Crazy, right?!
(The image above was our (awesome) wedding gift from Rachel Friere of Dental Hygiene & Secret Identities fame. )
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
I'm married!!
Crazy, right?!
(The image above was our (awesome) wedding gift from Rachel Friere of Dental Hygiene & Secret Identities fame. )
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Playwright
UPDATED: Now with actual content!
As I mentioned before, I wanted to be sure to remind those who might be interested that Eddie Campbell & Daren White's new book, The Playwright is hitting U.S. stores today. (I think it may already be out in the U.K.? Maybe?) If the snazzy cover I designed isn't enough to sell you on this thing (which is the idea, after all), then take a peak inside and see for yourself that this is the most visually stunning book Eddie has yet made... (UPDATE: I discovered today that it's being sold shrink-wrapped, so you CAN'T actually take a look inside... so I guess you have to buy it to see how gorgeous it is.) Something as simple as switching from a 9-panel grid to oblong 3-panel pages really lets you focus in on each panel as an individual composition, and each page as a composite whole. And the color palate is vibrant and gorgeous throughout: as Eddie himself put it: "I have had enough of the purply brown. For me the rainbow!" And I don't mean to give short shrift to Daren's story, either, which is funny and a little sad and mildly terrifying to those inclined to the artistic life but ultimately kind of sweet. Anyway, if you're anywhere near a comic shop today, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this sexy little hardcover. (Proper bookstores are a little less fetishistic about "release dates" than comic shops (Harry Potter notwithstanding), but certainly they ought to have them out soon enough as well. Or there's always Amazon.)
Enough of that: here's the design process stuff, as promised:
My first idea for this would have involved some new art from Eddie, so you'll have to kind of imagine it, as it never really came to be. There's a repeated scene of the book's protagonist sitting on a bus, fantasizing about the women around him. Here's that scene in the book:
I liked the idea of expanding that into a full bleed cover, replacing all the other characters with attractive women to fantasize about. Here's my 30-second sketch of the concept:
That would have been the dust jacket, and underneath that on the cover itself would be the same image, except in the second version, we get a glimpse inside the playwright's head and show all of the women nude, and he himself red-faced with shame. A little silly, admittedly, but I thought it was funny, and kind of fit the cheeky story.
The second idea was less high-concept, I just liked this particular drawing of the playwright, so I took some type from some old playbills. Not unattractive, but a bit too close to what had just been done on Eddie's previous book, The Black Diamond Detective Agency.
Then the final option in the first round of comps was based on that idea, but with some pretty girls added in to give a hint of the root of our protagonist's frustrations. I also liked the way the ball dots the "i" in "playwright."
The later ideas got the most traction, so Eddie drew some new girls (in bikinis this time so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the book-buying public), and I tried a few new variations.
The conversation the shifted back to an earlier idea Eddie & Daren had (before I got involved), about a close-up of the playwright's typewriter with little fantasy nudes crawling all over it--an idea that had been rejected for potentially looking too much like a '60s-era Batman splash page. But there was something to the idea of incorporating the typewriter, so I tried a couple versions along those lines, with a bunch of different typewriters, ranging from a more iconic typewriter to something a little closer to the typewriter that's actually in the book...
We got really down into the nitty gritty of tweaking that concept, and it was just about approved, Except... Eddie and I both had some last minute qualms, primarily that the design ultimately wound up a little too quiet and might get lost in the shuffle at the retail level. We felt that a book so colorful and bright deserved a more colorful cover, and I decided it was time to go back to the well... there's only so far you can tweak a concept before it crumbles under the weight of the design committee, and I think this concept had just about reached that point.
So, stepping back from it, I realized that we had actually lost quite a bit by adding the bikinis to the girls... girls in bikinis playing with beach balls is just a beach scene; NAKED girls playing with balls is illicit and slightly surreal, obviously a fantasy. And a curiously innocent fantasy at that (at least until you process the visual pun there), which I think says something significant about our somewhat naive protagonist.
Also, the typewriter was a bit on-the-nose... the title of the book already does the work that the typewriter did, conceptually: it's the concept between the high-minded/creative/artistic ideal ("the playwright") and the purient/sexual/human (the naked girls) that gives the idea its power. The typewriter was only confusing the issue.
So I lost the typewriter and replaced the bikinis with a "censorship" bar to emphasize the illicit nature of the nudity, and that was the answer. I did a "safer" white version (closer to what we'd been looking at)...
...but the clear winner was the version in bright yellow and pink, (with a snazzy spot varnish on the non-yellow areas), which certainly solved the problem of it being too quiet! Everyone was happy here, and we were off to the races!
And, having seen the final printed book today, I have to say it came out really well! (I'm especially happy with the transition from the yellow/pink cover to the turquoise endpapers inside!) All in all, I'm very happy with how this came out, and thrilled to be involved with this fantastic book. Thanks again to Brett, Chris, Eddie, and Daren for letting me be a (small) part of it.
As I mentioned before, I wanted to be sure to remind those who might be interested that Eddie Campbell & Daren White's new book, The Playwright is hitting U.S. stores today. (I think it may already be out in the U.K.? Maybe?) If the snazzy cover I designed isn't enough to sell you on this thing (which is the idea, after all), then take a peak inside and see for yourself that this is the most visually stunning book Eddie has yet made... (UPDATE: I discovered today that it's being sold shrink-wrapped, so you CAN'T actually take a look inside... so I guess you have to buy it to see how gorgeous it is.) Something as simple as switching from a 9-panel grid to oblong 3-panel pages really lets you focus in on each panel as an individual composition, and each page as a composite whole. And the color palate is vibrant and gorgeous throughout: as Eddie himself put it: "I have had enough of the purply brown. For me the rainbow!" And I don't mean to give short shrift to Daren's story, either, which is funny and a little sad and mildly terrifying to those inclined to the artistic life but ultimately kind of sweet. Anyway, if you're anywhere near a comic shop today, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this sexy little hardcover. (Proper bookstores are a little less fetishistic about "release dates" than comic shops (Harry Potter notwithstanding), but certainly they ought to have them out soon enough as well. Or there's always Amazon.)
Enough of that: here's the design process stuff, as promised:
My first idea for this would have involved some new art from Eddie, so you'll have to kind of imagine it, as it never really came to be. There's a repeated scene of the book's protagonist sitting on a bus, fantasizing about the women around him. Here's that scene in the book:
I liked the idea of expanding that into a full bleed cover, replacing all the other characters with attractive women to fantasize about. Here's my 30-second sketch of the concept:
That would have been the dust jacket, and underneath that on the cover itself would be the same image, except in the second version, we get a glimpse inside the playwright's head and show all of the women nude, and he himself red-faced with shame. A little silly, admittedly, but I thought it was funny, and kind of fit the cheeky story.
The second idea was less high-concept, I just liked this particular drawing of the playwright, so I took some type from some old playbills. Not unattractive, but a bit too close to what had just been done on Eddie's previous book, The Black Diamond Detective Agency.
Then the final option in the first round of comps was based on that idea, but with some pretty girls added in to give a hint of the root of our protagonist's frustrations. I also liked the way the ball dots the "i" in "playwright."
The later ideas got the most traction, so Eddie drew some new girls (in bikinis this time so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the book-buying public), and I tried a few new variations.
The conversation the shifted back to an earlier idea Eddie & Daren had (before I got involved), about a close-up of the playwright's typewriter with little fantasy nudes crawling all over it--an idea that had been rejected for potentially looking too much like a '60s-era Batman splash page. But there was something to the idea of incorporating the typewriter, so I tried a couple versions along those lines, with a bunch of different typewriters, ranging from a more iconic typewriter to something a little closer to the typewriter that's actually in the book...
We got really down into the nitty gritty of tweaking that concept, and it was just about approved, Except... Eddie and I both had some last minute qualms, primarily that the design ultimately wound up a little too quiet and might get lost in the shuffle at the retail level. We felt that a book so colorful and bright deserved a more colorful cover, and I decided it was time to go back to the well... there's only so far you can tweak a concept before it crumbles under the weight of the design committee, and I think this concept had just about reached that point.
So, stepping back from it, I realized that we had actually lost quite a bit by adding the bikinis to the girls... girls in bikinis playing with beach balls is just a beach scene; NAKED girls playing with balls is illicit and slightly surreal, obviously a fantasy. And a curiously innocent fantasy at that (at least until you process the visual pun there), which I think says something significant about our somewhat naive protagonist.
Also, the typewriter was a bit on-the-nose... the title of the book already does the work that the typewriter did, conceptually: it's the concept between the high-minded/creative/artistic ideal ("the playwright") and the purient/sexual/human (the naked girls) that gives the idea its power. The typewriter was only confusing the issue.
So I lost the typewriter and replaced the bikinis with a "censorship" bar to emphasize the illicit nature of the nudity, and that was the answer. I did a "safer" white version (closer to what we'd been looking at)...
...but the clear winner was the version in bright yellow and pink, (with a snazzy spot varnish on the non-yellow areas), which certainly solved the problem of it being too quiet! Everyone was happy here, and we were off to the races!
And, having seen the final printed book today, I have to say it came out really well! (I'm especially happy with the transition from the yellow/pink cover to the turquoise endpapers inside!) All in all, I'm very happy with how this came out, and thrilled to be involved with this fantastic book. Thanks again to Brett, Chris, Eddie, and Daren for letting me be a (small) part of it.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Sam's Myth
We just put up a link to his Everlasting Moments post over at the Criterion Current, which reminded me that I've been meaning to link to newly-minted Criterion designer (and helluva nice guy) Sam Smith's excellent blog for a while now. (In my defense, I've hardly posted anything at all, so it's not like I was specifically neglecting Sam.) If you've been frustrated by the lack of updates over here, Sam's blog should help fill that design-process-blog-shaped hole in your life...
Friday, June 11, 2010
Chaplin!
Hey, how about a sneak peek of the poster for the new Janus Films Charlie Chaplin series that will be touring soon:
It's drawn by the great cartoonist Kate Beaton, she of the great webcomic "Hark! A Vagrant"--also available in book form as Never Learn Anything From History. She did an amazing job capturing the classic icon of the Little Tramp but treating it in a new way. We wanted to remind people that these aren't just stuffy classics to be studied, they're honest-to-god funny films to be ENJOYED. (Something that even some of us at the office had forgotten until we started watching them again recently.) And I think Kate captured that spirit perfectly.
The type is inspired by (read: "stolen from") an old poster for Modern Times, one of the films in the series, redrawn in Adobe Illustrator. In the actual posters that grey is a shiny pantone silver, which gives it a little more life. Overall I'm thrilled with how this came together.
The series starts June 17th in L.A., then July 16th at Film Forum in NYC, and on from there.
As of this posting, we don't quite have the Chaplin site live yet, but given the frequency of posts around here these days I should probably link to it anyway, since it'll almost certainly be up before I get around to another post here...
It's drawn by the great cartoonist Kate Beaton, she of the great webcomic "Hark! A Vagrant"--also available in book form as Never Learn Anything From History. She did an amazing job capturing the classic icon of the Little Tramp but treating it in a new way. We wanted to remind people that these aren't just stuffy classics to be studied, they're honest-to-god funny films to be ENJOYED. (Something that even some of us at the office had forgotten until we started watching them again recently.) And I think Kate captured that spirit perfectly.
The type is inspired by (read: "stolen from") an old poster for Modern Times, one of the films in the series, redrawn in Adobe Illustrator. In the actual posters that grey is a shiny pantone silver, which gives it a little more life. Overall I'm thrilled with how this came together.
The series starts June 17th in L.A., then July 16th at Film Forum in NYC, and on from there.
As of this posting, we don't quite have the Chaplin site live yet, but given the frequency of posts around here these days I should probably link to it anyway, since it'll almost certainly be up before I get around to another post here...
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Stagecoach
We now resume your regularly scheduled blog postings, already in progress...
As previously mentioned, this movie is pure bottled fun. (Not that you should take my word for it.) But like a lot of old Westerns, it never got the design it deserved. Especially when they get to DVD, so many classic Westerns just get the "big John Wayne in a cowboy hat headshot" treatment, to the point where I don't know how you'd tell Stagecoach from The Searchers. So I really wanted to try to find a new angle on film westerns, something other than the aged sepia-toned thing that you see so often. I liked the "western noir" approach I worked out for The Furies, but that wasn't appropriate for a film this light... and besides, I'd already done that!
Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot to work with, in terms of photography. In fact, I didn't even have much in the way of big John Wayne headshots! (Mainly because John Wayne wasn't even the marquee name for this film at the time of its release--Claire Trevor got top billing.) I tried a few photo based treatments that were pretty bad--most of them bad enough that I never even hit "save" on the files, so I can't show them here. The least egregious of the bunch is below. The execution is still pretty rough, the tattered black border in particular, but I did like this photo of the whole cast in and around the stagecoach--it is really an ensemble picture, so that did seem to capture something of the film.
Then there was this version, which uses the original title treatment from the film. notice how quickly I fell back into bad sepia-toning! The rest of it, meh... but the title treatment, at least, was a good idea.
At this point I got stuck, and started flailing around for inspiration. What else says "western"? I thought about Hatch Show Print, the great Nashville printers, and thought that might be an interesting avenue to pursue. So, looking at stuff like this:
...I came up with this:
Better, but too Warhol for no reason. (Plus, the saddle doesn't look nearly as good repeated as the guitar.) I wasn't looking to enshrine the film as a kitsch artifact, I wanted to emphasize the upbeat fun in a way that was appropriate to the period but also felt modern and cool. Then I remembered some great prints that Josh Cochran (who you may remember from Wise Blood) showed me, which evoked old tin toy packaging, screen printing, and just plain looked great. And how about those colors!
So that sparked some ideas, about how to use negative space and color. I had one still of the most exciting moment in the film, a great stunt scene from the climax where John Wayne's character (but really the great stuntman Yakima Canutt--check out the doc on him on the disc!) jumps from horse to horse to regain control of the reigns. Awesome stuff, and totally gets at the popcorn fun of this movie. I added some layers of color and texture inspired by Josh's drawings, and came up with this, which I was immediately happy with:
I did a version with a big John Wayne head floating in the sky, just in case anyone was worried about not including him on the cover:
...but it just immediately brought it back to discount twelve-John-Wayne-movies-for-ten-dollars territory. Better to let the concept stand... and luckily everyone agreed! It took a few lousy covers to get there, but at the end of the day, this is one of my favorite covers in a long while. I hope you all like it, too!
As previously mentioned, this movie is pure bottled fun. (Not that you should take my word for it.) But like a lot of old Westerns, it never got the design it deserved. Especially when they get to DVD, so many classic Westerns just get the "big John Wayne in a cowboy hat headshot" treatment, to the point where I don't know how you'd tell Stagecoach from The Searchers. So I really wanted to try to find a new angle on film westerns, something other than the aged sepia-toned thing that you see so often. I liked the "western noir" approach I worked out for The Furies, but that wasn't appropriate for a film this light... and besides, I'd already done that!
Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot to work with, in terms of photography. In fact, I didn't even have much in the way of big John Wayne headshots! (Mainly because John Wayne wasn't even the marquee name for this film at the time of its release--Claire Trevor got top billing.) I tried a few photo based treatments that were pretty bad--most of them bad enough that I never even hit "save" on the files, so I can't show them here. The least egregious of the bunch is below. The execution is still pretty rough, the tattered black border in particular, but I did like this photo of the whole cast in and around the stagecoach--it is really an ensemble picture, so that did seem to capture something of the film.
Then there was this version, which uses the original title treatment from the film. notice how quickly I fell back into bad sepia-toning! The rest of it, meh... but the title treatment, at least, was a good idea.
At this point I got stuck, and started flailing around for inspiration. What else says "western"? I thought about Hatch Show Print, the great Nashville printers, and thought that might be an interesting avenue to pursue. So, looking at stuff like this:
...I came up with this:
Better, but too Warhol for no reason. (Plus, the saddle doesn't look nearly as good repeated as the guitar.) I wasn't looking to enshrine the film as a kitsch artifact, I wanted to emphasize the upbeat fun in a way that was appropriate to the period but also felt modern and cool. Then I remembered some great prints that Josh Cochran (who you may remember from Wise Blood) showed me, which evoked old tin toy packaging, screen printing, and just plain looked great. And how about those colors!
So that sparked some ideas, about how to use negative space and color. I had one still of the most exciting moment in the film, a great stunt scene from the climax where John Wayne's character (but really the great stuntman Yakima Canutt--check out the doc on him on the disc!) jumps from horse to horse to regain control of the reigns. Awesome stuff, and totally gets at the popcorn fun of this movie. I added some layers of color and texture inspired by Josh's drawings, and came up with this, which I was immediately happy with:
I did a version with a big John Wayne head floating in the sky, just in case anyone was worried about not including him on the cover:
...but it just immediately brought it back to discount twelve-John-Wayne-movies-for-ten-dollars territory. Better to let the concept stand... and luckily everyone agreed! It took a few lousy covers to get there, but at the end of the day, this is one of my favorite covers in a long while. I hope you all like it, too!
Updates!
So... if you know me well enough to care, you've probably heard the news already, but it's worth mentioning as an excuse for the extremely light posting schedule around here lately: I went and got myself engaged! That's right: the lovely and talented Mariel P. Isaacson and I will be tying the proverbial knot this August. And just to keep things vaguely design-related, here's a look at Mariel's ring, custom-designed (with some input from me, of course) by Brooklyn-based artist Camile Hempel:
So... yay! Exciting times!
Anyway... regularly "scheduled" design post coming in 3... 2... 1...
So... yay! Exciting times!
Anyway... regularly "scheduled" design post coming in 3... 2... 1...
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