Creative Workshop Exercize 8: Spray Paint Wars

The Challenge: Come up with a name for a new clothing company whose work is inspired by street art, and design a logo in a graffiti style. Next create a storyboard for a video where your logo will be painted to be shown on a TV in the store. Time: 2 hours.

The company name: I came up with the company name "Hang Tag" which refers to the tags that are attached to retail clothing, and also refers to graffiti slang (at least from when I was "cool" - maybe they're calling it something besides "tagging" now).

Here's my storyboard:

With about 45 minutes to spare.  I hope not to have as big a hiatus between posts going forward.

Challenge 07: Gridlocked

This challenge has to do with layout. I had 60 minutes to design an interior spread for an 11x17 (tabloid) brochure (folded to 8 1/2 x 11) for a juvenile diabetes treatment plan. Prior to the starting the clock, I was to come up with a name and logo for this thing.

The number of grids on the spread are determined by a random dice roll.

There are 6 required elements: 1 3" x 4" picture, 500 words of text (4-6 paragraphs), 100 words of "legal" (tiny type), 1 inset/pull quote (20 words) 1 8-word headline, and the logo, shown at least 1.25" wide.

Of course, I rolled a 1 on the die.

1-column layut

 After this version is done, create a new version where the logo is at least 2" larger than it was before.

1 column layout with larger logo

 Then, re-roll the dice and add that many columns to the layout and re-design. I rolled a 4.

5-column layout. This one is my favorite.

I went over time on this challenge, I blame my lack of expertise with InDesign. I am not completely in love with any of these layouts (or the name I came up for the treatment plan, but I am so ready to get past this assignment and move along to the next one).  I used some stock photos from an old library I have from some even older software that's been sitting on my hard drive. I would have done more with color and "artistic elements" if I had more time. Every time I look at these, I see things I want to tweak and change. But this is what you get for 1 hour and 24 minutes worth of work.

Challenge 6: Blu

That hiatus was rather longer than I had planned - work and other projects got in the way. It had nothing to do with being blocked for ideas at all. Seriously. I mean, how hard could it be to come up with a concept for a magazine named "Blu" and then design the cover of the first issue? In an hour.

My Blu magazine is a fiction magazine, with some art and possibly some irony thrown in.

Challenge 5: I'm Drawing a Blank

In this challenge, I had 60 minutes to design a 9x12 folder for a paint company as part of a rebranding effort. The folder must have 90% white space showing in the overall design.  What I have trouble with is calculating that 10% ink would look like. But I came up with this, produced in Adobe Illustrator:

If this were a real client and a real job, I'm sure it would go through several iterations before final approval. I find this particular challenge slightly amusing, since I just spent the last month working on a major rebranding effort at work, which included a 9x12 die cut folder.

This particular design uses a slightly modified paint brush icon from The Noun Project. I didn't spend time working up a company name or logo, using the paint brush as the de-facto company logo.  At some point, my portfolio will get redone and I'll post the "real" folder that was sent to the printers' last week.

Sorry for the gap in posting. Lots of overtime at work, to get the rebranded collateral finished for an upcoming trade show, plus college financial aid application deadlines (prompting the completion of 2011 taxes) kept me from doing anything for myself for a couple of weeks.

Challenge 4: One Line Logo

This challenge is to create a logo for the London 2012 Olympics with only one line - in other words, do not lift your pen or pencil off the paper. The timer is set for 30 minutes. I finished with 10 minutes left to spare.

This actually dovetailed nicely with a drawing exercise we did in life drawing class 2 weeks ago.(which was to draw the mannikin without lifting the pencil).  This time, the examples in the book stifled me a bit, because I didn't want to "copy" them, but I wound up riffing off the same theme anyway.  I think I might have come up with something better if I knew the iconic buildings in London more than I do. I think a mock skyline drawing that also hinted at letterforms would work for me here. In any case, here are my results, in chronological order.

on this page, I practiced making  the number 2 as part of a continuous line, but I started to focus on a particular idea.

The final version is a bit more literal than I would have liked, but it's a couple of years since the book has been published, the official London 2012 logo is out, and NBC has rejected that one for something else entirely in their TV ads that are starting to plaster the airwaves.

Challenge 3: Time Machine

This 90-minute challenge requires that you find a print ad from before 1980 and redesign it into a contemporary ad for a full-page color spread in one of these magazines: Wired, Better Homes & Gardens, O: the Oprah Magazine, Dwell, GQ, Vanity,or  US Weekly. In other words, none of the magazines I ever read.

I also recently (as in the last 2 years) purged the house of every magazine older than 1 year old. I did manage to dig up a National Lampoon from the mid-70's, but all the ads were for cigarettes, cars, booze, condoms, or stereo equipment. A big fat MEH.

So I did a little poking around online and found this lovely, whimsical ad from 1888:

 

Which I proceeded to "modernize" and by modernize, I mean crush its soul, and remove any hint of subtlety.  think I've made a statement on the state of how we market things to people 130 years into the future.

Challenge 2:Easy As ABC

Today's challenge was to design typography using only found object or environments around you. Time limit 120 minutes. I will meet the time limit including posting this blog entry. I read the instructions before I went to bed last night (and woke up with ideas for tweaking the logo design from yesterday's challenge). So when I was brushing my teeth this morning, I realized that the faucet with the water running plus the valve handle at just the right angle formed a letter A, and I decided to find the objects in my bedroom (which includes the Master Bathroom).

For those that are curious:
A: Bathroom faucet
B: 2 Dixie Cups
C: Philodendron
D: Toilet Paper holder
E: Rocking Chair
F: Jewlery box with 2 drawers removed
G: Headphones (needed the book between them to hold the earpieces apart)
H: Bed frame
I: Bed Frame (different angle)
J: Tub faucet (upside down)
K: Plumbing access panel with knob, and cord used to hang a quilt on the wall
L: Edge of the stairway partial wall
M: 3-prong plug
N: Books (I realized at this point that I could do an entire alphabet with just books, but... time limits)
O: Make-up Mirror
P: Handlebar for my treadmill
Q: Crystal bowl with handle
R: Bathroom sink cold water valve handle
S: Pair of boots and a slipper
T: Bed frame
U: Books
V: More Books
W: Even More Books
X: keyboard bench
Y: 2-prong plug
Z: Yoga mats and yoga blocks
Punctuation: a pair of dirty socks left on the floor

Photos taken with my iPhone 4, and cropped and collaged in Photoshop.

And... Time.

I will probably be doing these exercises on the weekends and not every day. I don't think I have the time in my schedule to do these every single day for the next 80 days. But doing 2 a week will take most of the year as it is.

Challenge 1: Hello, My Name Is

All the challenges in the Creative Workshop are time-constrained. This is because, as author David Sherwin aptly points out, all your paid design work will be under a tight deadline. As I come off of 2 weeks of "we need a cut sheet for this product in 2 hours" at work, I can completely testify to the accuracy of this statement. I know this applies to all sorts of work, every writing assignment, every programming job, every huge engineering project I've been a part of - we never seem to have quite enough time to do it the way we would have liked. There is always pressure to get it done faster. So I really appreciate where the author is coming from, and I appreciate having to practice being creative "on demand" without my job being in the balance, so when my job is on the line, I don't have to actually panic to perform when the office is in panic mode.

Creative Workshop

I purchased the book Creative Workshop, 80 Challenges to sharpen your design skills by David Sherwin, and it showed up at my door this morning. I'm already in love with it.

I will be showing off the results of my work as I progress through this book. I also invite any of my readers who are designers (or aspiring designers) to work along with me, because it's more fun to do things as a group than by yourself. I also find that having people to be accountable to helps keep me focused and on track.

My next post will be to show off the results of lesson 1... Stay tuned.