ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHICS

FROM THIS....TO THIS!

i needed to help kir out with some graphics for a big event she has coming up. the idea is to have some postcards that can be folded into A-cards to put next to her amazing desserts! she gave me a photo of her logo that she had a local artist paint and i tweaked it and sent it off to the printer! even better it's multi use if she cuts them down the middle she has labels for her boxed goodies and business cards with her info.

the photo she gave me:

the post card design:

FLYER I MADE - REMINISCENT OF OLD SHOWBILLS

PHOTOSHOP GEEKERY... AGAIN!

RECENT PHOTOSHOP TINKERINGS

ART?

for a while now i've been wanting to start drawing/producing artwork. i've been busy and usually have a million excuses of why i can't get to it. however, last night i quit making excuses and put pen to paper. here's what came out. i can't expect to produce amazing pieces if i never practice but i think this is a decent starting off point. please let me know if you like it.

ARMS AT AKIMBO - FINAL RECORDINGS

At long last I have finally mixed 5 of the songs from an old band I was in called Arms at Akimbo. I posted a few songs a while ago but these are remixed and mastered with samples added. I guess you could say these are the most formal of recordings that we ever produced.
Here are links to where you can download the MP3s if you should be so inclined:

01 Open
02 Bahia de
03 JT
04 Andromeda is a Spiral Galaxy
05 Rising Sun

Also... I took the liberty of uploading them into an online playlist. If you have internet access you (or anyone) can listen to the entire "album" streaming in a browser window at the following link:

Arms at Akimbo - bandcamp

I hope you enjoy. I'd love to hear people's comments. It was a fun band to be a part of.

COMPOSITION 1

title: erik dragging a knee
media: marker on white cardboard w/ corrugation exposed
dimensions: 18" x 8"

COMPOSITION 2

title: walter charles wickham
media: printed ink on paper
dimensions: 10" x 8"

COMPOSITION 3

title: neuschwanstein castle
media: printed ink mounted on foamcore
dimensions: 16" x 10"

COMPOSITION 4

title: pink floyd
media: latex paint on carved polystyrene
dimensions: 68" x 42"

AMAZING INFOGRAPHIC

so i found this through word of mouth. it's probably one of the coolest interactive graphs ever created and what makes it even cooler is that it represents data on movies! check it out. be sure to click on the different movies to see more detail.

ACHICK INSANE

i helped my friend emulate a classic album cover. the idea was that it had to be a portrait of her. i suggested we do david bowie's aladdin sane. this is what we came up with after i photoshopped the paint on her face, changed her hair color, adjusted levels, and cut out the background (i lost patience when it came to the hair).

COMPOSITION INSPIRED BY VIDEO

i took a video of a freight train in southern idaho and really liked the color that was on it. so, through a long process of capturing stills of each and every train car i converted it to a striped background (if you look closely you'll see that each stripe in the background of the image corresponds directly to one of the 67 train cars in the video. they're also in order.)

STYLIZING PHOTOS

i spent this past weekend in rexburg, idaho working on some rental properties that my parents own. it was good to do some physical labor and to see my parents and sister. i stopped along side the road on the drive back to logan and decided to take a few photos. i was inspired by the combination of colors i saw on the countryside.

i had this antique fan in the back of my car so i pulled it out and decided to take a self portrait with my digital camera. after a few attempts at setting the camera timer and then running into position i snapped this one which i liked the most.



i needed to crop it so i opened it up in photoshop. i was just playing around but one or two tweaks turned into many and i came up with a few different versions of the photo.

let me know which one you like best.


the effects on this one are subtle but i used gaussian blur to try to give the photo more of a in-focus/out-of-focus look. i am not sure but i think this might be called short depth of field. (maybe christy can comment on this). i also bumped up the saturation of the yellow weeds a little.


i tried to give this one a black and white film like quality. i used the same blur effects for depth of field but i also blew out the levels so that it would have high contrast. obviously i got rid of all the saturation as well. then i added noise to different areas of the photo to emulate film grain.


this last variation is kind of inspired by christy's photos taken with her holga camera. i subdued the saturation and added reds to the midtones to give it more summery/poloroid type of tones. then i created a few vertical blocks of varying saturation on top of that to give it that cool misaligned frame effect that you get with holgas.

ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES

this last weekend jake and i flew out to new york and met up with motoki to attend all tomorrow's parties. it was a weekend filled with lots of loud music. we attended about 15 full sets and about six other partial sets. it was really great to see all of the bands (lots of them aren't likely to tour through utah anytime soon) and even better to talk geek stuff with the boys.














i took photos, drank beer, ate way too many chicken tenders due to lack of available food variety, attended impromptu dance parties, and marveled at sweet vintage gear. it may sound like a perfect vacation but i was actually completely exhausted by the time i got back to logan at 3am on tuesday.

built to spill - playing "perfect from now on"
this was nothing short of amazing. i have been a little let down the past few times that i've seen them play but this was a real treat. they had john on cello with them and it really filled in their live sound to approximate the spacey/epic sounds of the album. they played the tracklist in order and then went directly into "going against your mind". then they did an encore of a few songs and finished with a knob twisting freak out at the end of "car". it was very good and i was glad not to be let down.



tortoise - playing "millions now living will never die"
all in all i think that this set got my personal stamp of most well composed and intricate music. they sounded great and it was great to finally see them live. they did a lot of switching instruments and whatnot.

meat puppets - playing "meat puppets II"
this was the first time i've seen them live. they played pretty well but i kept noticing the singer giving his brother on bass sneers for making mistakes. i hate when i see this happen in a live show and it kind of makes me assume that there are some serious egos on stage. either way, they rocked hard and the possibly inebriated bobble headed bass player was fun to watch for sure. near the end he threw his bass in the air and even though that trick may be regarded as a little cliche in some circles i still found it cool.

bardo pond - playing "lapsed"
i wasn't familiar with this band nor the album they were reproducing in a live setting but i found them to be rather entertaining. i didn't care much for the flute playing. however, the guitars had some serious tone. in fact one of the guitarist had a moogerfooger murf which influenced my decision to pay way too much for one when we returned to manhattan after the festival. give it up for analog geek gear and impulse buys!

silver mount zion
this was one of the main bands i came to see and they were nothing short of amazing. we camped out by the door and ended up getting to watch from the front row. i can't even believe the raw talent that they exhibit. haunting and droning with an abrasive message. very good performance. i was hating the fact that my bladder was about to explode halfway through their set.




low
low was amazing! i had never really fallen in love with the albums i've listened to of theirs but to see them live was so good! they are quiet, minimalist and stripped down which is really nice because i could listen to his guitar tone for days on end. it is amazing. they got my favorite band of the weekend vote. did i mention that they're midwest married mormons. in other words, they're not your typical rock stars.




harmonia
these were old dudes that were pioneers in electronic music decades ago. i watched from close to the stage at first but after hearing their ambient electro-synth harmonies i ended up going to the back of the room, laying down on the floor and letting them lull me into a dreamy state. good but not my favorite. it was nice to have that variety though.

growing
this is two dudes that make weird sounds. it's mostly archaic noise with little to no melodies to be found. a lot of people were raving about them. i liked watching them work their equipment but i couldn't help but think that what they were producing live was mostly happenstance of which they only had a vague amount of control over. it's funny that i probably under-appreciated this band while the music i make on my own is so very similar. does that make me a hypocrite? possibly.

fuck buttons
not dissimilar to growingw, this band is two dudes with a table and laptops and a few other things. i have said this before and i'll say it again. i can't get on-board for bands that i can't see producing the music. i need to be able to follow the process from eyes to ears in order to appreciate a live performance. i can't really do that with fuck buttons. it amounts for me to being slightly more entertaining than watching someone play solitaire on their computer. still fun...kinda.

mercury rev
their music had a big overly-produced sound which i actually really liked but the lead singer was so over dramatic that i give the entire set (which otherwise would have been quite impressive) a so-so at best feel. you'd think this guy was performing the most secret of cult-like rituals from the way he was waving his arms and prancing around the stage. it was obviously synthetic. he'd hold out his arms and a roadie would come from off stage to put his guitar on him. it was pretty lame. and that's coming from someone who really enjoys their albums.

yo la tengo
i saw them once before and ended up being only slightly impressed. they didn't seem stoked to be playing in utah and i sensed that. however, this time was like a re-awakening. they rocked so hard and were so good. their last song was a looping noise fest that turned into spazzed out guitar playing. if he didn't actually have a epileptic seizure on stage he sure faked it well. i was feeling it big time. this band knows how to work the feedback of their amplifiers. i can't appreciate that fact enough.

mogwai
another of the main bands i came to see. they took forever to set up. i was on the front row for this one. they came out and played 9 amazing songs (four from their new album to be released 2 days later). the songs were so very similar to the albums and so powerful. they joked a bit which was the only tip off to the fact that they are actually human. i was blown away by everything about their set. very very good.



dinosaur jr.
i'd heard a lot about this band but had only listened a few times to their albums. i'd guess they're a throwback to the pre or post grunge era. j mascis was old and kinda creepy looking. he showed off a lot of his amazing guitar work. i've never seen a bass player play so fast and strum so much like a guitar. they played well but it felt like between every song they'd lose focus and all have to play little boredom induced riffs. it was this fact that really kind of made me wonder how they had become legends when they're still like 4th graders with ADD. it seemed more like practice and less like a performance. good but not great.

my bloody valentine
this was the headlining act of the weekend. they were reuniting for this after about a decade and a half apart. known for being ridiculously loud live, they didn't disappoint in this aspect. defined as one of the seminal bands of the shoegaze genre, i was a bit disappointed that the cool synth sounds of their songs weren't produced live. they were playing along with a backing track of said sonic samplings. they had about 14 or 15 marshall half stacks on stage (and only 2 guitarists; do the math). kevin shields probably went through about 20 different guitars during the entire set (almost one for every song; no joking). they were mostly all fender jazzmasters or jaguars in a spackling of assorted colors. i got tired and left about halfway through the set to wander around. when i met back up with jake and motoki they said that it was without a doubt the loudest thing they had ever witnessed. there was one song where they stood like statues on stage for 17 minutes straight and let their guitars feedback. the idea seems kind of cool but i think i'd get the point after about 2 minutes and the remaining 15 would just be mundane fluff. they made sure that everyone had a chance to get free ear plugs before they played. i'm glad i got mine.

GOOD NEWS

i checked the mail when i got home today and noticed an envelope from general electric. i opened it up and read the enclosed letter to find out that i won 1st place for my kitchen design. this contest was the only one i've done that wasn't required for one of my classes so it was pretty tough to make myself stay up 3 nights in a row to finish it. i guess the $5000* in prize money makes it all worth it though.

* with tax day tomorrow i can't help but wonder how deep uncle sam will dip into the winnings°°.

°° of which he rightfully deserves†††.

††† in other words, my kitchen design killed soldiers for Dick Cheney(among other things)

SCHOOL BLOG

so this has been a pretty killer semester and now that it's over i guess i should document some of it.

the first project i worked on was for an IDEC competition. it was a group project and the emphasis was to make a small housing unit that is extremely affordable. this is basically low-income housing but we also needed to incorporate the principals of sustainablity. the boards that we ended up creating were completely hand drawn. i spent hours writing out the text and another person in the group did the renderings. the corrugated part on the bottom is where we actually cut the top layer of the cardboard out so you see the inside of it. i think it turned out well and hopefully we get recognized when the time comes to be judged.

the next project i worked on was for another competition called Tasmeem Doha. a partner and i had the task of coming up with a design concept to better the world. it needed to have something to do with shelter. we decided to take the vague nature of the design breif and keep it really simple. basically we want to create a blueprint for a container that can be used for a whole bunch of other things. we called it xix and we submitted a video i made using 3DS max. hopefully you'll get a good idea of what we had in mind by watching it (please do because i probably spent like 50-70 hours on it). we also made a custom CD case with some images and a simple built-in scale model of our container that could be assembled when you open the booklet. p.s. the music on the video is arms at akimbo, the band that we had last year. (i think we're re-forming after the holiday too.)

the project that followed was one i did on my own. it was to design a piece of furniture that had multiple functions. it was to be presented to KARIM RASHID and so i designed it in a similar style to his work. we were required to build a model of our design and so i used a rapid proto-typing printer. it's a basically a 3D printer that makes objects out of a starch. it's pretty cool but expensive. my model cost me about 100 bucks and wouldn't you know it, i dropped it and broke it right before i handed it in. i ended up gluing what i could back together and it looks alright. below you'll see some photos of it. i'm aslo including a video file that played in the box that it sat on and showed the various functions.

after that it was another group project. we were given a project that a SLC firm is currently really working on. the objective was to design a space for SUNSET magazine which is opening an office in downtown SLC. each person on the team did different parts of the project. i'm just going to post some images of the layout which i did. i also built a model of the reception area but i haven't photographed it yet. note: the white squares had material samples attached after the boards were printed.

the last project that i've worked on wasn't technically for school. it was for a design contest i chose to enter. the object is to design a DREAM KITCHEN that uses GE MONOGRAM appliances. a friend of mine won last year and bought herself a harley davidson sportster with the $5000. i could really use $5000 too so i figured it was worth staying up 3 nights in a row. here are the images that i came up with and submitted: