Kittys Drawings

Hi Everyone!
As promised, here is some ART – omg FINALLY. Hahah ;-P

This is a design I did for a company that my partner is involved with. They are having a risk management conference quite soon and needed an eye-popping handout that would go with the visitors welcome pack given to conference attendees. The theme of the conference was psychedelic 60′s! Crazy-cool! There I was thinking that risk management was kind of dry and would need sleek and minimal design. Not so!

Thankfully, their printer specialises in packaging and boxes etc so my idea for a fold up card was feasible. I thought something 3D would stand out amongst anything else in the welcome pack and my client gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted. Time being a major constraint of course. I did a small mock-up which got approved and then it was time to get cracking on the illustration.

In typical Esz fashion, I bit off more than I could chew, my plans being grander than the time would allow me to complete such ideas. But in the end I think I managed pretty good. The drawing took up the bulk of the time of course. I’m pretty sure my client is happy (I hope!!) and hope to see the finished result soon. I will post that if/when I get a copy so you can see how it’s supposed to stand up.

I used Corel Painter for the illustration (the mockups were done by hand!) and Adobe Illustrator for the layout.

Next up – More sewing. I’m fairly caught up now on blog-worthy sewing projects. I made a big leap yesterday actually spent some money on some NEW fabric. It is destined to become a dress to wear to a friends wedding. Which is only three weeks away. Cue major panic. BUT – it’s a fairly simple design so I hope I can knock it out quickly. I will start on the ‘wearable muslin’ today and have a go at the proper dress next week. The fear of cutting into something that I actually paid more than $4 a piece for is kinda daunting. FYI, I bought 3m dark green taffeta, 1.5m light green taffeta with black flocked polka dots for contrast bow, and 1.5m pale green silk for the lining….total, $43 which is still kinda cheap for a formal dress isn’t it? The design will be a knee length wiggle dress so I’m hoping I was generous enough with my fabric and have plenty to cover any mistakes. And maybe enough of that dark green taffeta for another project!

That’s about all for now. I better get back to sewing!

Bya!

Hi Everyone!

A few months ago I helped Jonny’s mate out with some flyers and posters for I think, Tactical Week. It’s one of those expo things for security professionals and people in the biz of being tough.  I had the logo (the shields) and the website to use as inspiration/resources for the DL sized flyer and larger posters to hang on the walls of the exhibit.

All done in a very short time-frame. Only had a couple of days to do the work plus revisions (of which there weren’t many).

I’m pretty proud of these cos they turned out how I imagined them.

Click to make larger cos they’re a bit skinny (oooh they’re blurry whoops – cant be bothered fixing)
Posters:

and the flyer:

I’m also doing an ad for them at the mo which will go in some Aussie security mags – its got a WHOLE lot more info to cram into a smaller space. Fun!
But you don’t get to see that yet

Sorry if I’m killing all your bandwidth peeps – do my pics take too long to load? If so I can make them smaller.

Other news – I made another dress. Using a Vogue vintage re-isssue design. So basically a vintage design but new pattern. I rushed it and the bodice was WAY too big….I was lazy and didn’t check it til after I put the lining in so the quick fix I did is a bit dodgy. A lot dodgy. But hey – the fabric is nice and it doesn’t look soooo bad. I took a look in the Salvos today and found about 5m of a khaki cotton drill for $4 that I might use to make another version of the dress. I’ll take more care this time and see if I can shrink it a lot more to fit me.

Ehhh I better go make some dinner now. Seeyas!

Hello my poor neglected readers!
I’m here to bring you some colour – for the first time in ages.

This is a flyer I’ve drawn up for my parents’ vineyard (St Imre) – Mum is holding monthly Saturday dinners (I think they’re monthly right Mum??) where she cooks a meal and shares some wine and it’s all good times and awesome food. If you’re in Tassie then you need to get down there, Mum’s cooking is fantastic! And I’m not just biased, even the fussy boyfriend always loves her cooking.  I always have a bunch of things to request whenever I visit, favourites from when I was a kid that I just can’t make myself.
Worth a visit just to try proper Hungarian food – there’s not that many places you can get that in this fair country

So yeh – this is the flyer I will be printing off which will be available around parts of Tas. It didn’t take me too long as I can’t be my slackie self with this one. I’m sure the design will change over time but Mum loves it so that makes me happy. Yay!

Here’s a link to the bloggy too.

Well – off to bed now to read my book. Night!

Hellooooooo!!!
Lately I’ve had the opportunity to do some illustrations for work. It’s not often that I get to crack out the Wacom but it is getting more frequent as our clients realise we CAN do the fancy pants design and photography without having to pay two lots of people to get their work done. Yay for the customer!!
And Yay for me cos I like being able to potter about drawing while at work.

Today we had a customer that wanted a revamp of their old designs with some illustrations thrown in. I wasn’t sure if they were happy to pay the extra for full colour process plates (cyan, magenta, yellow and black – which in our kind of business costs a lot more than the printers that make magazines etc) so I kept the colours to a minimum. Just one spot colour (Pantone), black, our standard double white (for opacity on the clear bags) and varnish.

First, the illustrations. I found some stock images and redrew them into a pleasing composition. I wanted a sketchy kind of look – all done in Photoshop. Corel Painter 9 packed it in on my work computer too. I think it may have something to do with updating the Wacom tablet drivers for the new operating system so I had to use PS.

Red wine and garlic:

Garlic and herb:

And this is the final result. This is only the first concept for the customer so I’m sure they will change it.

The stripes and colour block reach to the top and bottom of the bag so they will form a band across the meat.

Annnnyways it’s almost dinner time. Hope you have a good weekend peeps and I endeavor to finish this week’s CHOW so I will have that ready on Monday.
Ciao!!

Hi Everyone!

Something completely different from me once again!
A few weeks ago I got the CD with my latest schoolwork on it. This year I am going to be doing Certificate IV in Graphics PrePress – its the ‘post apprenticeship’ program which means only a couple more units that need doing. Two of those I am doing at work and the rest (I think three) I will be doing at school. When that will be I don’t know!

The most interesting of the on-the-job projects is the Advanced Typography one. There are two briefs we have to fill. One is a CD cover and the corresponding booklet and the second is this one – A muesli package design. Now this is really my forte I suppose when it comes to graphic design as it’s what I do every day. We don’t print on card but the considerations for food packaging are much the same across the board.

The most important thing is that type has to be legible. A lot of information usually has to be part of the design – things like the Nutritional Information, ingredients, addresses and the various certifications etc. These are often printed quite small and you really have to think about what font you’re going to use. A fail-safe in the food packaging industry is trusty old Helvetica. Many designers I’m sure think it’s boring and unimaginative – but really, nothing compares to Helvetica when you’ve only got a tiny space to fit 10 lines of text in.

Another thing to consider when creating a design for food packaging is colours. With magazine printing, you’re usually going to be able to get away with the standard CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). However, with packaging you are often working with special brand colours that must be very consistent across very large runs. Think of Bega red, Cadbury purple and Woolworths green. The only way to achieve the consistency you need is by using the Pantone Matching System colours (PMS). Plain CMYK can also get muddy and you don’t get such a wide variety of vibrant colours as you can get with the Pantones.
Also, sometimes you need more than just the colours you can see . In my line of work, for those vacuum sealed smoked hams you see in the fridge at the supermarket we need to add two opaque whites and also a clear varnish. It’s a bit easier to print on paper but it’s often you’ll need a varnish for that too.

Now for my design, the brief was to use CMYK plus two Pantone spot colours. I wanted to try something modern and sleek as it’s not something I’m often allowed at work (don’t ask!!!). The fonts I kept simple, using only Adobe Caslon and Neutraface. I’m loving Neutraface at the moment! It’s got a lot more edge than Helvetica, but it’s still easy to read and has a wide variety of styles within the font like small caps and different weights from thin to bold.
I’m no font genius, but I am absolutely obsessed with them! I can spend the majority of ‘design time’ picking a font. Each one has a personality and they all say a different thing. Neutraface is confident, timeless and cool
I chose Adobe Caslon for it’s beautiful ampersand (the ‘&’ symbol) – this was the basis of the design which I built the rest around. It’s also used in the Jasper’s logo.
The photos on the front I took off www.sxc.hu and comped them together in photoshop. I added the shadows and cut them out. Nothing too difficult there. The photo on the back came with the brief and is completely untouched at the moment.

There are still a few things I think that need tweeking. I’ve got to add a few more lines of text in which I’m a bit puzzled about at the moment. And I’m not too sure about the nutritional panel.

What do you think?

Speaking of apprenticeships and school…. I’m officially finished on the 28th of July! Yippee! I will get a proper salary (not that I’m not getting paid nicely already) and all that jazz. Yay!