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A lil’ something for the ladies. Or, lady, I guess.

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

There’s a couple things I’m working on right now. One of them will soon be a post that I hope will be cool and helpful or interesting for other designers. This one however is just for me… and I guess Ariane, my girlfriend/travel companion. Kidding, and you, the reader. Earlier I made the itineraries for my trip over to Europe and found them kinda cool to have. So now, since Im going to the east coast soon I’m working on that itinerary.

Above is the footer for the cards, as of now. At the bottom of every 3.5×5 in card would be that, the car were driving on the left and the unofficial official Richard and Ariane logo. Is that weird? a little? whatever, I did it.

Please, I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments. Sad Bird Design is most appreciative of all of you readers out there. We would be nothing without you. Id like to take this time to thank you for reading and say that I look forward to making many more memories with you.

-Rich

Tags: itinerary, logo, Rich, travel
Posted in Graphic Design, Grid System, Logo Design | 1 Comment »

August: Version 2

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

In my earlier post I talked about version 1. After much research I began to work on version 2. So far the uppercase alphabet is in rough draft. Currently working on lowercase and numbers. In the meantime I am getting some professional feedback on the uppercase.

Here is rough version 2:
augustv2

A few of the many changes include:
1. 20% wider
2. Thin strokes were thickened
3. Serifs extend left and right on most glyphs
4. Height of crossbars were lowered
5. Any round letter sits just below baseline

Sample words:
august1

august2

august3

Sample header/body text:
august4

Lowercase coming soon.

- Randy

Tags: Randy
Posted in Graphic Design, Typography | No Comments »

Business Plan Book Design

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Completed. Printed. Delivered. It all started here: Working On A Grid. We decided on 6x9in. and adjusted the grid accordingly.

Book details:
1. 6×9 Portrait.
2. 48 pages.
3. Saddle stitched.
4. 14pt baseline.
5. 9pt Gotham Light for body copy.
6. 36pt Gotham Bold for section titles.
7. Pantone 295 C for cover/title pages.
8. Printed on 80# matte paper.
9. Cover on 100# matte paper.
10. Written by Sam Paasch.

Download the PDF here. Also available is the grid system used.

Photos of book:
bplan6

bplan5

bplan4

bplan2

bplan

bplan3

Printing this book was a pretty good battle. We saw a company online that will print books for cheap. Gave it a try. Round 1: came back purple instead of blue (my fault) and glossy cover, yuck. Round 2: came back missing half the pages and terrible dark lines in the blue title pages. Round 3: switched to matte cover, fixed color issues, and all is well. Just for giggles we went to Kinkos and was quoted $60 for a 48 page book. Ha!

I need to invest in a toner printer.

- Randy

Posted in Graphic Design, Grid System, Typography | 2 Comments »

Revisiting The Font: August

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

I’ve decided to revisit a font created in my last semester of Graphic Design. Project was to create a single weight font (not technically a family) that included numbers and symbols. I had a little less than a month to complete the project. Turned out well for the time I was given, but I’ve been wanting to tweak each glyph ever since.

Font Details:
1. 77 glyphs in total.
2. Extreme thick/thin lines.
3. Technically a slab serif, though they are nearly hairline thin.
4. Created using Adobe Illustrator and FontLab as a working TrueType font file.
5. Manually kerned each glyph, admittedly with many mistakes.

Poster:
font2

Glyphs:
font3

Close up of x-height:
font4

So what do I plan on tweaking?
1. There’s actually too much consistency between each letter. Giving more character to certain letters will help.
2. Each glyph needs to be a bit wider.
3. The transition between thick and thin is harsh and will be softened with curves for a more natural look.
4. I was never happy with the uppercase Y, needs a completely different style.
5. The x-height will be the biggest change. Needs to be lowered.
6. Lastly, I need to work on proper kerning. Lots of research will be required.

I’d like to use this font for headings in future projects. Paired with a sans-serif body text sounds like a good idea. Stay tuned for updates!

- Randy

Posted in Graphic Design, Typography | 1 Comment »

It’s here.

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

chrstmas1

This is something I’ve been wanting to try for a while – the blurry tree. It also has the desaturated border that I used on a thanksgiving invitation (below) which I’ve been liking lately.

thanksgiving

-Rich

Tags: Christmas, Rich
Posted in Graphic Design, Uncategorized | No Comments »

National Geographic

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

This is a quick post I’ve been thinking about for a while.

A lot has been said about great iconic logos; IBM, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, ect. One of the logos with the most nostalgia for me is the National Geographic magazine cover. It’s a weird one, as it’s not really a logo. Now, they have the official logo with the yellow rectangle and text to the right, which is alright. But the real icon for the brand is the magazine itself. And that’s what I think is great about it.

The first issue had a very non-descript brown cover with thin dark line border. It looked like a very serious scientific journal. Sometime thereafter, before 1910 as far as I can tell, they added the yellow border. That has remained a constant ever since. It’s wonderful. It is something that makes the magazine cross many generations. That yellow border makes an issue from 1930 seem just as informative and interesting as one today. So much of the magazine is about constants. Places that haven’t changed. Mountains. Canyons. People. The cover of National Geographic. The yellow border remains, just as wonder remains.

-Rich

Tags: logo, National geographic, Rich
Posted in Graphic Design, Logo Design | No Comments »

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