This is a portfolio of my work in many forms. It should give you some insight as to the products I might help you to create.
I’ve always had an unmistakable inexplicable affection for the visuals, structure, and purpose of powerlines. They remind me of huge motherly robotic figures, feeding us, feeding us. I thought it would be fun to focus on the quiet benevolent giants in a sketch, and I thank you for indulging me. I hope this one’s connected to a wind turbine, just saying.
I am always amazed at the control, grace and mastery of a martial artist. The control of the flow of energy and the beautiful way in which that control is visually displayed can be magical. I wanted to capture the fluidity and looseness of the internal self that I’ve heard talked about by martial artists; the need to be like water. I hope you like it.
I just had a birthday, so maybe that has something to do with it, but my vision is not what it used to be. I spend a lot of time looking at computer screens, and usually at a high resolution, so I imagine it’s only a matter of time before I become bespectacled. I imagine I’ll forgo any contacts, and just do some geek rimmed thing. At any rate, i notice a lot more quickly now when a certain effect is visually jarring, and this kind of thing does it for me — text that you can partly see, partly not, that is blurry in some places, and crisp in others. I first noticed it in “I’m sorry, I’m just a little sleepy” and wanted to try to push it a little here. Anyway, keep an eye out for me in glasses. I suggest it will be less than a year from now. B)
Today’s my birthday, and today’s sketch is officially the halfway point, as 365/2=182.5. Strange!
My very good friend, producer and mentor Janie Hermann, who helped me more than ever in the last year, deserves a break. She’s not going to get it this year, for various reasons, but normally, every year, she gets to visit a lake in her homeland of Canada. She made her suggestion with photos as follows, which I thought was particularly beautiful, (with geolocation protective edits):
When we go to Canada we go to a place that is very special to me — our family cottage on a (lake) deep in… Northern Ontario on the rocky Canadian shield. It is a small(er) lake with around 20 cottages on the perimeter and a very small island in the middle that is the home to two Loons that come there every summer to raise their young.
Waking with the morning mist off the lake as I sit on the dock with my coffee listening to the loons and watching them float by is one of my favorite summer memories… Loons are unusual birds, their call is so evocative and to me it evokes summer in Canada.
The best part of a morning is if the loons decide to take a run across the lake… I miss the lake, our loons, and our canoe…
yes tonight… I am dreaming of a northern lake.
Janie, I hope I was able to capture, if just a wee bit, your Northern lake. Thanks as always for the opportunity, your friendship, and your guidance. It’s invaluable.
I’ll start here by saying that no one asked me to do this, and it is completely unofficial. I work at Rider, but I want to be quite clear (it’s mandated in fact) that this site is in no way associated with Rider University. This design is kind of a joke, really — the kind of thing that might come out of a closed door review where a lot of contemporary website logos were shown alongside Rider’s current logo, in the hopes of bringing them closer together visually. I like Rider’s current logo quite a bit. I work there, and I am proud of that visual representation, as well as the ideological factors of their brand represented in their mission, vision, and strategic plan, such as student centeredness, and academic excellence. But, it was fun to transform it using the techniques that are present in so many contemporary design approaches, even if they’re wildly inappropriate here. 🙂
So this marks the second presence of a golden rectangle in 365 sketches, but it also marks the likely last entry of the 500px square sketches. Ahhhh. It was a good run. Although every CD and album cover ever made has been a square, in theory, I have found it limiting for layout. The golden rectangle, beautiful in and of itself as a ratio, will hopefully give me the opportunity to make a vertical vs. horizontal layout, show a fuller story, and develop more complex compositional arrangements. Looking forward to sharing what I’ve come up with so far.