These are a couple of really nice stamp designs I dug up on Flickr. The design is so clean and elegant, it's a shame that we don't see stamp designs like this around anymore. Both designs communicate a big message with only the simplest of lines and form. I am a little short on information about the designers of these stamps therefore, if anyone has any information about them, I would love to hear about it.
I had a bunch of my new designs printed yesterday. It is always fantastic to see your work as a tangible object. This is a string of pictures I shot of the Imagination print today. It is printed on 19 mil velvet fine art paper (which I am particularly fond of).
Finished this new, typographically focused print a few days ago. Imagination was created as a small mailer card for DesignbySolo promotional purposes. Clean, crisp, and tasteful were the objectives for this design with a classical color scheme of grays, cremes, and dark reds. I started this design by compiling a list of words and fragment sentences of things that I am inspired by, as they came to me. I then narrowed the list and built a justified text block, culminating in a paragraph about imagination and design as it relates to DesignbySolo.
This is a print I designed for fun. It features a photograph I took of my girlfriend last winter when we were outside playing around in a snow storm. It was one of the first snows of the year and we went outside to enjoy it and play with my two cats, Aslan and Silence. The extra treatment was done in Illustrator in the style of Arnaud Mercier, the French designer who I had been studying at the time.
It was around 30 degrees outside today so I decided to post this as the image of the week to inspire thoughts of warmer and happier times. This image was taken on Panama Beach in Florida with a great afternoon temperature of 81 degrees. Shot with my Canon digital.
After breaking out the old Transform print in the archive work post, I decided to convert the design into a t-shirt, Transform as Needed, available for purchase at the shop.
This print was created for the same client that had me make the Imamaginazione v.1 poster. This poster, Doppelnachte (or Dual Nights), is for an exhibition in Berlin. The guidelines for this poster were very similar to the previous project but I decided to add a bit of color. This print was created about half and half with Photoshop and Illustrator.
This is a fantastic print with a lot of wonderful aspects. The image has a great ambiance depicted through the cool colorization of the background warmed by the orange glow of the headlights. This was photographed at the perfect and precise time of day. Also, the font and type treatment work perfectly to create a elegant and simple logomark.
This is a font I designed about a year ago to go along with some web based graphics I was producing at the time. I call the font Breeze as a kind of ironic name that emphasizes its geometry. Breeze is based off of a 25-square grid with characters for every letter and major symbol. Breeze is my first, and as of right now, only font creation.
I created this print, entitled Immaginazione v.1, as promo poster for the Imagination Art Exhibition in Pisa. The guidelines were very open giving me really great freedom for flexibility on this project. Created almost entirely in Illustrator (with a bit of touch-up in Photoshop) I kept with a very muted color scheme which gives a classic, contemporary feeling which are the two main themes of the exhibit.
The latest image for display features Japanese Koi, one of my favorite symbols to use to depict Asian culture in my work. These specimens were very beautiful but not quite as large as some that I have seen. This was shot with my Canon digital via a polarizing lens filter. Hope it helps to inspire for the day.
I recently created this print, simply 69, as a submission piece to the online magazine Anti. The theme for the current issue was 69, therefore I tried to develop a print that worked with the theme in an unconventional (non-sexual) way. Upon doing a little research, I found that 69 is the twentieth distinct bi-prime number, etc. and also the atomic number for thulium. I incorporated some bits of the information that I found in a predominantly typographic piece. Enjoy.
The latest edition to my 'archive work' postings, Transform. I completed this work after a pretty extensive study of Michael Place's work (Build). Designed as a homage to old gaming electronics, it contains silhouettes from Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, and X-Box. The message, Transform, exemplifies the systems as a means of escape (which holds personal significance). With video games it is possible to escape the sometimes mundane realities and become something greater.
My tiny beetle design, Eldritch, has beeen featured on the RedBubble homepage today. I have been a member of the Redbubble artist community since October 2007, where I have a print/clothing shop, and this is the first time I have got a piece featured on the homepage. It is quite rare and a great honor for me to be represented in such a way. Visit Redbubble homepage or check out the Eldritch, design which was inspired by shiny beetle that I photographed with a macro lens.
As a freelance designer, I am constantly looking for new projects and new clients. I recently created this blog, but after a couple of weeks I realized that I wasn't fully utilizing this space as an advertising platform (not having any advertisement that I am available for hire). Therefore, the word is now out, "Hire DesignbySolo for your design project, today." Spread the word, tell your friends, don't be afraid to drop me a line (or a call). If you have a design project you need a hand on or are looking for a artistic new spin on an existing entity, contact DesignbySolo. From print graphics, to identity (logo), or web I can be your design solution. If you don't have a current project but want to hear what my design principles are like, want to see more of my work, or simply want to discuss design in general, feel free to get in touch.
Recently finished this new print, Just Before Waking. It kind of acts as the culmination of my hand-drawn experimentation. I combined two separate pencil drawings (which I retraced in Illustrator) to make this print. No particular meaning here... when I decided to create these, I sat down with the intent to draw the first thing that came to my head until I filled the page up. Hope you enjoy.
Its been a while since I have posted anything about prefabricated home, but there are still several other places I found to discuss. The EcoSpace Studio is one of my favorite prefab designs. Available as modular or bespoke sizes, ecospace is perfect for extending your living or working space. With emphasis on fast track installation, your ecospace is fully insulated, heated and ready to use within matter of days without compromising quality and attention to detail. The roof of the ecospace is covered in ultra-low maintenance organic plants that not only reduce the visual impact, they also ensure the area taken by the ecospace continues to give something back to the environment. The siding is cedar, the flooring is heated, and the windows are high-energy, sealed-unit double-glazing with Scandinavian pine frames. The homes are customizable and very affordable, check them out for yourself at ecospace.
I wanted to start doing some posts that show some of the art that inspires my creativity. For quite a while I have been stockpiling art (anything that catches my eye) to go over and draw creativity from. I wanted to go ahead and share some of this art to hopefully show the outlines and origins of where my work comes from and maybe inspire some of the readers. This piece was found on the FFFFound! database. I don't really have a lot on this piece, anyone else have any info? At any rate, the typography, tone, and subtle texture are well portrayed. The jagged lengths and tails on two sides of the text columns really offset the symmetry of the work.
For anyone who has been keeping up with the Image of the Week posts, they have all been shot with my Lomo film camera, but it is Valentines Day today, so in light of the mood of the day I decided to go with a flower picture. This flower (maybe a magnolia?) was a blossom from a tree and was shot with my Canon Digital Rebel. The flowers were a light pink color, but in the afternoon light of the fading sun they came across as more purple than pink. Hope you like it, have a happy Valentines Day.
This is the latest print in the Prot +A series, entitled Nostalgia. It follows the same lines as the previous two prints, paying homage to outdated (but not out designed) machinery from the past. This focus of this print is an old IBM computer, very similar to one of the first computers I encountered in elementary school. Printed on velvet fine art paper from my Epson 2400 Photo. Let me know what you think.
I was so happy with the way the way my latest print, Revolution, turned out that I decided to go ahead and do a series of prints in that style in order to pay homage to the technological relics of the past. It sometimes seems that in the race for new and better technology, the outward design of the product is put on the back-burner or left as an afterthought. Contemporary designs seem to be cold, sleek and shiny, whereas these technologically inferior, but design superior devices of the past seemed to epitomize grace, warmth, and usability. This piece, entitled Essence, credits the age of records and turntables; I hope you enjoy it. I also decided to enter this piece in the competition held by Code magazine in which the winning image is displayed on the cover of their spring issue.
I had one of my works, Robot Monster, featured in Blanket Magazine's issue 8. "Blanket is a free PDF art + design + photography magazine that is released bi-monthly. It is aimed at uncovering new, emerging talent from around the world." The theme and title of issue 8 was, "I Made This." Under this theme I entered a Robot Monster, which I had recently created after a study of some hand drawing techniques and styles. I also released this design on the RedBubble shop as a t-shirt.
This is another archive piece which I never titled. It is a poster design that I did as a recruiting tool for the Visualist Design program at Shawnee State University. My main theme was a rainbow, which I used to symbolize a promise, and to encompass all types of people. I displayed pictures in a web (spider, not internet) layout, with pictures in each web-shoot featuring a color of the rainbow, all linked to a central hub (Visualist Design). The assignment also required the necessary courses listed somewhere on the poster. I categorized the classes and listed them below the web rainbow under color groups.
Image of the Week, wk. 4. The last featured image of the week was of a dolphin, taken at a resort in the Mayan Riviera last year. This weeks image was taken at the same time, but features a manatee. Manatees are fantastic creatures and I almost regret not being able to swim with them, more than not being able to interact with the dolphins. Anyway, hope you like it.
