PHX Layers Quarter Finals Weekend!

Yesterday's match was between myself and Safwat Saleem. He's a tough competitor, but it was a good match. The new format allows all of the images to come together in the end and create one large image of the match, pretty awesome idea. Voting is now open.

The other competitions were between Tiphani Brook vs Pricilla Gomez, Jon Ashcroft vs Sean Cornwall and Elliot Fuller vs Luz Galusha-Luna (in that order). Some amazing design going on this weekend.

Check out the PHX Layers exhibit durning Phoenix Design Week

Phoenix Design Week

As you may know, I've been involved with the creation of Phoenix Design Week and I'm super excited about it! It's been an awesome opportunity to work with some great creatives around the valley and pretty cool to be part of this revolution in the local design community. I hope you can make it out, there are some really cool speakers, exhibits, films and lots of fun parties planned. Oh and speaking of exhibits, that's kinda my sector, if you're interested in submitting design work to show during the week, or create something for one of the exhibits we've created, check out the Exhibits Page. Hope to see you there!

Photoshop Layers Match

Saturday's PHX Layers match was myself versus Victor Vasquez. Basically what happens in a Layer match is first, a coin toss, and whoever wins has 30 minutes to come up with a design in Photoshop. After their time is up they then pass it off to their competition who has another 30 minutes to manipulate the file keeping some element(s) from the previous design. This goes on for three rounds. It's tough, thirty minutes is not a lot of time once you get started. 

It's kinda strange because I think I'm becoming addicted to this competition, it's fun, I even get butterflies right before it begins.  Check out PHXLayers.com to see all the matches. 

Here is my final "volley" from Saturday's match. 

PHX Layers Competition - Qualifiers

A couple months ago I invited my friend Elliot to a Photoshop tennis challenge, being called Phoenix Layers. It's a chance for local Phoenix designers to show off their skills and will eventually be  part of the Phoenix Design Week. It is being done tournament style, I think there will be an elimination every week or so, then the top two will go head-to-head live during the Design Week Conference at the end of October. Elliot and I both qualified to be in the tournament, here is the first challenge between us.

Elliot started the challenge with an image of his new devil-baby, Cash.

Next, I had a little trick up my sleeve for Elliot...or should we call him "bunny"?

Dazed and confused, Elliot didn't know what "bunny" meant, but he fell for the trap and kept the "bunny" theme going. 

Little did he know, that, wham! I found a picture of him, dressed like a cute lil pink bunny. 

He tried to make himself look like a badass in a bunnysuit, by going the "look at me, I'm crazy" route. 

So I took his crazy eye and turned it into a happy ending. 

Thanks Ell, it was fun! 

Hopefully I'll make it to round two, I'll post when that happens!

Camping '09 Polaroid Photobook

In complete contrast to the two beautiful, clean-styled books I have completed in the last month, this little camping memoir is small and grungy. Chris and I took the dogs camping this weekend and I brought along one of my favorite toys, my polaroid camera. We managed to become incredibly filthy so I thought this book should reflect that. It turned out pretty cool especially since polaroids also have the reputation for being mucky, perfect!

Gorgeous Portfolio Book

I started working on this book back in January, so six months of consulting with the client, gathering images and copy, it's finally completed and printed! Kim at Good-Stock.com was a pleasure to work with and crafted a gorgeous portfolio. The leather cover is so soft, I want to take a nap on it. 

The printing turned out fantastic, the divider pages, which are Tizziano hand-made italian paper with debossed foil stamping are a highlight of the craftsmanship of the book. It really turned out nice. 

Pie Chart of Experience

Over the last 7 years or so, I have gathered a variety of skills. Here is a little pie chart of what my experience looks like.

Looks like I may need to update my pie chart to include furniture restoration.

Wedding Book Design

FedEx just dropped off my latest book and I'm pretty impressed with how it turned out! Blurb.com had contacted me a few weeks ago about a beta test they are doing specifically for graphic designers. They asked me to custom design a book using InDesign and then output a pdf to them (instead of using their online pre-made templates), in return I get a free book. What better way to use the 400+ images I have from our wedding?

I just submitted another book design to a printshop in Seattle today, they do old-school hand-binding, so I'm really excited to see how that one will turn out. Stay tuned!

I created another book a couple months ago using Blurb, that time I chose the softcover, I was a little disappointed in the quality so this time I chose the hardcover image-wrap and it has a much better feel.

OVO Party

I was invited to OVO's anniversary party last week. They do really nice work, thanks for the portfolio book guys, it turned out very nice.

Redesigning Christmas

I was listening to archives of one of my favorite NPR shows this morning, Studio 360. One of the topics (since the show was from Dec. 5, 08) was to redesign Christmas. Kurt Andersen (host) asked the design firm Pentagram to re-brand the holiday. One of the first things Michael Bierut at Pentagram suggested is to get rid of green and red, yes! The official color of Christmas will be white, and shades of white. That's what I usually try to stick to when doing Christmas-related design, and am happy to have some backup!















Here is the podcast, it's a fun listen, whether or not you agree.

PAPERSHAPERS

Did anyone catch the PAPERSHAPERS exhibit in LA that just ended? Well, it was put on by Scion and GiantRobot. It looked really cool, here are some of the submissions I found that I thought were inspirational.

Layers of intricate xacto-knifing, Hunter Stabler has some pretty amazing paper work.






















There is a special place in my heart for these little miniature buildings by Ana Serrano. My college roomate was an artist who made miniature ceramic buildings and furniture, we always had them around the house. I love the satellite dish, nice touch.

My favorite new cookbook

I was at Barnes and Nobel the other day looking for a baking book and while searching through the aisles of cookbooks, this one caught my attention. I picked it up, loved the feel of it, it is a lot lighter than you would think. The cover is a creamy linen, so it makes it feel really down home. I love the layout, styling and the way it's organized by seasons. The content it really nice as well, he not only gives you recipes, but explains how to grow some of the ingredients. The wood-cut graphics add to the organic feel of the book and the photography fits in perfectly.

By the way, the book was $40 at BnN, but I found it on Amazon for 15 bucks.