Morning Disc Designs

One of my pickup ultimate friends, Emmanuelle put out an open call for tee-shirt designs to represent our unique early-morning game. The game, started in 1997, originally met on Wednesday mornings at 6:45AM and ending promptly at 8AM when we would all go out for breakfast together, during the daylight savings months. There are pickup games on weeknights but those aren't possible after the time change. The game has morphed over the last few years, and an influx of loyal participants, into a Tuesday to Friday game that starts at about 7:15AM and now lasts sometimes until 9AM. Starting last year some of the participants have begun playing at more mellow tournaments together as "The Magnificent 7AM", representing our group quite well.

I love designing logos, and I really love designing logos for ultimate, so I designed these:

Swiss Miss + Michael Bierut = Creative Morning

2010/01 Michael Bierut from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

This talk happened several weeks ago, yet unlike many things these days it will remain relevant for weeks, months and years to come. This creative personality has the particular advantage of being positioned at a powerful company with a host of excellent clients, but even still his comments on the client/designer process seem prescient and basic to every professional relationship you may have.

He broke his lecture (his lesson) down into simple, bullet-pointed aphorisms that you can take with you and use to help curate and influence your own professional creative lives, and he expressed them with clean well-kerned Keynote slides, easy banter, and a humble yet authoritative voice. He has the authority of his stature backing up his simple advice, and it rang true for myself, and perhaps others in the wrought iron lilypad room at Galapagos. The simplicity of his message is also it's power, I think. It is not so groundbreaking, like telling someone to break up with an abusive boyfriend or girlfriend, but as in those cases, there are always excuses to stay with the abuser, as there are always excuses to stay with a bad client; the money is good, the project is almost done, there may be more work down the road, etc.

Since this lecture I have begun my adventure as a full-time educator, teaching in the Advertising Design and Graphic Arts Department at City Tech (CUNY's New York City College of Technology) and I will do my best to translate Bierut's advice to my students during my time as a professor, and as a colleague. Experience and accomplishment lend themselves towards being more selective, but throwing that out and making excuses for taking on bad jobs and bad clients only justifies more of the same.

Ryan McGinness

I remember meeting this guy at an opening at Rare when it was back on 14th Street, probably around 1997 or 1998. I think he was handing out matchbooks or stickers with his puking guy icon and the word, "art" on it. Maybe. Memory is a funny thing. I think he was working at PopSmear Magazine at the time, and we spoke on the phone a few times. He put me on his mailing list, so I have some cool early postcards from him, including a metallic foil invite to the book party for "Flatness is God" that happened at B Bar. The party was fun, and I bought a book, which was originally published by Soft Skull Press (now defunct.)

I remember one phone conversation we had, where I was trying to garner some sage advice from him, and he was telling me about this book project he was working on, that is was pretty intense, and how I shouldn't get so caught up worrying about making gallery art, or getting into the galleries, etc. I was extremely impressed and inspired by the first book, and have a growing library of his publications, a few prints, and at least one tee shirt. Most recently found the issue of Arkitip he was in for half-off at the Staple clearance space down on Ludlow. I passed up buying the Peter Saville issue, which was a lot cheaper, because I wanted/needed the McGinness one.

His show earlier this year at Deitch Projects filled me full of wonder and laughter; how cool is it that he gets to make work that is so much FUN and that I find meaningful as well. I have the press release and some notes I made about that show and maybe someday I'll get around to writing something more substantial about it, but I am certainly happy to have the Arkitip catalog for it.

Was reminded all of this when SwissMiss posted a video of him working and talking about his work on her blog. The video is from Upper Playground, SF-based art/design/fashion collective, or whatever they would like to be called.


SwissMiss writes:
Ryan McGinness is interested in creating a new vocabulary for everyday symbols and icons through context and composition. Using layering, repetition, and juxtaposition, his complex pieces construct worlds within worlds. With his massively intricate silk-screened paintings, sculptures, and installations, hes able to blur the division between design, pop culture, and fine art. Ryan McGinnesss artwork has appeared in numerous books, magazines, and exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe.

Prince's Purple Rain

I remember listening to this album constantly when it came out. I had the 45" of "When Doves Cry" and my sister had the LP, and we'd listen to it at our house and her best friend, Jennifer Wentzel's house. I would sing, "this is what it sounds like, when dogs dieeeee!!!" I didn't know what "Darling Nikki" was about, but I wanted to. Spin just published a huge feature package marking the 25th anniversary of the release of the movie and album, and they got a bunch of bands to cover the album. Best part for me? I got to do the photo-illustration for the cover under art direction from Devin Pedzwater.

This first sketch is something I threw together that didn't get used. I had done a few different ink versions before I scanned this and colored it in photoshop. It got me very comfortable with the image, which helped when I made the final.
This is the final version, as it looks on newsstands.
And this is the original photo, by ASP.

new self-brand

I lifted it from an electric company's logo, but I still like it.

Angry Wade's Running Team, redux II

Here's the mockup from the printer!

logos I like

These are some of the logos that I spent a lot of time drawing and redrawing all day long during classes at JFK Jr High in Florence, MA. I think they influenced me and the way I approach logos and type as much as all of the cover titles on the comics I love. Do bands still go out of their way to have an iconographic logotype? I should probably know since I work at a music magazine. I'm gonna poke around on the interwebs and see if I can find some contemporary ones that I like. These were the bands that I loved as well, and it was only a few years ago that I found out that Raymond Pettibon was responsible for the uber-iconic Black Flag logo, because his brother was in or managed Rollins' band back then. I think he did some of their cover art as well.

Not shown - Bauhaus. I think I was in my third year of art school before my Russian buddy informed me that the Bauhaus was actually a collective of designers, etc. from Europe who basically birthed modern design, and that Peter Murphy and the gang just completely ripped off their logo. Ah well.

Also not shown, but worth mentioning - the Aerosmith winged-A, AC/DC, Anthrax, Def Lepard, anything at all whatsoever by Peter Saville (well documented lately), KISS, Metallica, Misfits (unfortuanetly co-opted and now completely played out), Ramones, Stones, and on and on.

Glaze

Identity for a possible retouching/imaging company.