I somehow stumbled across an old bookmark for Jon Keegan, a Brooklyn-based illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report among others.
His technique is tremendous, but most of all I love the expressions. Just classic. I love his ability to render complex emotions and group dynamics. He’s also got a number of sketchbooks up for our perusal, spanning from 2002 all the way back to 1998. If you can spare 20 minutes or so, browse through them chronologically starting from the earliest; always interesting to see someone’s style evolve and develop, elaborating on certain themes and dropping others. Since I’m pretty much still working on getting my stick figures down, it’s fascinating to see someone working on variations of expressions with mouths and brows drawn over and over in various permutations.
Linotype, Bitstream and other big companies are a bit like major record labels, with catalogs full of reliable classics like Helvetica and Futura – the type of type sold in packages to software companies. There are also hundreds of smaller players: indies, in music-business terms. Emigre is one of the best known of these (with hit fonts like Mrs Eaves), along with Hoefler & Frere-Jones, House Industries and P22. Such firms may sell licenses for one person to use a single font for $50 or less, or sell packages of fonts for multiple users to design firms, ad agencies and the like. (They also create custom typefaces for specific clients, for much larger fees.) Meanwhile, as Tamye Riggs, executive director of the Society of Typographic Aficionados, points out, the digital revolution has also spawned tools that make it easy for almost anyone to create a new font and sell it for as little as $2 – or even give it away as a form of promotion. Not surprisingly, font piracy is pervasive. ‘’Just like MP3’s,'’ Riggs says.
A gaggle of designers name their ‘desert island fonts,’ as in the fonts you would want if you were stuck on a desert island (and presumably had a computer, and interestingly enough needed to put your text in the appropriate typeface more urgently than you wanted to get of the island…. ok, so the discussion is much better than the metaphor…) Read it here on Andy Budd’s Site Round One, Two, Three…
I am no longer last to be picked for kickball. The powers that be have seen fit to finally approve an upgrade to Photoshop CS2 (still working on the rest of the creative suite). So far the most stunning improvement (and I haven’t heard anyone mention it) is the expanded dual-screen functionality. Previously only one screen was really operational at any given time, though you could keep toolbars and the like on the other screen, freeing up some space. Now you can use all the real estate on both screens. Wicked.
Guest writer Adrian Shaughnessy uses the album to discuss the state of album art in general, the status of which has been gradually eroded with the succession of LPs to tape, to CD to faceless mp3s that obviate the need for album art altogether.
Finally got around to re-doing the Graphic Design section of the site, and added coverage of the Houston Chronicle re-design that turns 1 year old tomorrow and still looks just as fresh. Now maybe they can turn their attention to the Chronicle web page….
for my new copy of Photoshop CS2 to get here. As usual, I had to finagle the upgrade. For some reason Management takes the cynical view of upgrades, assuming that the new features are tricks to get weak minded people to buy something they don’t really need. Too used to dealing with Microsoft, I guess. Ironically, I finagled it as part of the $1500 Adobe Video Collection Professional. Whew, sure glad we saved that 150 bucks for the upgrade. So that also means I now have a bunch of meta-cool goodies like Premier, Aftereffects, Audition & Encore but that’s a separate happy dance.
As usual, the hoi palloi are myopically obsessed with Photoshop’s ability to mess with reality, but for those of us whose work generally takes place outside the intelligence or conspiracy theory communities, this is a minor amusement for after hours.
So what has me salivating? The easy batch processing built into Bridge for one. This is perfect for those perfectiony jobs like contrast tweaks where you don’t want to mess with a batch. Along a similar vein but even more useful is the multiple layer control. I’ve long dreamt of the ability to perform the same task on a bunch of different layers all at the same time. As usual there are a bunch of really neat features that I’ll probably never have a valid use for, but are nice to have nonetheless - vanishing point and image warp. I’m going to have to wait and see what this SmartObject thing is all about - sounds pretty amazing, but I want to see it in action.
My reaction to this was a little bit like finding out your two best friends are engaged to be married. It’s really great and you’re really happy for them, but you’re also a little freaked out about what this will mean for your relationship with each of them individually.
I’m a bit scandalized by the idiocy of some of the reporters covering the story though. Terrance Nielan is a might bit clueless about what these companies’ products actually do. He describes Adobe as a “document-design software company” which is a bit like describing GE as a lightbulb manufacturer. Photoshop gets a mention near the end. He then refers to Macromedia’s products as “the Dreamweaver and Flash web-design software used mainly in digital video production.” Since when is web-design software mainly used in digital video production? Dammit Terrance!
This is definitely the most fun I’ve had with a flash application in a while. While I can’t understand a single word of the website, Hokusai’s drawings alone are enough to keep me thoroughly amused. Hokusai Manga was something of a sketch journal published by the prolific Japanese artist, Hokusai. Clicking around on various links finally deposited me at a sketch page (flash required) where I could arrange scenes using Hokusai’s figures. Try it out for yourself. Link via DesignObserver
Favorite blog Boing Boing left a pleasant reminder of childhood in my RSS aggregator this morning. Behold the glory of the running bat…
Yeah, just so you know, it wasn’t the bats that triggered the memory, but the multi-frame time sequence a la Eadweard Muybridge (I googled it, it’s really spelled that way). I saw them in my mom’s art history textbook. They were the coolest things ever. The Smithsonian has a nice article on Muybridge.
William Drenttel has an article on Design Observer about Chris Marker’s seminal film La Jetée. Mr. Drenttel is lucky enough to own the book version, which apparently was designed by Bruce Mau, unbeknownst to me. I am kicking myself for not snagging the copy I first read in the library at Emerson… thus depriving the next generation of film students the same enjoyment I experience…. so I guess it all worked out for the best.
It remains one of the best cinematic experience to be had. I first saw it at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, I think, and remember sitting in stunned silence the entire T-ride back to the North End. I picked up a DVD version of La Jetee on Short 2 Dreams. Even several years after seeing it for the first time it still retains its tremendous emotional resonance. Oh yeah, and 12 Monkeys was based on it, but if you want the real thing, get the real thing.
So this is a bit of an odd one, but my friend Joy Goodgame recently did an album cover for musician Randall Goodgame (cousin, it’s all in the family) that plays off of Randall’s very strange, though apparently benign obsession with Charles Schultz, and it turned into a great website, but now that I am “attuned” to the undercurrents of Charles Shultz, I’m a little freaked out that I’m starting to see Peanuts stuff EVERYWHERE.
