The "Contain Us" Stop Motion Video

(For best results, click on the "Vimeo" logo to watch in HD)

In celebration of the Devin Townsend Project's Contain Us deluxe package being released just in time for the holidays, I created a stop motion video for both my archives and for promotional use by the record label. I shot it on-site in the photography section of PCA&D and had a blast doing it.

Over 3,400 views in just 2 days and another 1,600 over the next week for 5,000+ in the first 10 days out there. It's a lot of fun to share something I did on my own one afternoon with Devin's fans around the world. When this was posted on Blabbermouth on December 22nd, the first comment made me smile: "awesome... reminds me of classic Sesame Street." Indeed.

During the actual shooting, I came up with a few impromptu ideas while, in hindsight, I have several more I wish I integrated as well. Not surprising, of course, seeing as how this was my first-ever attempt at stop motion. Oh well, life and design are always works in progress, right? Right.



(click images to enlarge)

I [Heart] Communication Arts!

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While I pass around criticism occasionally, most of what I do on this blog (besides post my own work, mind you) is highlight or praise the art and design world's successes; both contemporary and historic. Today's a praise day, if you will…

Year round, I preach to my students to be an all-around artist and not simply a designer. For example, within my plans for our yearly New York trips, it's never enough to simply line up a studio visit, head to the AIGA, and call it a day. In my eyes, that's a failure.

For me, both the viewing-of and experimenting-in hand-made art, photography, fine art and beyond are essential in one's evolution in the arts. In order for us to see things beyond our monitors, even if more often than not that's where we find ourselves, we need to see beyond our profession's cold, digital realm and once-again discover the textures, the smells, and the unpredictably exciting ways of other art forms.

You know who also gets this concept? Communication Arts. This year I've received six issues, all "annuals" of one sort of another. Namely Illustration, Photography, Design, Advertising, Interactive, and Typography. I don't care if it's simply the smell of the freshly-inked pages of their latest Typography Annual that has me all happy about CA right now. The bottom line is that this past year's issues have been inspiring. And when you consider that…

There was once a time when I viewed CA as the boring, stiff, secondary subscription. That time is long gone, of course. If anything, they've proven to me that they're the essential magazine in the industry for those of us always looking for more. And that's worth writing about.

Modern Vintage (Banners)

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Every 18 months or so, Jennifer asks my assistance in designing new banners and buttons for her Sally Jane Vintage blog and Etsy shop. For the 2012 (and beyond) version, the only request I received was to have the imagery complete itself while going to white around the edges. Thus giving the graphic a free-floating feeling, as opposed to a cropped look.

I wanted to create something that didn't look like any other vintage fashion site. There are many stylish blogs out there and after checking out a few of them, I dove back into my world. In the end, I'm only ever successful at what I do if I'm doing what feels right to me. With that said, Jennifer loved it and went live with it on January 1st.

Notes: I used the same beautiful font I used for the look book that I both shot and designed for Sally Jane Vintage late in 2011. That brought some consistency along with fresh new colors that can work year round.


(the 2012 color palette, including typography [l, r])

The Science Of Color (In 2012)

(Fig. 1; what color looks like to designers)

Hot on the heels of 2011's Honeysuckle, Tangerine Tango (a.k.a. PMS 17-1463) is Pantone's 2012 Color of the Year. From the official Pantone website:

"Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it," said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. "Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy."

Um, yeah, what she said. Regardless of the art speak, this color is very much in vogue right now. In fact, the it's strikingly similar to that of PCA&D's official color – which I designed a color scheme around earlier this year for the school's 2011-12 Admissions Department materials.


(Fig. 2; the 2011-12 color scheme for PCA&D's Admissions Dept.)

So while I never endorse the forcing of a color into a design equation, it does seem to be an excellent choice of warmth with an understated sense of positivity in these tough economic times. And who can't use that right about now?



For more information about Pantone LLC and
PANTONE® Products, visit www.pantone.com.

The Best Music Of 2011

(click to enlarge the awesomeness that is Sweden's Ghost)

Music plays a major part in both my personal and design lives, of course. Could I forge forward through a long night or a tough day of design without the help of music? It's possible but very, very hard to imagine.

2011 was the year that saw Ghost's debut album being released in the U.S. and subsequently locking in my Album of the Year award. With that said, here's an overview of my favorite music released in 2011.

THE TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2011:
• Adele, 21
• The Atlas Moth, An Ache For The Distance
• Book of Black Earth, The Cold Testament
• The Civil Wars, Barton Hollow
• Ghost, Opus Eponymous †††
• Graveyard, Hisingen Blues
• PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
• *Shels, Plains of the Purple Buffalo
• Thrice, Major/Minor
• Times of Grace, The Hymn Of A Broken Man

††† Album of the Year

THE 2011 MIX-TAPE:
• Adele, "Rolling In The Deep"
• Anathema, "A Simple Mistake"
• The Atlas Moth, "Holes In The Desert"
• Book of Black Earth, "Road Dogs From Hell"
• The Civil Wars, "20 Years"
• Death Ray Vision, "Get Lost Or Get Dead"
• Fucked Up, "Ship Of Fools"
• Ghost, "Ritual"
• Graveyard, "The Siren"
• My Morning Jacket, "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)"
• PJ Harvey, "On Battleship Hill"
• The New Recruits, "What Have We Got To Lose"
• Radiohead, "Codex"
• Rival Schools, "Shot After Shot"
• *Shels, "Butterflies (On Luci's Way)"
• Thrice, "Blinded"
• Times of Grace, "Where The Spirit Leads Me"
• Chelsea Wolfe, "Friedrichshain"

Happy New Year, everyone!

I've Got This House Under My Skin

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Commissioned by a Chase Manhattan Bank heiress and completed in 1951, this beauty is all I'm asking for come Christmas this year. For a mere $12 million, I could be living in the long-time home of crooner-turned actor-turned cultural icon, Frank Sinatra.

He began renting it from Dora Hutchinson in the 1950s, during the height of his Rat Pack days, and lived within the 10,000-square foot, four bedroom main house that features a pool, a 1,000-square foot, one bedroom guest house with its own pool, and painstakingly gorgeous views all found on 14 acres that also include a vineyard and parking for up to 200 cars. It's surrounded by 3,000 acres of nature preserve and can apparently only be seen by helicopter due to its unique, hilltop locale. Did I mention Frank used to sublet the guest house to his close friend, Marilyn Monroe? Her pool was also the site of her final photo shoot while the the guest house is rumored to be the meeting spot for the late Monroe and President John F. Kennedy's affair.

How amazing is this place? Very. Now, if I could only reach 12 million people willing to send me just $2 each, I'll be able to not only buy the property but also pay for the taxes, upkeep, and a slew of great parties to thank everyone!

For more images and insight into the property, visit the Forbes online story here.

Also of note, for a post by Steven Heller featuring beautifully designed pages detailing the vision behind "The Town Of Tomorrow" at the 1939 World's Fair, go here.

Hipsters In Print (Magazine)

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I received the 2011 Print Magazine Regional Design Annual before the Thanksgiving holiday. With that said, I've got good news and bad news. Good news first, you say? No worries, let's have at it (hoss)…

GOOD NEWS #1:
The first bit of good news is that the Regional Design Annual is void of any mis-guided, sophomoric guest art direction and design. It's been an awful year for Print in this matter and I'm still trying to figure out who was worse: Metahaven or Kokoro & Moi. In the end, it wasn't the idea that was bad, it was simply who they picked to execute it that was.

GOOD NEWS #2:
Our second nugget of good news is that, as always, the design competition section of the book is chock-full of inspiring design work. I've always loved how the annual is split into sections by region, seeing as how each section of our country is greatly affected by its own vast and varied cultural influences. It's great stuff, by enlarge, despite it's largely hipster-leaning tendencies – which is nothing new for Print. And that leads me to the bad news…

BAD NEWS #1:
The hipster frenzy within the design world of the 21st century continues to spiral out of control. Mind you, even the biggest hipster in the world isn't a hipster – or at least in their own mirror. To a hipster, it's always somebody else that's a hipster. It's funny how that plays out, but I digress…

In the design sense of the term, "hipster" is commonly defined by, but not limited to, your college pedigree, your musical tastes, where you live, who you know, how ironic you attempt to be, and – in recent years – your use of letterpress. For example, when we "Meet the Judges" on pg. 44, we meet 8 people chosen to review the work submitted this year. Here's a breakdown:

The Far West was curated by a German-born NYC-based designer who studied at SVA. The Southwest by an LA-born, Brooklyn-based designer. The Midwest by an NYC-based RISD graduate. The South by an NYC-based MICA graduate. The East from another couple of NYC-based designers who studied at MICA and SVA respectively. Ironically (and hipsters love irony, by the way), the NYC region was judged not by an NYC based designer but by Pam & Jake from Washington D.C.'s fantastic Design Army. Breaking all of the molds, they attended Radford and Penn State and are the exception to every rule set forth in this commentary. A welcome, and well-deserved, respite from the predictable patterns found in the other judges.

Now, this is not an indictment of the judge's themselves or their obvious talent, it's an indictment of Print Magazine and its limited, metro-bubble approach in representing both the graphic design world and all of the tunnel vision its actions generate. Three-quarters of the judges combine to represent only one city and 3 different schools. That's about as fair and balanced as network news. Which, in fact, is not balanced at all. That is, unless you believe there's nothing more balanced than NYC's design community judging the entire country's aesthetic from their cramped studio quarters while sipping coffee, eating vegan sushi, and bitching about the rest of the country's failures. Mind you, all of this is coming from a vegetarian designer who's lived 11 fantastic and inspiring years of his life in NYC and LA.


BAD NEWS #2:
There's more hipster-related bad news that punches even harder at your (not-so) humble narrator's heartstrings. On pg. 21 you'll find "The Best Album Art of 2011," as chosen by a certain Portland, OR-based music critic named Douglas Wolk. It's worth noting that Portland is second only to Brooklyn in the world of hipster-mania. It's also worth noting that the quotation marks around pg. 21's headline in this paragraph were placed there as much for sarcasm as for proper punctuation.

Not unlike Pitchfork Media, a scenester-ridiculous website he also happens to write for, Douglas also breaks out of his 80% hipster band list with a token hip-hop title in order to show us just how well-rounded he is. Now, the Jay-Z and Kanye West album cover may be the cream of Douglas' crop this year but the Roseland and Battles covers are absolutely horrid and uninspired selections. His other titles, Fucked Up and The Weekend, are both solid work but not exactly "best of" material when culling from an entire year in the music industry on a worldwide scale. Assuming, of course, that that was what Douglas was indeed doing (which it certainly was not).

In the end, while album art is a creative outlet that faces different challenges than it did even 15 years ago, this is not a proper "best of of 2011" by any stretch of the imagination. Next year, Douglas might consider getting out a bit more and experiencing music beyond that of the elitist bubble of indie rock. And finally…

BAD NEWS #3:
Typographical widows, or orphans, seem to not be a problem for the in-house staff at Print Magazine. Now, perhaps I'm missing the new trend here. Perhaps this wave of typographical anti-discipline that Print is cunningly generating in 2011 will make its way to the backwoods of America where the rest of us can join in one day. Until then, however, I'm going to continue both believing and knowing that widows are the result of lazy designers who are willing to accept less from their work.

There, I said it. I feel better.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

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Photos by Srfrjff

I recently spoke on the "Digital Media" panel at the Revolution Music Conference at Lebanon Valley College. Created and run by the students of the college, the conference featured live performances and 12 panels covering everything from music therapy, law, publishing, and beyond.

I joined fellow designer Mat Samuel, also a professor at LVC, and Andrew Pomeroy, a sound designer for MTV Studios and a former LVC student, to discuss the concept of visual and audio design and their influence in the industry. Moderated by Carrie Becker, a student seeking a dual-major in both Digital Communications and Music Business at LVC, I found that I wore two hats during the near-hour-long panel, drawing upon both my experience in the music industry as well as my design career.

After fielding a couple questions from the attendees regarding shifts in the industry and what an average day is like for us, I spoke at length with a father of a young man attending the event as well as another group of students with interest in the future of music. If only we knew what that was exactly, of course.

Overall, I had an excellent time spent on a beautiful campus with the politest group of young people I've been around in a long, long time. Oh, and a free (vegetarian-friendly) lunch to boot! Good stuff, for sure.

Contain(ing) My Excitement!

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For more images from the package, go here.

I had the immense pleasure of creating a very deluxe package for the Devin Townsend Project which is now being shipped to fans around the world. What a treat to work on a project of this levity and intensity, for sure. The package's features include a 12" x 12" charcoal linen slipcase, a 64-page book, a 45.5" x 11.75" gatefold centerpiece, 6xCD, 2xDVD, and more.

Throughout the process, I received nothing but the fullest support for my concept from everyone involved – most notably Devin and the almighty Steve Joh. Much respect and many thanks to two of them and so many others. Now that it's made it through production, I'm beyond excited for fans to pick up a copy, dig in, and have fun experiencing everything for the first time.

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My quotes from the press release:

Upon getting the call to work on what would become the "Contain Us" collection, I saw this as a chance to bring everything – both released and unreleased, seen and unseen – together in one clean, elegant, and utterly deluxe package.

I immediately began the process of developing a plan to bring that vision to fruition. As we all know, Devin is anything but cliché so eliminating dripping blood and the "none more black" approach was easy. Instead, I leaned away from all things metal and turned my aesthetics toward that of fine art, museums, and high-end printing methods. From the texture of the book and its slipcase to the feeling of the paper itself, I wanted everything to exude "class."

Devin & Co. were touring the states this past summer and I joined him in Philadelphia to both review my plans and to make sure we're on the same page. From the get-go, Devin & I were 100% in sync. To put it simply; the meeting could not have gone any smoother. For instance, the DTP albums and their concept inspired several aspects of my design concept and seeing those musical and lyrical ideas shift into the visual realm excited us both.

Hanging with Devin that day also gave me an opportunity to photograph both himself and the band behind the scenes. Several of those photographs can be found inside the album-sized book that contains approximately 250 rare or never-seen-before images culled from the band's personal archives, professional photographers from around the world, Devin's hand-written lyrics and studio notes, tour laminates, and pretty much everything in between.

"Contain Us" was no small task to coordinate, for any of us involved. However, seeing it all come together made it all worth it. Especially for me when I received an email from Devin saying: "Beyond cool. Seriously, way to knock it the FUCK out of the park bro!" Worth it, indeed.

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The "Modern/Vintage" Look Book

Open publication - Free publishing - More fashion

Note: To view properly, click to "expand."

Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph a vacant building in the Financial District of Manhattan, NYC. Known simply by its address, 5 Beekman, the building had me wanting to not only capture my own photographic work but also to shoot something special for Sally Jane Vintage. Upon doing so, I put together a "look book" with a focus on the fashion and photography.

THE HISTORY: Designed in April 1881 as The Kelly Building (after builder, Eugene Kelly), christened Temple Court in March 1882, and built to completion in 1883 of brick and terra cotta, Temple Court was 165,000 square feet featuring 212 office suites, a vault of safe-deposit boxes, an atrium topped with a glass pyramid, and much more. It was the first-ever fireproof building in the city of New York and the third with an elevator. Due to (of all things) fire code violations, the atrium was boarded up in 1940. Hidden behind the drywall, tenants from that point on would never even know of the atrium's existence. This drywall, despite its sad aesthetic, served to help preserve the railings and their character for future use. Vacant for the last decade and obscured in the New York skyline until 2010, the (likely) future hotel is now in the midst of finalizing its ownership and subsequent plans for redevelopment.