Short roundup of packaging that’s caught my eye

This gallery contains 5 photos.

Note: I’m using the mobile app for the first time so my apologies if anything looks wonky… A few wine labels that caught my eye recently… This olive oil bottle is a nice change of pace from the traditional earth … Continue reading →

Random ads I’ve seen here and there

There’s just something about mid-20th century (40s-60) ads that I just dig… These are hanging up in one of the laundromats in town.

Create Something Every Day (#daily365) #fb

©2010 rafael armstrong

©2010 rafael armstrong

©2010 rafael armstrong

©2010 rafael armstrong

The year ain’t over yet. Here’s a roundup of the latest…

Photoshop– you sure you’re doing that right?

I was walking around the mall this afternoon running a couple of errands before I start my new job on Monday, and I happened to come across a poster for the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie. I thought it was pretty cool as a teaser type poster (I’ve always been partial to bass and drums). That is, until  I took a look at its feet:

What jumped out at me was how oddly angled and out of proportion (relative to the figure as a whole) the sneakers looked. And let’s not get into the shadow. For a second I thought the whole thing might have been an optical illusion created by overly baggy pants, but the jeans looked loose or relaxed, but definitely not baggy. I also looked Michael Cera up on IMDB, and found that the kid’s close to six feet, so not only did the shoes look like they had been replaced, but they were now tiny as well (I’m fairly confident in saying that, if anything, Mr. Cera would not want to be known as the guy with the tiny feet).

Just so things are in context, here’s an image of the whole poster. I took the liberty of really quickly drawing a rough “wireframe” of where I think the original feet were placed.

I’m hoping the reason such slipshod work was put out was because of time constraints. I’d hate to think this exemplifies the type of quality the studio’s marketing people (whether in-house or not) are putting out.

So, tell me– am I correct in my observation? Am I completely off-base here? I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this.

The New Testament and Social Media

I’m writing this as I’m about to post, and not really editing (other than for typos), so please bear with me.

Lately I’ve been listening to Joel Osteen on Sunday mornings as I’m getting ready for church, and the last couple of weeks in particular have hit home with me, for one reason or another. Yesterday’s message boiled down to how we need to have in our “inner circle” (his phrase, not mine) people that will encourage us and who will be supportive in chasing and reaching our goal.  Those “toxic” relationships (as he described them) should be ones that we re-examine and possibly even eliminate from our lives.

Also, this past Sunday our church was visited by one of the pastors from a nearby church. The message he prepared and delivered was all about sharing. I believe some of the phrasing he used– to me– echoed in a weird reversed way Gordon Gecko’s speech about greed in Wall Street.

But I digress.

See, you can take out all the Biblical bibliography, and both messages remain extremely relevant. And, the way I see it, as designers/developers/artists– whatever, the idea of having people that are supportive of our goals and the idea of sharing what we have (knowledge, experience) are both things that are important to our growth, and are an integral part of living and interacting in the realm of social media. After all, isn’t that at least part of the reason we involved ourselves initially, and continue to do so day after day?

Create Something Every Day (#daily365)–for May 12

In case an apology needs to be made

I promised myself I wasn’t going to use helvetica for this. That said, I didn’t set out to the typeface I ended up using.

How did this happen?

I started looking at the different looks of each “h” typeface, and I noticed how much hobo’s “h” looked like a piece of a wishbone. I started scaling and placing and rotating, and the wishbone ended up becoming more of a spiral pattern. From there I arrived at what we have here. Total time: less than 10 minutes.

©2010 rafael armstrong

Create Something Every Day (#daily365)– for May 11

I learned two things working on this “g” piece. 1) I have a really sucky selection of “g” fonts on my Windows machine. And 2) I really like the double storey “g” over its single storey brethren. I also scoured the interwebs trying to find out why this letter changes from double to single as you travel to the heavier weights in Gill Sans (one of the quirks in this family that puzzles me), but came up empty. Guess there are some things that us humans aren’t meant to know.

So, long story short. I decided on Glasgow because I liked how the negative space played with the positive to give me the impression of crop circles. Simple as that. The color used is the same color (in various tints and transparencies) as on Scotland’s flag.

©2010 rafael armstrong

Create Something Every Day (#daily365)– for May 9

I just realized that I could have done something to belatedly commemorate here one of my best friend’s birthdays– oh well, hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

“e” is for Eurostile

Today we’re looking at the letter “e”. I saw Eurostile’s lowercase “e” and it reminded of some of those unwieldy, heavy door handles/pulls that you see in hotels and restaurants. So I played around in Illustrator with textures and stuff (which, I should point out, almost came close to bringing my 10+ year-old computer running CS3 to a grinding halt). Anyway, this was the result of roughly 20 minutes (or so) worth of work.

©2010 rafael armstrong

Create Something Every Day (#daily365)– for May 2

So much for the “every day” part. Although, I have been doing a fair amount of work these past couple of months, so it’s not like I’ve dropped designing and coming up with stuff altogether. Anyhow, I think I have a plan on how I’m going to get somewhat caught up fairly quickly. Here’s a start.

I was reading online today about two things that seemed to dovetail together in a funny way– to me, at least. First, the capping of the well out in the Gulf (BTW, if this isn’t the definition of cluster#$%&, then I don’t know what is. I’ll get off my eco-political soapbox now). Second, I read on a blog somewhere about a series of short videos made by the Old Spice Guy (OSG), some of which personally thanked celebs or “internet famous” folks. Both these things got me thinking about the long-running meme about Chuck Norris. And, being a fan of the show Deadliest Warrior, I started to wonder who’d win should Chuck and the OSG were to meet in a mano a mano.

Create Something Every Day (#daily365)– for May 1st

So, this is what I got for today. No fancy intros, no purple-prosed laden explanations.

©2010 rafael armstrong

(And, yes, I’m well aware there might be some irony at play tonight).

Enjoy!