How I spent the rest of my summer

As we’re heading into Labor Day weekend, I’m just baffled by just how quickly the summer went by. Next thing I knew, six weeks passed without making a post. Family-wise, we took a trip to Durango and spent a lot of time playing outside. However, when I wasn’t working, every time I was in front of the computer, I was consumed by making lots of other things besides blog posts.

New Amy and the Peace Pipes single

My band was excited to release a new single, “Piano In My Head”, and I did some artwork for the cover, having little fun compositing the images in Photoshop.

The single is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Google Play, and just about anywhere you can stream music.

Bethany’s Counseling Video

After winning Colorado School Counselor of the Year in 2018, Bethany needed to submit a video to the national association for their award. She came up with a really great idea of doing a parody of “We Will Rock You” and story-boarded the whole video. We got the footage last spring, but we had to get it edited and submitted. While it turned out a little differently than we originally envisioned, we were really happy with the result.

https://youtu.be/_MYQlUHWTQs

Design, design, design

I’ve gotten some opportunity to do some poster and promo designs for a lot of band events I’ve been involved with. As a band, we had some pretty big shows, including getting to play Old Town Square.

I guess after creating all those things, I can see why it feels like summer zoomed by. Here’s to a fun fall!

New Gigposter: Stuff A Truck Benefit Concert

We have a really exciting gig coming up with Amy and the Peace Pipes on Friday, where we’ll be playing with Aires Attic and South to Cedars to benefit Homeless Gear.  Members from the three bands has been doing a lot of work towards things, getting some generous businesses to donate really cool prizes that we’ll be giving away.  I got a chance to design some artwork for it, I do have to confess that I did borrow from a previous design that I put together 8 years ago – but I figured the Statute of Limitations for my artwork expired and I could make it useful again.

20161118-HomelessGearBenefit

One of the biggest challenges was the use of all of the logos for the sponsors. Everyone’s managed to come in different shapes, sizes and colors.  I also found it difficult to striking the balance to providing the logos enough prominence without detracting too much from the other information I was trying to convey.

I also played around a lot with the new Facebook banner design, coming up with this guy:

20161118-HomelessGearBenefit-FB

The gap in the middle was allocated to give space for the event title and date that Facebook imposes. People who would click onto the cover art would see the full “donate items” text, but I wanted to put the most striking content above the fold. Here’s what it looks like over on Facebook:

StuffATruckFB

I played around with the art some more, making a 1×1 image for our Twitter and Instragram profile pictures:

20161118-HomelessGearBenefit-1x1

I’d definitely welcome any thoughts or input!

New Artwork: Pamlico Sound

it’s been a while since I’ve had a reason to play with some graphic design work, but I got an opportunity to do a little for a band I’m playing with tonight, The Pamlico Sound.  They’re doing their CD release show, and had the idea of giving away a song from their new CD. I designed this 4×5 postcard that we’ll be putting on the tables at the bar. I set up a quick script to collect email addresses for the mailing list in return for the file.  I’m sad to say that this is my first foray into responsive web design, but found it surprisingly easy.

PamlicoCard

I’m pretty satisfied with the art work, but definitely could use some improvement on my script. For something quick & dirty: it’ll do the job.  I’d definitely welcome any feedback (especially on the artwork).

Also if you happen to find yourself in Boulder on Saturday (Feb 23), come out to the Lazy Dog and check us out! We’ll be playing around 11pm.

More Graphic Design Artwork

I wrapped up my semester in my Graphic Design class, with things turning out pretty well. I wanted to share some of my final work in that class.  We had two remaining projects: A 1929-era travel poster, and a movie poster for our favorite movie.

Starting with my Vintage Travel Poster: I really struggled with this project the most. I’m a modern-oriented guy, who loves the bleeding edge – so to try to re-create something that looked old and dated was really tough to wrap my head around.  I decided to go with a train poster, starting with Paris, then was later convinced to do a series of travel posters around France.

The last project was the poster for our favorite movie, which I chose The Dark Knight.  I decided to gear my poster towards people who have seen the movie and understand the specific scene.  Let me know what you think:

More artwork: CSU Alternative Spring Break Benefit Poster

Earlier this week I posted my Rockies logo for my Graphic Design class.  Last weekend, I put together a personal project.  Greenfoot is playing a benefit show for the CSU Alternative Spring Break, and I volunteered to put together the poster for this show.  I’d be anxious to hear your thoughts:

Also if you’re in Fort Collins/Northern Colorado, we’d love for you to come out on Sunday night and support a great cause with us!