Saving good causes from bad design.
Until recently, I did all my vector graphic work in InDesign or Photoshop. This might be a cardinal sin among designers. Vectors are what Illustrator was MADE for, it’s far more powerful when it comes to making scalable artwork or logos! But I’ve been using Photoshop and InDesign (and it’s predecessor, PageMaker) since I was 10 or 11, and I was afraid. Afraid of all the strange and different tools in the toolbar, afraid of the myriad unfamiliar options and settings not available in InDesign. I’ve always been more comfortable working with raster graphics.
About six months ago, I took a lettering workshop with the Friends of Type at Typecon, picked up a few crucial tips, and made my first Illustrator vector piece. After that, I made a commitment to master Illustrator, or perish in the process. I decided to convert the dozens of files I had for the board game I was designing, Co-opoly, from InDesign to Illustrator. I’m excited about the new directions Illustrator is taking my work, and thrilled to be learning new techniques and tricks every day.
This Halloween, I thought the best way to truly channel Illustrator was to BECOME Illustrator. I chose to embody Illustrator as a superhero, since my motto is “Saving good causes from bad design.”
See the process and final costume!
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Click to see it bigger
Hand lettering design made at the Friends of Type workshop at TypeCon 2011.
Leave a nice comment.And I love it! I’m down at Typecon in NOLA, and having a blast. New Orleans is as beautiful as I remember, but pretty gross and muggy in the 90s – though not as horribly unbearable as I expected. Thank goodness for air-conditioned hotels and workshop rooms.
Lots of cool signs everywhere
Yesterday I went to a hands-on CSS workshop with Marcin Wichary of Google and learned some great new web tricks. Today I went to the Friends of Type workshop and learned some awesome hand lettering tips and processes. I’m going to refine my design over the next few days, but I’ll post it here when it’s finished!
Some of my sketches from the workshop
Aaron and Erik, the Friends of Type
Well, I decided it was finally time for the yearly update of my website! I’m going to TypeCon in New Orleans this week, and expect to be doing a lot of networking with designer-types, so I figured I’d better make my website reflect what I’m up to now.
I not only redesigned the look of my website, but did a refresh of my portfolio too. All the projects featured are from the past year, with the exception of my animation reel and some photography.
I’ve definitely grown by leaps and bounds in web design, from my first lame portfolio on googlepages, to wordpress, to indexhibit, to more advanced customizations of wordpress. The fonts used on my website are Lobster Two and Mako, available through the Google webfonts API.
Those of you who have seen previous versions of my websites, what do you think of the latest?
Leave a nice comment.One of Tara and I’s obsessions while traveling was creating ambigrams. They first came onto our radar when we were discussing the design possibilities for our next circus venture, Downside-Up. With a name like that, there are so many graphic possibilities, but I realized an ambigram would be the most apropos.
What is an ambigram? According to Wired, ambigrams are the hottest trend in typography since Helvetica. An ambigram is a word-image that can be read from multiple vantage points, most commonly by flipping it 180 degrees. Ambigrams were popularized a few years ago by Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons, which features several ambigrams as plot points, including this one to the left.
Now, the complex gothic ambigrams from Angels and Demons were the only ones I was very familiar with, and I believed them to be for advanced artists, mathematicians, designers – not for amateur typographers and doodlers like us.
ambigram in progress
NOT SO! Ambigrams are fun AND easy to make! Tara and I made loads of them on our many long train rides around Europe. It’s pretty simple – I just start with writing the word below itself upside down. Then look at each of the letter pairs, think about the key components in each letter necessary to define it, and start doodling different ways those letters can be combined. Think about how to turn necessary letter strokes into decorative elements. It also helps to consider both upper and lower case letters, I thought ‘SEATTLE’ would be impossible, until I thought to try it with lower case letters.
I’m in the process of digitizing the Downside-Up ambigram for a logo now, but meanwhile here’s another one I’m working on. Try making them sometime! And don’t go looking for any lame ambigram generators on the internet – get out a pencil and pad and do it yourself. It’s like solving a logic puzzle.
For more on ambigrams, check out:
http://www.johnlangdon.net/ – the website of the Prof who’s one of the leading ambigram scholars, he also made all the ambigrams for Dan Brown.
http://www.ambigram.com/ – online magazine about everything ambigram.
Leave a nice comment.The last week and a half traveling on my own in Scotland has been crazy. I’ve been working at a hostel by Loch Tay, and when I first arrived it was hectic because it was Easter holiday weekend, and the hostel manager took off for the week to be at his other hostel on Mull. It was overbooked most of the weekend, and I had to sleep in a different bed every night.
But the rest of the week was mostly pretty quiet and peaceful. I had the company of Joe, a British filmmaker who was also doing Help Exchange there, and Andre, a colorful Estonian character who’s working at a local restaurant and living at the hostel. Joe is working on writing a screenplay, and we got to talking and sharing ideas. We ended up collaborating on an animation for a logo sequence for his production company, Dreamscape Pictures. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever animated, I will definitely post it here when it’s finished (it’s about 90% done now). Hooray for unexpected creative collaboration!
Pretty much all I’ve done the last couple days is bake and cook and juggle and animate. I think I have improved ten-fold at juggling in the past two weeks, I can do a bunch of tricks now. And I baked chai shortbread biscuits, cinnamon oat scones, and vanilla almond biscotti. All with no measuring utencils! I have a very good sense for estimating ingredients now. Yummm.
SADLY my camera battery charger dissapeared so I have very little documentation of Scotland. I have a few pictures of a gorgeous hike up Ben Lawers, which I will post as soon as I find a place with wifi (I am on a hostel computer now).
Tomorrow I will explore Edinburgh, and on Monday I fly back to Boston. Farewell to Europe for now, and hello to friends and family back in the states!
-Molly
Leave a nice comment.As I’ve become more familiar with the graphic design and typography “world,” and begun to identify more of my favorite artists and type designers (Robert Slimbach, Matthew Carter, David Carson…) I’ve started to wonder why I don’t have more female role models.
The other day I happened upon this fantastic video (I highly recommend it) of a panel discussion on the art of the book, with Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd, and Dave Eggers, moderated by Michael Beirut. I’m very familiar with all of their work, and all four of them are some of my top heroes – my idols! The coolest, savviest, most interesting designers I know! And seeing all of them together in the same room talking about book design, it was a real treat. Until the very end during a Q & A, when there was a question about why there were so few female “superstar” graphic designers – “is there a glass ceiling in graphic design?” Milton Glaser’s response:
He said that the reason there are so few female rock star graphic designers is that “women get pregnant, have children, go home and take care of their children. And those essential years that men are building their careers and becoming visible are basically denied to women who choose to be at home.” He continued: “Unless something very dramatic happens to the nature of the human experience then it’s never going to change.” About day care and nannies, he said, “None of them are good solutions.”
The crowd was silent except for a hiss or two and then Eggers piped up that he and his wife both work from home and share child care responsibilities — but added that maybe New York was different (although we don’t think Eggers really believes this). Then it was clear to everyone in the room that it was time to move on.
In Helvetica (the greatest movie ever) why are only two of the two dozen interviews with women?
Shira asked me once when the first time I was really conscious of my gender was. There are probably some times in my youth that I can’t clearly recall (other kids questioning whether I could play Huck Finn because I was a girl), I think the first time was in a class my freshman year of high school. After completing a month’s worth of assignments for an Intro to Technology class in one day, my parents and teachers realized something should be done. So I was transferred into Visual Communication, where I was the only freshman and the only girl. I thrived on the material, but I felt really uncomfortable and out of place in that environment.
I’ve take a number of computer and technology oriented classes in both high school and college, and I’ve always been in the minority. I think it always made me subconsciously want to work harder, to prove that I could be as good or better than the boys.
Graphic Design, Feminism, and Me – Part 2: what I’ve learned from doing design and animation on the documentary film Heretics: Stories from a Feminist Art Collective for the past two years… coming soon.
-Molly
(p.s. if you read this, you should comment! the more you comment on our blog, the happier we will be, and the more often we will update. it’s nice to know when your writing is read.)
Leave a nice comment.This is from McSweeney’s, and it’s so fantastic I decided to repost in it’s entirety.
WHITE HOUSE STAFF MEMO REGARDING THE TRANSITION ON JANUARY 20
by WENDY MOLYNEUX and MIKE BOYLE
To: allstaff@whitehouse.gov
Re: transition
All,
As you know, the date when we must be out of our offices is fast approaching. Here are a few helpful reminders in preparation for the changeover:
1. As of this morning, the red phone is again routed to the Kremlin, not Domino’s. Please use a regular phone to place your lunch order.
2. The Monday Night Football Room has been converted back into the War Room. That is why the president is crying.
3. If Mr. Cheney has killed one or more members of your family, kindly recall that we gave you a Wii in exchange for your continued silence.
4. All staff is requested to sweep the residential rooms for hidden Bacardi bottles. Please give these bottles to the president, as he would like to throw them away personally.
5. So as to appear frugal, we will be burning $100 bills instead of $1,000 bills in the fireplaces.
6. Going forward, if you experience problems with the Xerox machine, please summon a technician—not a demon.
7. When the first lady is in her werewolf state, please do not let her out of her cage.
8. If Obama staff are in the White House prior to the transition, please refrain from eating babies in front of them.
9. Please remove skulls, scalps, and human bones from common areas.
10. A construction team will be closing up the hellmouth in the Oval Office. Please pardon our dust.
11. Please take home any leftovers from the fridge.
Leave a nice comment.Amazing photos of frozen bubbles.
I might actually try doing this. It’s certainly cold enough here to attempt…
Leave a nice comment.This is kind of amazing.
GM: OK, the bugbear attacks you. What do you do?
OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it.
MCCAIN: OK, seriously. Why does he have so many henchmen? I’m a level 72 ranger and he’s only a level 8 paladin.
OBAMA: Well, if you’d bought the Grassroots Organizing and Oratory/Colgate Smile proficiencies you could min max it so that you…
MCCAIN: Why is he even IN this campaign? I thought this was supposed to be a high level party.
OBAMA: Well, maybe some people got tired of the grim and squinty “Matterhorn, son of Marathon” shtick you keep doing. Dude, could you be any less original?
MCCAIN: Oh my god, I did not leave my left nut in a tiger cage in the Tomb of Horrors to spend my Friday nights mopping up after the new kid.
OBAMA: “My friends, I am a totally unoriginal grizzled character class stereotype. I should lead the party because I have more testicular damage than that one.”MCCAIN: Yeah, well, you pal around with dark elves.
OBAMA: OH NO YOU DIDN’T.
MCCAIN: Whatever, so’s your mom.
OBAMA: So’s your FACE.
MCCAIN: So’s your Mom’s face!
HILARY: WTF you guys. Why am I playing the cleric?
Read the rest..
-Molly
Leave a nice comment.I promised recipes on this blog, so here’s a recipe! The last few days I’ve had a lot of turbulent energy after work that I needed to channel into something. So I made a few pumpkin pies, and last night I made pumpkin biscuits. I had never made pie or biscuits before, but they both came out quite nice. My only regret with the biscuits is I made them a little too thin. While they have a good biscuity texture, they’re also rather moist, which is nice.
-Molly
Pumpkin Biscuits!
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Okay, SO Tara and I have been horrible at blogging the last few weeks, but we’ve both been rather busy moving. To be fair, I moved only from North Amherst to Hadley, about five miles away, and Tara moved from New York to London… Here is a picture of us hugging goodbye a few weeks ago. And, here are some random scattered thoughts and article excerpts about social interaction the internet and such things.
I read an interesting article a few days ago about digital intimacy, and it had a few new media terms I liked: microblogging (posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing, like Twitter) and ambient awareness.
“This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.”
But: “If you’re reading daily updates from hundreds of people about whom they’re dating and whether they’re happy, it might, some critics worry, spread your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships.” It’s a long article, but I recommend reading all of it, very fascinating stuff.
I also just read an article in Hampshire’s student newspaper, the Climax, about so-called “Facebook celebrities” in the incoming class – those kids who, before school even starts, go and and friend every single person they can find. So when you meet someone you’ve friended on Facebook in person for the first time, do you pretend you don’t already know where they’re from, their favorite music, relationship status, and employment history? Is it taboo to ask about an interesting picture you saw of them on a vacation?
Facebook was the new thing when I first started college, and our generation is still navigating the social do’s and don’ts of how online information is used in real life interaction. But do you suppose, in a few years, there will be a more universal, unwritten social code about how we interface with such things? OR, maybe at some point ALL of our socializing will just be digital? This virtual reality cocoon is amazing technology, but it kind of freaks me out.
We joke casually nowadays about googling or stalking someone online, but in the age of social networking, digital intimacy, ambient information, and blogging, where is the line drawn between curiosity, obsession, and straightforward stalking?
-Molly
Leave a nice comment.Now that “photoshopping” has become a commonly used term in pop culture vocabulary, even most non-digital artists can spot and laugh at a bad Photoshop job these days. But when the government is behind such an image, it becomes even more amusing and disturbing.
Evidently the Iranian government needs to hire some better photoshoppers… or better yet, STOP FIRING MISSILES. This image was printed on the front page of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and many others before someone noticed there was a missile too many, and an identical cloud of smoke.
Oh, and did you think that the satellite photos on Google maps were surely sacred? Apparently not, as evidenced by this secret alien landing site in Holland.
It seems like everyone is manipulating reality these days, from shady foreign governments, to bitter relatives removing undesired family members from vacation photos.
Manipulating photographs has been going on long before the advent of Photoshop, but the degree to which people are digitally altered today is unsettling. Sure, as a photoshop artist, it’s very easy for me to change the color of your shirt, remove a few zits, smooth out those wrinkles, trim a few pounds… but should I? Where to draw the line between a few touch ups and a completely fabricated makeover? I would hope that most women understand the degree to which celebrities and supermodels are digitally beautified these days, but I know that’s not the case.
I guess the bottom line is: don’t trust any image you see, and either launch the proper amount of nuclear weapons or just don’t bother launching any at all.
For more about Photoshop topics, see:
the Dove “Evolution” ad, and it’s many parodies
Photoshop Disasters - blog about poorly done and often amusing photoshop jobs
You Suck at Photoshop - very entertaining serialized fictional video blog, masquerading as actually useful Photoshop tutorials
-Molly
Leave a nice comment.I’ve been thinking about the dichotomy of connectivity, communication, and new media. How “web 2.0″, social networking, cell phones, email, etc are making communication across time and space exponentially faster and easier. And yet, we are often so plugged in that we sometimes don’t take time to interact in real ways with real people around us. I am not arrogantly scolding society, I am often guilty of this too. But I am always trying to think of creative ways to start conversations between strangers, like my 11 Shirts project. Also, this was part of the instigation for my friend Tara to start the Society for the Creative REalization of a Weirder You. This is from our manifesto:
Worried about personal connections in a society of increasing isolation, SCReWY aims to be the antithesis of apathy — to challenge the public to actively engage in changing and exploring reality.
SCReWY manifests interactive interventions by using internet video and new media technologies to connect cyberspace with real space. Orchestrating flash mobs, Happenings, community art, and collaborative performances, SCReWY aims to proactively instigate community expression
There are a million other sub-topics I could take on here: crowdsourcing, social bookmarking, activism on the internet, performance art and the web, and of course… facebook. I have probably done too much critical thinking about facebook for my own good. But these will probably all come up in future blog posts. For a start, see my two videos about Friendship on the internet, and Minifeed: a Story about Facebook.
-
In other news, my SCReWY-cofounder, friend, and long time collaborator Tara will be joining me on this blog! She’s also taking next year off of Hampshire, and she’ll be in London for most of the year, playing with her new baby niece and doing circus things. Hooray for Tara!
-Molly
Leave a nice comment.Sometimes, I silently scold cars that pass me when I’m biking, in a Dave Eggers style imagined conversation.
- You don’t see what I see.
- I am in a hurry.
- The hot air balloons drifting over the cornfields at sunrise…
- I am tired.
- The horses, sheep, cows, winking as you glide by.
- …
- Endless farmland and gracious meadows, rolling green hills. Twisty tall trees, vines hanging down to create a tunnel of green. The birch groves, where, when the early morning sun hits just right, you can very nearly catch sight of where the elves live. On the bridge crossing the Connecticut, squinting a little and tilting your eyebrows just so, the bridge disappears and you are flying into the sunset on your bike, ET style, through the viney green canopies of Never Never Land.
- I am sorry.
- Just think about biking next time.
Also: 20 miles a day X 5 days a week X 10-ish weeks = 1,000 miles! Yeah!
And: Today I got caught in the rain on my way home. It wasn’t so bad at first, the only thing that’s hard about biking in the rain is when my glasses get clouded. But then it started getting really vigorous, and maybe hailing, so I took shelter under a little tunnel because I knew it would pass soon.
After a few minutes, the sun came out, but the rain was still coming down hard core. A rainbow appeared in a perfect arch over the path, lined with trees stretching off into to the horizon, and it was just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
This is not my image, but I included it just so you could get a general idea. Sometime I’ll take my camera along and document the beauty myself.
- M
Leave a nice comment.The other day I was fontspotting in Northampton, and I wondered just how many fonts I could easily name if I saw them somewhere in public. At first I thought about a dozen. Then I thought, well, maybe something more like two dozen.
When I got home I made a list of all the fonts I can recognize and identify instantaneously.
48. And there are about two dozen more I can name with a little thought.
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