Media, Events, Experiments
Posts tagged design
Homage to Verner Panton
Sep 16th
Verner Panton was a furniture and textiles designer to put it very briefly. His lifetime of great works include the Tulip Chair, the S Chair (A breakthrough in plastics) and Visiona II (a cave-like hybrid between room and furniture). In addition to furniture, Panton produced some stunning textile designs. I investigated some of the circular patterns and came up with the following design:
The original inspiring work is quite stunning: Many of Panton’s designs preceeded the op-art trends of the mid-late 1960s by over a decade.
Panton’s use of colour and form in his textile work is a pinnacle of design in my opinion. Not quite fully psychedelic, just enough ‘op’ art, and containing sufficient visual stimulation to delight the mind.
Self-Portrait
Aug 17th
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Every few years, I create a self portrait. Many find it to be challenge to create a visual representation of how they actually look without illustrating how they think they look. In 1999, I created a 36″x48″ acrylic portrait on sheet-board, in the style of a three colour propaganda print, using yellow, red and black. The lack of additional elements made the overall work feel incomplete. In 2001, I created a self portrait using oils, but lacked the patience to slowly build layers of paint up to create depth, and the painting ended up feeling plastic and doll-like. It has since been discarded.
2004-2008′s self portraits were primarily photographic, with various exposure and lighting techniques being used to create some sense of originality.
The most recent was produced in Illustrator based on a photograph taken in May 2010, in Yosemite, California. The style is reminiscent of the early 20th century snake oil salesman. I completed the design by using wood-typefaces and an ornamental to accentuate the period.
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Snowboard Design
Aug 17th
Mid Summer snowboard design: ‘Lock and Load’.
The top of the board features a ‘bordello cowboy’ motif with decorative dueling pistols, organic flourishes, and decorative wings.
The bottom of the board has a rifle silhouette in gold, so when a rider has dismounted and is carrying their board it appears upon first glance that they are carrying a gold gun.
I wished to celebrate the gunslinger outlaw feeling which snowboarders sometimes exude. Although a part of mainstream culture, they are somehow perceived to be on the fringes of morality and order.
As an added bonus to the snowboard design I posted earlier this summer, I created a very short video animation of the content of the design.
This very short practice video features 3D layers imported from the illustrator file, animated and viewed with a moving camera.
Viterum logo design process report.
Jul 2nd
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I developed a logo and wordmark for a Tokyo based eco-consulting company last year. I created a design process report based on the workflow, read the Case Study PDF file, if you’re interested in seeing how this logo came to be.
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Oil Siren: we need you, we love you.
Jun 22nd
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I developed an oil monster character illustration over the past week. The initial concept came from what has been happening recently in the Gulf of Mexico. Initially, the intent was to create a dark and evil menace which was killing everything in its path, except the process of drawing, digitization and coloring left the character decidedly ‘beautiful’. Years of being inspired by Mucha must have left a mark on my style. Instead of changing the drawing, I decided to amend the concept to suggest that our unquenchable addiction to oil turns the oil monster into a thing of beauty. It is an Oil Siren. We need her, we love her, we cannot stop burning her or forming her into plastics. We are powerless to her siren calls. The Oil Siren is so entrenched in our society that we cannot break our addiction and will destroy ourselves in the process. She could be a contemporary version of the legendary siren myths from antiquity.
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Animated Blacklist Logos
Aug 23rd
Produced for the August 2008 BlackList event at Crystal Lounge. Original Crest courtesy of Euroculture & Antique 505 stock imagery book.
Animated BlackList logos from Stuart Ward on Vimeo.