Vector Luna Moth

I truly wish I had seen and understood the beauty and elegance of Graphic Design when I was younger. For the last ten years or so I have worked to teach myself as much as I can about Graphic Design, I can never give it as much time as I would like (like many of my endeavors), but I did get a chance to explore my developing sense of minimalism. I have been trying to work on projects and exercises that could stand as portfolio pieces. Here are my imaginings for a minimal techno singles series. It was fun working on this project for the cohesion aspect. I like how the text holds it together and that the play or variation is in the line work. I wish I had a bit more time to work on the size for display. I knew it was going to be small, but wanted to put it out there. I may revisit soon and try a different format. The piece on top started as a tiny grid sketch on a small Rhodia sketch pad. I scanned and then built the components for the piece in Illustrator. This is actually the second variation on the idea, where I selected and removed certain pieces. I am wanting to spend some time practicing layouts using grids.

Grumblebug

Illustrator is great for character design. This was once a quick sketch done with a Sharpie that I then scanned and built vectors over. It's also all set up for animation in Flash. I just added it to a bug filled street scene that I haven't touched since last summer. I was gonna leave my computer at home when I travel to Vermont next week, but have since changed my mind. I want to keep getting some more of my digital work done and the ipad/iphone just won't cut it for the serious work. I want to finish and animate the bug filled street before the end of summer, even if its only a short scene.

Praxis

Using the name of the anarchist collective I've lived with, in, around for almost fifteen years, I did this exercise in which I first hand drew the Old English letter forms by hand, then built the vector version of the letters in Illustrator, added flourishes with brush strokes and brush styles. Then I rasterized the whole mess and exported to a Photoshop doc and used drop shadow, outer glow, and emboss for final touches. I know layer styles are somewhat scorned by professional graphic designers for their overuse, but what the hey, I don't know about you but I'm always pretty happy when things are glowing and all soft around the edges.

CAST Motion Graphics

Here's a piece I made last year. Using the name of the academy I help run and teach in at my high school, I animated an Illustrator/Photoshop tutorial project in After Effects. I really enjoyed producing work that combined several different programs. This was one of those moments where I felt like my skill set and intuitive sense of working with computer graphics and motion graphics crossed into a new dimension. I still have a lot to learn, but this is a good example of how far I've come.

Heart with Daggers

Here's another Illustrator piece in the same vein as the earlier posted Pentacle design. I love how easy Illustrator makes it to play with your designs and re-use assets again. I still remember the day when the pen tool finally made sense, and the clouds parted and the brilliance of vector imagery shone down on me.