The Magical World of Medical MMJ

Hello everyone.

Yes It's been awhile, but back I am with new work.

I am currently working with a medical marijuana dispensary and let me just say that it has been and amazing design challenge. medical cannabis is a new industry and as such, it offers us a unique opportunity to really flex some design muscles. Because medical marijuana is so new there is no real design standard for it, each collective garden stands alone so to speak. What I mean by this is that almost every collective has its own sense of style, it's own approach to medicine and its own unique branding. I was lucky enough to hook up with the amazing people at Herbal Choice Caregivers. I was given the task of creating a new look for them and here is what has been done so far!

Business cards

Informational pamphlet.

Some New Cool Design

Its been awhile since I posted, so I guess i will start with some of the design that I have really been appreciating lately.

#1!

Jimmy John's

Although JJ's has kinda a frat boy feel with its funny ads and it's line of instant gratification sandwiches, I can not help but be amazed at how well designed and well put together all of their marketing materials are. Along with their immaculate attention to detail when it comes to their branding, the custom signs hanging around JJ's are also very well designed.

#2!

Popchips

Ok, so i know these aren't exactly brand new, but I felt like I needed to bring it up because its just so dang cool. The Popchips branding is awesome! The simplistic design really lends itself to the product, with different bag colors for each flavor. Bust winner for the best part of the design goes to the logo! Even though you can't see the stem of the "i", having the dot above the space between the "h" and the "p" suggests the stem so well that your eyes just except that it's there, how incredible is that. It's definitely times like these that I just love graphic design!!

”Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” -- Picasso.

-Claire Svendsgaard

It Been A While

OK.... So its been a little bit since my last update, but I promised myself that I would get better at this whole blogging thing.

So today I am gonna talk about things I have been looking at recently and some stuff that I have been working on.

So as of late I have been really into industrial design, by this I mean packaging. I recently bought a copy of the Big Book Of Packaging (heres a link in case your interested in getting a copy), I think that this book is really a must have for a designer. Sooo any ways, on to what I'm really excited about. Mixed Emotions has got to have the coolest packaging I have ever seen. The way the the glass intertwines together with the flavoring in on tube and the alcohol in the other, it's pretty much genius, plus it just looks beautiful. Not only was the industrial design extremely well thought out but the design on the labels were designed so that they wouldn't over take the already complex styling of the bottle while still being gorgeous.




         I think that its time that someone starts talking about the redesign that Kotex just went through! Not that any really likes to talk about feminine hygiene products, but come on, you have to give credit where it is due and the design team who designed the new "U" collection deserves a huge pat on the back because its awesome!

So now onto what I have been working on.

Presenting The Shes concert poster collection.

This is only the first three in what I hope is going to be a series of ten. This is a made up band based on an idea that a friend and I came up with when we were young. It's the Damn You Stupid Girls tour! Given that the band is supposed to be a punk rock girl band I decided to try and stick with a fun theme of pink and black. The  logo being a pair of lips with "The Shes" written in them, I decided to try adding some photo elements into the series to make the group a little mare dynamic. As soon as I have some more of the series done I will have them up.


Till next time!!

If Fire Was Water

I happened upon these images today and had to add them to my blog. They are from Platinum FMD which from what I gathered in a studio that focuses on images manipulation and using CGI.  Here are some of my favorites of the site.

 Tell me thats not cool. They have a lot of other really neat things on there site so here is the link Platinum FMD

Enjoy.

So What About Psychedelic Art?

So what about Psychedelic art?

As ofter as you see art from the 60's you don't normally thing about psychedelic art.  Try this on for size Alton Kelly was a poster artist of this era who made posters for people such as Jimi Hendrix and the Doors also did this:

Thats right, the things you use to role your cigarettes, he had a big hand in that. He also was one of the founding members of Family Dog, the series of concert dances in the 60's.

What lots of people don't realize is the work that went into making the work that you saw on the posters. given that there were know computers for graphic design at this time they had to make a print all of these posters by hand.

Take Rick Griffin for example he was a fabulous artist who stated off doing hand drawn comics for a surf magazine. He had to teach him self how to print and look at the stuff he did:

Can you imagine having to print these? Having to get the registration perfect every time? To teach people about color they really should have to learn printing because the extreme amount of time that it takes just to do one poster if amazing.

If you are interested in this kind of art take a look at

Alton Kelly
Rick Griffin
Stanley Mouse

Did Someone Loose the game?

For those of you who play I'm sorry.

Now on to real business. I have been looking at motion graphics as of late, thinking that it might be something that would make a fun career. Looking through a lot of different things on youtube and vimeo, I have found quick a few great motion graphics videos. What surprised me though was the stuff that people at my school are producing. After spending a good few hours online looking through videos I discovered that the things some of my class mates are making are very much professional and in some cases way better than some of the things you actually see on tv. For example Janeale Dean and Steven Akers have bee doing some fabulous work lately, check these out because I'm sure you will see stuff by them on tv very soon.


BATHtastic! bumper commercial from Janeale Dean on Vimeo.


Amazon Logo Animation from Steven Akers on Vimeo.

House of Cards

It's been a looooong week folks. Coming up to the end of the semester and working hard to get everything in on time. One of these projects that I happen to be working on right now is the House of Cards. This project is something that you would think would be easy since we pretty much get complete creative freedom with, but alas I feel like most of us are so used to having direction that we are funning around like chickens with our heads cut off (sorry to the animal activists out there). Well after going through a couple different ideas and trying to make sure the project didn't come out looking like a complete disaster it came down to this:

House of Cards Box and Cards

This is my House of cards. I decided to go with emoticons, so one one side there is an example of the use of the emoticon like on face book or yahoo messenger and the other size it is a picture of a person doing that facial expression with a one word description of the emotion. Over all the pictures came out well given that I am photographically challenged. Pretty much, I'm just happy to have it done, this semester has kicked my proverbial butt.