Article Accompaniment

This was something I did as an experiment for a graphic element to accompany articles. I thought it would be interesting to use a couple characters in a few poses for an acceptedly comedic effect. This particular one was for an article I wrote explaining how to seek financial aid. I thought it was a neat idea to start, but the final result feels a bit lackluster, so I didn't bother including it. Maybe after some more practice.

While my initial vision of this was to use solidly-rendered characters, I quickly realized that wouldn't be possible for a few reasons. For one, I'm not sufficiently experienced at drawing realistic-looking humans with accurate proportions without the aid of picture guides, and then that limits my options of poses somewhat to the pictures I can find or take. This wouldn't be an issue if I had a camera, but currently I do not. This line design keeps things simple and uses negative space to an advantage, as well as making the identity of the models very difficult to discern.

Junk Food

And to all a good night!

KDSU - Devil's In The Details

I've tweaked up the KDSU logo design and added some text. This should be pretty close to the finalized version.

In accordance to a friend's opinion that it looks like the Trojan helmet was wearing earmuffs in my previous iteration of the KDSU logo, I did some tweaking to give the headphones a more prominent headband and to add some perspective detail to the phones themselves. I tweaked the colors around a bit, although, as always, colors are the easiest bit to quickly change when it comes to logo design. I went for a blue brush and more yellow-bronze color to the helmet itself in order to better conform to the appearance of DSU's official logo. I did a grunge design in order to appeal to a sense of personalization and underground rebellion that one often associates with the sort of music that college students listen to.

While I like the changes and feel fairly confident with the design, I'm a bit disappointed at how the design itself just doesn't feel as tight as some of the previous logo designs I've done of late. I feel as though there's some small detail that I'm overlooking that would turn this from a "pretty good" design to an "awesome" design. This is one instance where creative collaboration would come in very handy, and I must give a thanks to all the people whom I bug for their opinion on what dose and doesn't work, because while I can be the harshest self-critic, sometimes it just takes a second pair of eyes to notice a problem that the designer would have taken for granted.

KDSU - Excessive Elegance

The local college radio station, KDSU (K meaning "west of the Mississippi" and "DSU" being the acronym for our university--Dakota State University), has been in need of a new logo. I struggled a fair bit while trying to come up with a good design. I had thought of perhaps using some headphones tilted at an angle and hanging off of the words, but was concerned that it was too cliché on its own, and, on top of that, was something of a weak design. That was until a friend offered a brilliant solution: combine DSU's Trojans logo with the concept of a DJ: that is, headphones and the like.

Once the design idea had settled, it was a fairly easy matter to create a finalized version of the logo, although I wanted to steer away from the color scheme I used in the Trojan Times logo. While the Trojan Times' logo is more accurate, color-wise, to DSU's Trojans logo, I fear that I'll fall into a pit of monotony with the repetition of colors and designs will start looking all the same. Besides, I felt that the red worked a lot better to signify the energy intended to be portrayed in the radio station.

While I like the use of negative space, it may not be such a good idea in this case, since the "headphones" need to be clearly visible. I may end up filling that area in with white.

It was after I had finished this clean logo design, however, that I found it would not work: it was too clean. I am still fiddling with a possible grunge-y version, but, until that is completed, here is a glimpse at the clean version of the logo.

This is essentially the design I envisioned as soon as the idea was given to me. While, in the Trojan Times logo the helmet was negative space, in this case the complexity of the headphones pretty much demands that they be the object of negative space. Additionally, making them in negative space saves me the trouble of having to detail precisely where the headband goes, so I can combine the appearance of the headband with the look of a separation between helmet and the brush of the helm. The colors were chosen for their brightness, and, in the case of the helmet, their metallic tint.

Negative Space is Your Friend

As a writer for the local college newspaper, the Trojan Times, I felt inclined to offer my services as a web designer when they transition to a digital-only format. Currently I'm in the process of debating the hosting service: whether to urge them to purchase a host, jump the hoops to use one of those college newspaper hosts, or encourage them to use Blogger itself as a content management system. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I was aware that they were in need of a new logo, so, being on something of a roll (and it being my birthday today, so I'm full of junk and in a good mood), I went ahead and designed them a logo. I'm not only pleased with how it came out, but I'm downright proud.

The design came to me as one of my life-saving inspirations out of nowhere. I used a picture of a horse and a picture of a Trojan helmet to get everything aligned just right, then did the necessary tweaks to make everything fit. However, I had some initial trouble with people not seeing the horse's face, instead only noticing the long helmet. Adding the horse's cheek fixed that in a hurry, as well as added clarification to the negative space that makes up the helmet's main form. As for the typography, I used a free font called Title Wave. I played around a bit before arriving at this finished layout. I'd initially played with "The" sharing that enormous T along with the rest, but quickly decided that was a bad idea. The orientation of the "rojan" is just such that one can easily see the word "Trojan," thanks to its near-central orientation. The closeness to the T and how it is placed above "imes" ensures that one reads it first, while the lower alignment of the enormous T with "imes" allows "Times" to pop out as a word as well. It's just a perk of the font that the J happens to drop just enough to fit into the M like that. Win!

Creative Collaboration

I've recently partook in a certain collaborative writing class, the aim of which thus far has apparently been to test the stress level of college students at midterm by assigning dozen-page essays on such fascinating topics as "how collaboration is beneficial," and, "what makes collaboration necessary." Luckily for me, I chose the extremely broad topic of "collaboration in film," and, aided by a contemporary book written in 1938 and various documentaries on how Lord of the Rings was made, I breezed through the essay one fistful of hair at a time.

With all this affection for collaboration, I've found myself put somewhat at odds with the accepted perception due to my experience. For instance, a certain student-run ad agency at my university, which normally busies itself in creating various designs for non-paying clients, has been trying to update its logo. As the agency's web designer, I was shown a couple prototype logos to give me ideas for eventual website designs. Apparently the agency hadn't just been spending all semester on finalizing these two logos, but all of last semester as well, and possibly even longer. However, due to frequent meetings held concerning the logos, it is at least a relief to know that everyone was in agreement as to something.

Somewhat embarrassingly for them, I was able to sit down and whip up a (in my humble opinion) superior design from scratch in less than an hour. So much for the absolute power of creative collaboration.

I attempted to portray the concepts of "college student" and "art/design" in the best way I could imagine: by using a graduation cap and a calligraphy brush. Cliché? Perhaps, though I would insist that it is effective. I chose the colors in part because blue and gold are the colors of the college, but additionally because of the implications of the colors used. The calligraphy brush and graduation cap are both oriented to point to the top-right: a "rising" angle that reflects the group's acronym, "up." I intentionally avoided using the full name, "Unlimited Possibilities" in the logo for the sake of brevity and design tightness.

Posterity

What's the point of all this? It's something of a collection of most of the "major" works that I've created since attending the university. Many of these works are old, and I take no shame in wishing to distance myself from them. It's much like those pimply teenage photographs, except these are actually my fault.