One of the personal projects I’ve wanted to do for a while is a typography-based poster. Playing around with the idea that communication is a two-way street (communicator and recipient), it seemed like it would be a good candidate for a typographic attempt.

Just in case the words aren’t legible at this size, the road and dividing lines are made up of the repeating five words: ideas, imagery, thoughts, opinions, and feelings, which I thought comprises the majority of what we try to communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. The use of the different fonts (over 100) drives home the idea that there are more than one opinion, more than one idea, thought, etc.

I’ll probably keep polishing this, then see what it looks like in a large-format printout. It may look good on the office wall.

I’ve always loved the slice of Americana that is pop art. I wish there were more opportunities in my daily design career to utilize the style, but the fact is, there just aren’t that many instances where it would be appropriate. Even the great pop artists (as we’ve come to know them) such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and, of course, Andy Warhol, used the pop art movement as art, not the way modern designers use art in their designs.

That said, whenever I get the chance to delve into that arena I really enjoy it. I designed this BMW shirt for an E30 fan. It’s definitely not of the same caliber of the true pop artists, but it was fun to work on just the same.

I’ve had one of those weeks. The kind that feels like it’s lasted about a month.

Besides the gravity of home ownership settling in after the new purchase (mostly brought on by a steady stream of niggling problems), I then managed to get sick and miss two days of my 9-to-5 gig. Which, incidentally, runs from 7AM to 4:30PM.

On top of it all, I’ve been dealing with a new client regarding a design job. If you’ve been following my random rants, you kind of know what I’m up against. For those of you who aren’t yet up to speed, here’s a synopsis:
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I swear. There are some days that I really wonder if the job of designer is worth the frustration. It isn’t a difficult job, in fact I’ve often said a trained monkey could probably pull much of this off. It’s just the stupid things that give me pause. Or maybe it’s the number of stupid things that give me pause.

Today’s case in point:
The icon at the above, in full-size glory, is the result of a request from an internal development group. What they asked for was, and I quote, a “small, simple trash can icon.” We went back and forth all morning about the dimensions, then colors, and followed that up with a rousing conversation about the pros and cons of corrugated metal versus metal wire basket styles. That little thing above is the final artwork that got approved.

Long story short, I just spent my day creating a low bandwidth, high-contrast, empty version of the the default trash icon from Apple’s OSX dock.

I just wish they’d requested that from the beginning.