Ah, the smell of a printing press, something I haven’t experienced in awhile…or enough. Already noticing things I’d like to improve on and ideas to try out for next time, but pleased with the finished product.
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This month’s issue of Inc. Magazine features the CEO of Omniture, Josh James, now Senior VP with the Adobe acquisition. It’s such a minor thing, but still a bit of fun that the article portrait uses the little chalkboard drawing I did for them in December as a backdrop.
Another project that’s been in the works for too long is now at the press. With the production of the snowboard and the approaching SXSW conference, I made a push to finish some business cards. Basically, I adapted elements from my snowboard to maintain that self-promo theme. Funny thing is, I now have both the snowboard and business cards using a kind of logo that I don’t intend on maintaining as a permanent logo. It’s really more of a branding element reflecting the kind of characters I draw, more of a style association than a specific mark. It is an abstraction of my initials, which makes me think more along the lines of creating similar characters or redesigns of my initials without any of them being a standard.
Through the design process, I considered many different print possibilities with the cards—letterpress, die-cut, specialty papers, foils and metallics, emboss, etc. I didn’t want to overdesign, though; the card doesn’t have to implement everything. I did go for rounded corners and a slimmer vertical format. Also, a qr code appealed to me with the interactive festival approaching and I’m hoping it’s not going to be something too trendy. Finally, the press run necessitating a higher quantity than I’m likely to hand out anytime soon, it seemed like a good idea to create some variety from the theme, resulting in the three different designs.
New year and going out for some new things. On the smaller side is a portrait/portfolio contest by Artists Wanted. It’s one that I don’t really think I’m going to fit too well, but I figure there’s a better chance of something coming of it by entering than by taking a pass. Check it out and vote.
Further down the road, I’ve registered for the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin. Really excited about this one despite the fact that I don’t quite know what I’m up for. The basic aim is to get out, make new associations, acquire some knowledge that’s a bit out of my experience, and have a good time in a new city (travel is always good). This moves up another portfolio project—business cards. Postings to come on that as they progress.
After a couple years remaining on the list of portfolio projects to accomplish, I’ve finally succeeded in finalizing a snowboard design and sent it to production. Between obligations to client work and a perfectionist block about making the prime design, the project crept along for some time. About a year ago I got involved playing with fermat spirals and checking out surfboard patterns (which I often find to be more interesting in their streamlined design than the cacophony that sometimes clutters snowboards). Unfortunately, by the time I got enjoying those patterns, it was well into January and paying projects took center stage well into spring. Obviously, I’m a bit late this year, but at least there’s still plenty of boardable weeks remaining in the season.
From fermat spiral and surfboard-like stripes, I added a seven-pointed star (again built on the spiral) referencing the pinwheel at the opening of my website. (There is, actually, no particular branding basis for the shape, other than there being many such shapes and characters littering my sketchbooks, e.g. the extremely stylized glyph for my initals jjh on the base of the board). The next leap came with the observation that I ought to employ the planetary symbols created in the fall (thanks Brad), balancing them out with some new zodiacal glyphs at the tail end.
After that it was mostly an overly drawn-out debate on color, there’s simply so many great colors. Partial to blue, that was almost always assumed, but good bright reds, oranges, and even some greens, glow off the snow so fantastically. Still planning to put those colors to work in other snowboard designs (so much fun to do it once, why not go for it again… even if I don’t get to build them all), I went for the blue to tie in with my site and the red because of the striking contrast. I think it works with the blue being on the cyan side and the red having a fair bit of yellow in it, those colors, of course, being complementaries in subtractive color (light rather than pigment).
I’ve been down to Revolution Snowboard Manufacturing where I’m having it built and checked out the finished results of their last design competition. Going to have to watch for the next one. Now I’m holding my breath hoping the finished board looks so good when finished, which I’ll have to thoroughly photograph and post.
Thought it time to give out a little design swag, and as I’m constantly sketching lettertypes, I implemented some stylizations for a character set, and big geek as I am, yes, they’re the planetary symbols. They include the Sun, Moon, the eight major planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), the five current dwarf planets (Eris, Pluto, Makemake, Haumea, and Ceres), and two less-used alternates (for Uranus and Pluto).
Trick with the dwarf planets (geek time here), is that the three newest—Eris, Haumea, and Makemake—don’t have any official symbol. Eris appears to have a de facto symbol relating to it’s namesake’s discordant nature. The other two weren’t so easy. There were a couple resources where individuals have endeavored to create a symbol based on the Hawaiian pictographs relating to Haumea or the Rapanui image of Makemake, and they seem to be repeated, so without better information or an IAU ruling, I’m adapting those also.
Right, geek time over. I’m posting two variations for non-commercial use. Please download, enjoy, and contact me to discuss any use for commercial projects. I’m retaining copyright on these as I like them very much.
Getting involved with Creative Commons, interested to see how well this works. Thanks Brad, Tom.
Now check it out:
Tomorrow morning I’m headed off to London for a month. After my first trip out there I thought that not only would it be good to return, but that I’d prefer to stay there awhile and have days that are spent just living abroad rather than sight-seeing (that’s not to say that I’m not going to be finding myself in the museums much of the time). Though I’m realizing that a month is perhaps not quite long enough for this, I’m considering this trip a trial run, as there are so many other places I’d like to check out (some, perhaps, less expensive). Hopefully I can strike a good balance between time in the flat doing freelance and time around town expanding my visual vocabulary.
Once again I’ve neglected my blog. I could, of course, outline some professional reasons for this— occupied with clients, travel, in progress with portfolio projects— but, in truth, I’ve just been lazy about it and haven’t taken the time to organize my thoughts and experiences into an interesting and germane post.
I’ve had the opportunity to work on some product icons with the Omniture UXD team lately. Posted is a small sampling of icons I worked on and a portion of a screenshot for the product with a couple of them implemented.
Honestly, I enjoyed these icon projects, though there are some in the various sets that have a trick of telling the story in the succinctness of the icon, particularly if the function is uncommon to the user vernacular. To me, there are some icons that are simply not going to be able to fully communicate a complicated or specialized new action without mouse-over text, but should make sense within the set after that blank has been filled in.
After a couple intense weeks of working on pieces for the Omniture Summit, I was able to attend some of the events yesterday. It’s an interesting sensation to walk into the event venue and be surrounded by all this signage I’ve been collaborating on. That’s a lot of green.
The closing session for the day featured Martin Lindstrom who related many great things to work into professional practice. One in particular is the idea of “smashing your brand”– that is to say, having recognition of your company and product without the logo at all and more so by the smallest elements used in building your brand (i.e. a familiar color, sound, or the way photography is used, etc.). I was sitting with the UXD team who had to credit my friend Brad McCall for his handling of the Omniture brand in it’s initial conception such that many elements are recognizable as signature Omniture to people who have worked with them. For a session at a conference for a technology company, I was thinking how much of it was directly applicable to design, which gets me fired up to design and examine some new ideas.
I’d like to think that I’m building my identity fairly well so far. Of course, I don’t have a logo as yet, but feel that the use of sketched elements that I create almost subconsciously sometimes that I used for the buttons, borders, and menu items on my site make it unique as something identifiably me.
Ah yes, it’s Halloween season and a couple weeks ago during another moonlit working session, I altered the backgrounds and colors of my website on a whim for the season. Traditionally, I think of oranges for Halloween, or fearful greens, but for the site, they didn’t evoke the desired effect (and together they remind me more of a carrot). Thus, I arrived at the blood red and stark whites against the grey, which fit also with the mailer idea I was working on.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete the mailer this year in time to produce and send it. I suppose that considering I was delayed in my efforts with paying work, the immediate need for a mailer doesn’t seem to be present. I still think, though, that when business is good, it’s still time for self-promo, both to advance as well as to keep business flowing.
Some time ago, a concept of a moontanning vampire stuck in my head and I adapted that to a card idea playing off a traditional holiday or vacation card which relate sunny days, beaches, and such. In the Halloween vacation card, the moon replaces the sun, and a pale vampire enjoys a sanguine drink on the beach, his reflection absent from the water, of course. I’ve had the correlation pointed out to me, as lately (the past couple decades), I have a natural inclination to be most active at night, though I don’t think that’s terribly uncommon with designers and illustrators.
A couple months ago I was pleased to collaborate with Bjorn Pendleton, a former associate of mine from BYU. The project brief for QL Labs reminded me of NutraSanus– natural health supplements with an emphasis on the natural in the design. The instructions from Bjorn were to investigate the juxtaposition of natural and pharmaceutical lab elements as well as the integration of the ‘q’ and ‘l’ initials (incidentally, neither Bjorn nor I knew what the initials stood for, other than perhaps founders’ names).
As pictured above, I worked a lot with the leaves (simple, but a quick metaphor). In the far left draft, I meant to integrate the initial with the leaves, which, in a ring suggest sun rays, flowers, a cycle, and a complete whole. I also wanted to work an option with more than leaves, thinking of roots as sources in natural supplements along with their symbolism of growth and nourishment.
Yes, it’s been two months since my last blog. Although there has been plenty of work going on, there’s much that’s still in process and accordingly I’m not able to blog about those project, fun as they are. I did get to do some quick illustrations (one afternoon) for a tag associated with some t-shirts Omniture distributed at a BYU game. The plan was, of course, to get everyone to put them on with the reward of prizes, so for the tags the thought was aiming for the kind of drawings typically seen in airplane safety instructions. Originally I went with the parted plastic hair I usually associate with schematics from a few decades ago, but apparently that was a bit too nerdy.
At the beginning of the month, I was in the Victoria and visited the Royal British Columbia Musuem and particularly enjoyed the First Nations Gallery. Strong graphic quality to a lot of the masks, carvings, and drawings that I’d like to look into more. I like the sparing use of color and the play of organic shapes. Some items struck me as reminiscent of Mayan designs. There were also a couple interesting galleries in Seattle with current artists’ designs that I’m glad I saw. Last May when visiting the Met, I was glad to have made a point of spending more time in the African, American, and Pacific art sections.
Today I received a few emails notifying me of the approaching release of Adobe Creative Suite 4. Seems like all to recently I upgraded to 3. I have to wonder if new releases come around too often forcing everyone to upgrade to maintain compatibility with each other just for a version with a slightly new UI and minor buttons. There’s even been a couple times when some functions are more complicated in newer versions. Not that I’m making any particular total conclusion here, new stuff is always nice, but I have to ask if a minor upgrade every two years is more waste and hassle than progress.
The Atlas Capital Management logo is another collaboration with Michael Hancock of GoFish Creative similar to a previous piece for the Orion Management Group. I often see images of Atlas in profile, but for this one, my instincts leaned toward face-on symmetry for a stronger and more stable appearance… something that seems more inline with Atlas. Again, my mythological geek side comes out to make the point that Atlas supports the sky, not the earth as is sometimes depicted. I designed a simplified armillary sphere, not wanting to make more of the sphere than the figure. Pictured above is the final figure that I created at left and Michael Hancock’s implementation at right.
Incidentally, last week I was in Manhattan and was disappointed that Lee Lawrie’s sculpture of Atlas in Rockefeller Center is covered. On the other hand, it’s great that it’s being cleaned and taken care of.
It’s been a busy month. Work at Omniture has been centered on Summit, a fairly intense time for them. Frequently, people have been out of the office for Summit. It was an odd feeling going in to Omniture and being the one of the few people in the section of the building during the Salt Lake Summit. My contract there just finished this week and I’m looking forward to working with them again next quarter. The last major piece I worked on was a collaboration with Steve Gustavson for the annual report cover. The Omniture style makes an interesting challenge to design with two colors, one font family, and no photography.
Between work with Omniture, I’ve had some other small freelance jobs and have also been working again with Venafi on a couple of larger projects. I feel the increasing shift toward the corporate and technologies.
I was hoping again to balance out all the corporate design work and have pieces ready for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual, but despite their annual practice of moving the deadline back a couple times, the month was full enough with freelance projects to be able to do a satisfactory piece. I suppose that if work is that busy that I shouldn’t be needing to advertise for more just yet. Still, it’s always good to have as many options as possible.
I’ve gone corporate, as Brad would say. My latest client, Omniture, invited me to work on site a couple days per week over the next couple months. I’m working in the marketing department with Steve Gustavson and Ben Child and having a great time with the projects I’ve had so far. Hopefully I’ll be able to display some of that work later.
Last night I went up to the Utah State Fairgrounds to vote at the “Night of the People” for the Utah Advertising Federation Addy’s. I’m grateful for the post about it from from the Utah Graphic Artists Forum. I’ve never been before, but was impressed by the kind of work coming out of Utah. I arrived in the latter half of the event and hoped that there were more people attending earlier, as the turnout was a bit slim. I often hope to have a better association between colleagues in the area.
Some of the ads or campaigns that I remember particularly were for Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau, I like how the elements came together in the various components of the campaign. The Route 66 era, National Park look excites thoughts of travel and tourism. The Utah Film Commission had a gorgeous book of photography that was ordered by color. Richter7 had some very fun, but quickly read billboard designs. Bajio has always had some fun ads which interest me despite that fact that I generally shy away from that kind of food. I thought the writing and the creative placement for Utah Opera were strong points. I would also liked to have seen more for Bountiful Bicycle, which plays well off of the current environment. There were also quite a few PSA’s that appear to allow for more creativity.
Brief entry on what’s going on lately. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Chip Haskell at Crowell Advertising and anticipate working with Chip more often, he’s been good to associate with.
I also nearly missed an invitation to join a creative site called Jamuse. It aims to be a forum for sharing work in progress with clients and colleagues by the use of a .jam file, which is meant to curtail copying. It’s not publicly accessable as yet, but I’m interested to investigate the site and check out its creative community.
Fortunately, the past couple months have been fairly busy. From early August, I’ve had a continual stream of freelance work and other opportunities to investigate. Curtis Packer at Venafi has been a very good client to work with, (icon samples above), and I’m looking forward to working more with him in future.
I also received a call from Becton Loveless at NutraSanus, who I’ve done freelance for off and on over the past couple years, and there’s the possibility of some continuing projects there.
Another referral out of the blue came from Chip Haskell at Crowell Advertising. I anticipate some good business relationships there. They have some really great offices at the Gateway in Salt Lake. Chip also said he enjoys maps and astronomy– that’s a bonus. Always nice if you can work with someone with similar interests.
Brad Pamer also contacted me about potentially collaborating on projects that he has, some of which are former clients of the now defunct Indigo Creative. We even talked about the possibility (however fanciful) of a virtual studio (called Indigo Orange, of course) of our former collaborators at Indigo Creative. I was surprised that our website is still up, but, as Brad explained, he owns the URL and pays for the hosting– the owner of Excel and Indigo never reimbursed him for those expenses. I also saw Michael Hancock the other night and am pleased that he’s doing well. We talked about freelance work versus full-time work. He says he’s in a good place right now with the freelance. I have to admit, it’s nice when you have enough work to sustain you and can have your schedule to yourself.
Unfortunately, with many things occupying my time, I didn’t complete a piece to submit for the Society of Illustrators annual. I’m hoping that my dad, Richard Hull, enters some of his pieces that he did for a current exhibition at Brigham Young University. He mentored a group of students a year and a half ago in Ghana and this month they’re showing pieces inspired by their time there.
I’m off today to Asia for two weeks, and I’m already anticipating all there is to follow up on at the start of November.
It’s always good to have freelance. Recently I had a couple of small jobs come in from my friend Michael Hancock at GoFish Creative, including some illustration work for a logo for Devereaux Mansion in Salt Lake. I enjoy these collaborative jobs and am glad to see what Michael does with the type treatment and arrangement of the logo as a whole. It reminds me of the days at Indigo Creative.
At the same time, I received an unexpected freelance referral from my website. I didn’t design a website to be the first tier of self-promotion as it’s a rare thing for anyone to be browsing the internet and happen to come across a portfolio site and request work that way. Yet, I had the fortunate surprise of just that occurence. Alicia Quillin from Dangles Hangers contacted me and asked for a logo and accompanying illustration and layout.
As I’ve left Indigo, I’ve applied to other studios while freelancing, one of which was Rare Method (formerly B/O/W/G). I didn’t get the job, it isn’t always the right match, but Rare Method did refer an associate of theirs, Curtis Packer at Venafi, to me to make some modifications on a series of icons.
Recently a contact of mine from Razor Data asked that I design some logo concepts for a business he was starting up: Epic Experiences, an outdoor adventure tour company. His original thoughts were that of a circular shape including a mountain, another mountain with a rockclimber, a river, and a forest. I indicated that that many elements would likely be difficult to incorporate into a legible logo.
I attempted one logo involving the different elements, focusing on the rockclimbing figure, and simplifying the two mountain concepts into one central one. I also variated many other simpler designs, again focusing on the figure and the mountain. Sketching out ideas triggered ideas of aboriginal-type designs and mirrored E’s to form the mountain. Having further feedback from a graphic designer family and friends, I added texture and focused more on the facing E’s, being among the favorites.
Friday i quit my job at Indigo Creative to return to freelance and portfolio-building. Having been debating the timing for awhile, my quandary was answered when it was announced that Excel Graphics, our parent company, is finally collapsing with no money remaining for paychecks, having gone to fill the printing company’s increasing debt, and that the owner was requiring a designer to be laid off immediately. As I was planning on leaving in the near future anyway, I quit so that Indigo’s art director wouldn’t need to terminate our newest designer only to have me leave soon afterward. Sadly, after having lunch with my former co-workers today, it sounds as though they may shortly be joining me in life after Indigo.
After over three years working for the strange business association of Indigo and Excel, I’m happy to have worked with excellent designers and hope to maintain ties with them. Michael Hancock, our first art director, has already moved on to GoFish Creative. I’m interested to see the progress of Brad Palmer, the current art director; and my other associates, Kevin Sheehan; Scott Troxel; Jared Wright; and Kira Ludwig Shelton.
Occasionally, I have the misfortune of designing logos that don’t hit the mark for the client. I received a client referral from my brother, Thomas, who is a partner at Rigsby Hull in Houston. The project was to design a logo for some new condos near Memorial Park in Houston, Park Square Condominiums.
Another skill I have yet to perfect is getting adequate information from clients concerning their needs on a specific project, and learning to work with the ‘We’ll know what we like when we see it’ kind of situation that often arises when clients honestly don’t know what they want, or can’t articulate specific parameters to the designer. I knew the logo needed to be a monogram, something streamlined and simple, and reflecting the park environment, and that there wasn’t much time allotted for the project.
Nevertheless, the first drafts monograms (a sample of which are pictured below) were rejected, with the further note that the committee had decided to put the logo on hold for the time being.
Some time ago Jon Bybee, a college classmate of mine, called me up to say that he liked the bugs posted on my site and asked me if I was interested in submitting a few for a business he’s a partner in called Scribble on Walls.
I knew of the website via a blog which I’d read and had jokingly made the comment that the idea of wall art reminded me of scrapbooking paper for your room. Not that that’s a bad thing of course. High-end scrapbooking paper, as Jon said. I’m interested to see that business progress and ought to spend more time looking at what other designers and illustrators have posted.
So here are a few more bugs to pin and label in my portfolio:
While working on site with Razor Data for the past two months, I’ve primarily been working with a product called Arriba Trade. This entails working on many website pieces as well as printed manuals.
Of course in the beginning, there was the logo. The client presented me with the company name ‘Arriba’ associating ideas of success, moving upward, and increase with the company product which instructs and enables customers to analyze and trade stocks and currencies (as I understand it). Steering away from the latin connotations, I focused on rapid upward movement. Perhaps it was my preoccupation with astronomy that conjured images of a rocketship that culminated in the final logo. I have to credit my friend Brad McCall with the refining concept of subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) integrating the initial letter into the form of the rocket.
The color ideas originally suggested were along the lines of oranges and reds… colors which relate energy. However, as the logo was presented to the larger audience in the company, I had to understand that blue is the predominant color of their market and red is strictly verboten.
I’ve heard tales about design studios that can spend a great deal of time working on logos. Thus far, I’ve never been alloted much time to arrive at a concept for a logo. This is not a complaint, though, as I respect the ability for a client to readily accept a solution that fulfills their needs rather than agonize pedantically over a decision.
I recently set up plans for accomplishing more pieces this month, including working up some illustrations to enter for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual. (I’m never sure that there’s much chance of getting into the publication, but considerably more chance if I enter than if i don’t). Of course, as soon as that happens, I’m called back to full-time work at Indigo. Pushing freelance and portfolio projects into the crammed recesses of the evenings when one doesn’t often have the momentum and energy for it.
It’s always good to be appreciated, and to asked back to full-time work. Upon that, there’s a new challenge that comes with it– the request to work on-site for a client, Razor Data. It’s almost like starting a new job. I know these are not my employers, but new environment, new rhythms to establish, people to meet. All this is good and adds flavor to work, but can often be intimidating as I want to be sure I mesh well with the environment and produce what is expected of me.
In the meantime, there’s that balance to be found in returning to full-time work (which admittedly, most the world copes with just fine), and the freelance and portfolio projects, while not losing my mind to stress and finding time to live.
As noted in my first blog, I took time off from work beginning in September to work on portfolio projects, specifically, my final project to complete my BFA degree at Brigham Young University. During the past three and a half months, my status of full-time salaried designer was changed to part-time, so I could maintain my employment as well as have the time I needed for my projects.
Last summer, after over two years at Indigo Creative, I was started to get that itch for ‘what’s next’. While grateful for my employment, and happy with my co-workers, I felt the day-to-day work moving farther from the kind of work I enjoyed doing, so I took the risk of taking time off to do the kind of projects I wanted to for awhile, and to complete my degree. I was meant to return to full-time at the beginning of the new year.
Now, during that time, my boss, Michael Hancock, has moved on to pursue contract design work, and I find the studio continually moving away from the kind of work situation I’d like to be in. So I’ve decided to continue the risk. I’m grateful that the studio has opted to keep me on as a part-time employee, but I’ve decided that I won’t return as a full-time designer. Rather, there seems to come a time to look for the next move. Of course, there’s a certain giddy excitement to having most of my time to myself, but also the risk of not having a steady income. I have to hope to stay focused and structure my time to achieve visible accomplishments (i.e. a better portfolio).
Simply, it came down to the option of doing what’s traditionally safe and returning to a regular job, whatever the work; or continuing a risk a little longer to develop portfolio and hope to progress to ‘what’s next’.
I’ve recently had some experiences and subsequent discussions about dealing with freelance that prompted me to blog. Admittedly, this is mostly a ‘note to self’, but here goes.
The first thought that springs to mind stems from having a freelance client ask me to reduce thier bill because they hadn’t budgeted for as many hours as I’d taken. I had related to the client how many hours I had taken to complete their first draft, but had failed to update them through three additional rounds of designs. They felt surprised that it took me twice my original amount of hours to complete the additional drafts and urged a reduced bill. I complied in the interest of good relations, as the client was technically a friend’s client, and because I hadn’t kept them updated on the time involved. I relate all this not to bag on clients but to note that clients ought to be updated on the hours each round of additional work are taking. We would have this problem at the studio where I work, particularly with long-term projects, where a client would be surprised at how many hours they were being billed for.
Contracts are another topic of discussion lately. Typically, for a short and straightforward job, I don’t much see the point in requiring one. As the designer, by default, I retain ownership, and invoice the client at the agreed amount. When it comes to something more involved, long-term, or (in the case of recent experience) a spec-work job, I’d like to have something in writing. I was concerned lately that I may have offended a client by suggesting a simple contract, nothing complicated, just a couple points to mutally agree upon to avoid misunderstanding. Twice I was given the advice that contracts are to help maintain a friendship or good business relation, and if someone is offended by using a contract, then they may be a dubious client.
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