since I last posted a sketch and while I have been sketching, I just have not been posting them. Yes, I know the 20 people that read my blog are bummed and have been holding their breath. While hold no more as this is the latest to come out of my moleskine sketchbook. This is a sketch of some random model/person I found on a photographers site. As with most of my sketches the initial drawing was done fairly quickly in ink and then some watercolor was added and then a brief rambling of my thoughts on the side (which have been taken out). The words on the right were added in Photoshop as was the paint droplet. The original sketch had a very similar paint droplet that ran down to the bottom of the page and over my writing, but because I wanted to take out the writing it was a bit difficult (meaning time consuming for a quick sketch posting) to separate the droplet from the writing so I added a somewhat similar one in Photoshop.
Pen and ink, watercolor and Photoshop.

(click image for larger view)

How designers are treated

So in the last few days a video has been making its rounds and I felt that I should post it here so my hundreds of (well maybe 20) readers could see it. If you are a designer you will totally get it. For those of you who are not designers this is how we are often treated by clients but changed to reflect other real world situations.

Moleskin Lovers

So for many of you creative types out there and apparently white people (scroll down to #122) the legendary Moleskine® notebook is a not just a notebook but a piece of equipment, something that you put a reward on, something you treasure, something that you can't leave home without, something that you lay your creativity out on, something that blah blah blah blah... you get the picture. I know I love mine.

Anyhow over at the Moleskine website they have a new section called Project Detour. Detour is a Moleskine project dedicated to culture and creativity worldwide that features internationally recognized artists, architects, film directors, graphic designers, illustrators, and writers. There is some pretty cool stuff to look at and it gives you a little insight to some of todays most creative minds (my invitation I am sure was lost in the mail).

So check out some of the cool work from the artists here,
and read about Project Detour here.

Time to grab my Moleskine and do a little sketching.