c. billadeau

Illustration assignment; a slight homage to Sean Gordon Murphy and his freakin’ sweet inks.

Also, the preview image here and the full size image are wildly incoherent in color; the color profiles must be off or something and I am way too lazy to both fixing it right now. The preview is the more accurate intention, somehow!

Man, I am on a roll!

“Mother May I” has received a Top Pick over on Fontstruct. Like Arlen, it is a pixel font, but I have started on a beizel-like version using the funky shapes that the program Fontstruct provides, so that it may be used as a larger display font.

If the long list of comments is any suggestion as to how many revisions this one went through, it’s been an interesting process with this one. Right now, there is a normal lowercase ‘t’ and an alternate ‘t’, plus plans for a couple of other variations on gylphs. The world of type is a fabulous place, my friends. So many options, so little time.

In other news, my final for my typography class, I’m creating a font specimen book for my Arlen face, which will be fun times. I need to document my process more, so maybe there will be some process posts here! Who knows.

From this article I found while researching the idea of paradise in myth and religion:

“In the Middle Ages, it was believed that flies or other insects could penetrate the head of a person and cause mental illness. This is evidenced in Hyeronymus Bosch’s painting 1510 ‘ Paradise and Hell ’ : on the left panel, one can see very well high above in the sky the rebellious angels, who flew from heaven as a crowd of hideous insects.”

Fascinating.

It’s that joyous time of year again, folks.

Here at MCAD, the floor is covered with paintings, prints, and drawings. The powerdrills have been buzzing nonstop. The anticipation is in the air. It’s like Christmas for our students, no lie.

The annual MCAD Art Sale is upon us! This weekend, November 20 and 21, MCAD’s walls are coated and absolutely saturated with artwork by MCAD students and recent MCAD alumni and available for purchase–no piece is over $1000. Much of the work is less than $100. I have about ten prints of my artwork in the sale and none of them are over $35.

If you are in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area this weekend, you should be here. Admission required on Friday, $35 ($40 at door). Saturday, totally free. Buy things, or just come and look at this show of the world’s next top artists and designers.

The part that never ceases to amaze me is the fact that there are so many people who show up on Friday. One of the best things to do is head up to the third or fourth floor to the open walkway that overlooks the main gallery and watch the swarm of people that rush in at the strike of six o’clock. The best thing is–all these people paid nearly forty dollars just to get their feet in the door. That’s more than a ticket for most band or entertainment venues. I could get a whole lot of music for that money.

But then these people continue to pay even more money to get the full experience by purchasing artwork. There’s something kind of amazing about that. Big collectors, museum curators, art directors, all of these types of people walk through the school during these eleven hours of madness and see everything. This is the easiest opportunity for MCAD students to display and get their work into the hands of the people they want work from.

And then I wonder why some of the students don’t take advantage of this. A few people I know tried it last year and were dismayed when nothing was bought, so they didn’t do anything for this year–and I simply can’t fathom why. So what if nothing was bought! Your work was just seen by over ten thousand people. Many of which need painters, designers, comic artists, whatever for their own projects outside of this little incubated nest of seclusion that is MCAD. If it’s that important to sell, make your prints larger. Price to sell. Learn. Get over it.

Seriously, how the hell can MCAD students afford not to put work into this sale?

link to MCAD Art Sale 2009

David Hlynsky made over 8,000 photographs of Soviet-era storefronts; his website catalogues a period between 1986 and 1990 that few foriengers ever saw. From his artist statement:

“In a cityscape without commercial seduction, banality seemed to signify everything. At first I was interested in simple pedestrian traffic. Later I doggedly documented store windows. These seemed to signify the real difference between East and West. Without the garish ad campaigns of the West, these streets felt more neutral… devoid of trumped up and pumped up urgency.”

Knowing only the captialist world that I live in, it’s amazing to see these displays celebrating the mediocre and banal rather than the expensive and unobtainable. It’s been drilled into my head since I was a child that everyone is unique, everyone must be unique. Looking through all these photographs that Hlynsky took, all of a sudden it’s okay to be average.

This research makes me tenative plans for traveling to Russia in the spring of 2011 all the more exciting–how has this marketing landscape changed with the introduction of capitalism in a world that didn’t know it just two decades ago? I wonder if any of these old storefronts still exist in this modern atmosphere.

Communist Era Store Windows (via Douglas Wilson)

The Los Angeles Public Library has an on-line collection of travel posters from the golden ages of travel, in the 1920s and 1930s. These are all so beautiful oh my god I am about ready to break down and cry.

/snff

Please, someone explain to me why we don’t have posters like this anymore. I need to know why and who is responsible for modern crap like this, so I may kick them in the face.

Guys, I want to make stuff like this when I grow up.

Awwright.

Hatch is a design firm based in San Francisco, founded by Joel Templin and Katie Jain. Grain Edit has a nice interview with the two on their process for packaging and brand design for JAQK Cellars, but I’ll just save you the reading and show you the pretty pictures.

They have a great portfolio of work over on their website, but I am particularly enamoured by their work for JAQK. Like, really. As if you didn’t notice.

Mmhmm.

Arlen (yep, now just “Arlen”) is pretty much done, insofar as tweaking the letters go. I’m still adding diacritics and fancy glyphs, but consider this the beta stage. Or something like that?

Here’s Crave, which is also done as done as it will get. (I feel like I’m introducing my children here; “This is Billy, and here’s Billy Bob, and can’t forget Billy Bob Junior…”)

And a couple of previews of stuff I may or may not finish! The Fontstruct part of my typography class ends on Wednesday as we mosey on into our final projects, so anything I do here will be on my own time. Which will not be a lot, starting…now. On the upside, I have lately taken to making fonts during my downtime, rather than puttering around on the internet.

“Mother May I” & “Core Reactor”

I don’t know if the name on the latter will stick; it came to me while perusing the Orange Box soundtrack that I found on my iTunes today. Kinda fits, though. Speaking of which, holy balls, am I excited for winter break. I have a list a mile long of games I want to play, most important of which will be finally trucking through the entire Halflife series. And maybe upgrading to a PS3. Holiday sales are looking promising in that regard.

Five weeks, guys.

Take a look at this beautiful travel poster for Finland, dated somewhere from the 1950s to 1970s:

Fabulous, right? Concise, clear, right to the point. Arises that itchy need to travel again. Plus, a delicious image, hard to beat in even this modern day-and-age, I would think. In fact, let’s fastforward to today and see what designers are now doing with our shiny tools from the future:

… oi.

via Flavorwire,
also see grain edit for more good shit and stick to the denial, folks.

Killing time at the p-unit’s place, trying to get some schoolwork done. Incidentally, I have this illustration assignment to depict college kids moving out of the parent’s place. I was going with the idea of elation, freedom, something that I specifically remember when I first moved out. And I really didn’t want to bog it down with the negatives–a simple, pure, though slightly biased idea.

But well, despite all that planning, that didn’t happen–not to say I’m disatisfied with the results.

… I may still turn it in as is, lolz. I get away with a lot of things in this class; who says I should stop doing that now?