POSTCARD DESIGN #2 FOR SPIRITUAL VISIONS EXHIBITION

Here is another design for a promotional postcard for the Spiritual Visions Exhibition, featuring the artwork "Mighty Hercules".

This one was tricky because in the photograph, the art work was slightly tilted to the right. So I had to tilt the photograph on the postcard to the left, so that the central elements in the collage lined up down the line. This was kind of a pain in the butt (I had to create various shapes to hide the missing corners), but I think well worth it (I can be pretty obsessive about my centerlines, but on this piece it was essential).

I have to admit that I might like this one even more than the last one. The circle seems to balance itself well. Also, I picked a kind of offwhite/eggshell colored glossy card-stock paper to print it on, and this really sort of hums with the white of the lily petal, giving the entire postcard a slightly antique feel which I feel works supremely with the nature of the show, at this creaky and opulent old mansion/museum.

I feel very satisfied with this card, and worked very hard for it with a local printer. They mostly do sort of old fashioned offset printing, but inquiring, I discovered that they do digital as well. Somehow I got it in my head that they could work from Illustrator, which seemed suprising, and indeed it turned out that they don't! So the poor woman worked VERY VERY hard with me to REBUILD the entire postcard in Publisher. It was an arduous process for us both, which pushed us both to our limits, but in the end, we both pushed through, and came out with a postcard that I think we are both proud of.  And local artists have been telling me "wow, I didn't know they do printing like that!" So hopefully it will be worth all that hard work for them, and knickpicking on my part (they were very patient and understanding). I feel fortunate to have established this relationship with them, and am looking forward to working with them more in the future.    

POSTCARD DESIGN FOR SPIRITUAL VISIONS EXHIBITION

Here is a postcard that I have recently been designing for an upcoming Exhibition I will be showing my sculpture in, at Hermitage Museum in Norfolk, VA. The Museum's Publicity Director, and the Executive Director, were both very cool about allowing my to produce my own materials to help publicize the show; and more to the point, my involvement in it, which I appreciated very much. They were even kind enough to lend me the use of their logo (which I used on the back), and they were very encouraging in general. They have been great to work with.

Here is the BACK of the postcard. You can click on the image for an enlarged view (to read the text at the bottom)

Sorry about the size, blogger's scrollific format does not permit much in the way of width...

So, whadya think? For this design, I had to walk a fine fine line, between the sacred and the sacrosanct, trying to 'toot my own horn', while still keeping with the tone of the show. I hope that I have acheived this.

 To this aim, I made lots of use of the center points. Invisible to the eye, this thing is loaded green to the gills with guide lines. 

   And then, there is also that abberition...I felt a little bit corney at first, putting this in, but I needed a line to devide the back of the postcard (!), and it just sort of appeared....woooOOO!

I like it, he's the show's own Casper the friendly ghost, and he's welcome in my postcard anytime. 

Most of all, I'm glad I got to make a postcard featuring that image. I have a few particular friends wall that this postcard is aimed for like a remember-me seeking missile.

   It is also a pretty neat (ok REALLY NEAT) show, and I am proud to get to make a postcard for it.

I wish that I had thought to offer my services to the other artists in the show. Would be fun to see what they came up with...

Little Piggy goes to Print Shop tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn..

EVER WONDER SUMMER CAMP Illustrative logo

I just finished this illustrative logo graphic, meant for a brochure cover, and maybe a tshirt.

QUICK COMMISSION

I ran into a friend of mine Mary Helen, two days ago at a coffee shop. She was working on a graphic for her daughter-in-law, who is starting a summer camp with the name 'Ever Wonder' (?) (question mark subtly implied!).  I liked the concept of the name, and MaryHelen, had made a really good start illustrating this complex concept- had come up with the concept of the illustrative question mark to explore/represent the idea of wonder. She had also already come up with most of of the elements in the design, such as the earth, the musical notation, the rocket, the flag, and the fish. But she was feeling stuck, and was suffering under the pressure of the impending deadline (the next day!)- an experience I am no stranger to. So when I ran into her at the coffee shop on Saturday afternoon, and she showed me her project I offered to take a stab at it. I can't resist a logo design problem. While I was crazy busy at the time, she asked me what it would be worth. Since I needed the money, and she was willing to pay me what I asked, in order to get it done, and off her hands, I agreed to take it, due 2 days later. We talked about some ideas, and 2 days later, this is what I came up with:

Again most of the content and the concept is hers. While I like a lot of content that she brought, my absolute favorite thing that she brought to the design (besides the concept it self), is that fish at the end of the question mark! What an exlamation point, a perfect ending! He seems to be saying, "OK that was fun, but I want to go home now!"

What I brought to the design was:

- a few new elements (the hand/blossom, the jelly fish, the frog, the pipes, the bicyclist, and the book),

- some flow (hopefully- to the question mark)

- the text - lay out and font. (they had it scattered about in the upper portion)

I also introduced an elaboration on the question mark/Ever Wonder concept. By turning the dot of the question mark into a magnifying glass, and also another question mark, who's dot in turn becomes the same, I am attempting to allude to the idea of "ever wonder". I think it is a subtle approach to a subtle concept. You'll have to tell me if you think it is successful.

FUTURE

While all the text they wanted at this point was the name Ever Wonder, I thought that in the future, they/we could place bits of descriptive text below the EVER WONDER, in line with, and in proportion to, the smaller magnifying glasses below.

Also, it would be fun to try this in colored media, maybe watercolor pencils, and also maybe in/on scratcher board. I would love to try painting the question mark in a large single stroke in India Ink on clay board, and then going back in and scratching out the details of those forms. Particularly the Jelly fish, who I think gets a little lost with the pencil, but would come out beautifully in scratcher board.

This was a fun project, and I am quite pleased with how this turned out in the end (considering the narrow time constraint),  and I think MaryHelen is as well. I hope that her daughter in law, the owner of the business, will be also.
I hope they will ask me to take another stab it it some day, as I feel like there is much more that could be done with this great idea. (design flows so much easier when you have a rich concept to start with, few people understand this).

Please let me know what you think! (I have a thick skin when it comes to drawing).

PS follow up- to see how the design came out on their website, and what they did with it, check out this link:

http://www.everwondercamps.com/

Pretty Awesome!!! Got to love it!

PSS Wow, you know it really is a pretty amazing sensation to see some of your work fleshed out in this way, taken to another level, and put to a use far beyond my own scope....wow.
I think this is a new one for me...

Siler City Farmers' Market- Illlustrative Logo Graphic

Copyright 2008 Travis Cohn / Speyedr Graphix and Illustration

This is an illustrative logo/graphic I created for the Farmers' Market, here in Siler City. Founder and seller Joan Thompson approached me about the project a few years ago and about a year and many sketches, meetings, studies, and scratches later, this is what I came up with. The concept hopefully is self evident, and if not, is hopefully pretty well summed up by the tags lines we created to accompany the design in print: "from our fields to your table", or "we bring good food straight to your table".

  I designed the piece for, and executed it in, Scratcher board, which is a masonite board, coated with a thin layer of white kaolin clay, and then another layer of black india ink, which you scratch through, to 'exhume' the white below it. And let me tell you, I was ready to scratch my eyes out before thing thing was through! I have never undertaken such an involved project in scratcher board before, and this is probably one of the tighter drawings I have ever undertaken period. But a few details aside (I need to move the pumpkin to the left, and several of the vegetable are out of proportion), I am generally pretty pleased with the overall delivery of the concept.

And it was actually a really fun project to do. I happened to be working for the Cencus Bureau at the time, and this work took me out into the surrounding farmlands a lot, (and intoduced me to several dairy and poultry farmers), which became a source for a lot of the imagery and inpiration for the project (though most of it is infact from my minds eye, save for a few vegetable still lifes, and a few googled reference images). Siler City has a strong and rich poultry tradition, which lasts to this day (though it is finally dwindling), so this is the reason that I chose to include the hen and the rooster in the design.

When creating a scene, it is always fun to see elements wander in, and find their places (roost?) in the composition. Hopefully these fowl earn their place on this farm by laying a few eggs- helping to tell a little bit of Siler City's story, agricultural, and otherwise.

Also, it was quite gratifying to get to bear witness to this scene taking shape before me, during the final lino-cutting phase. To watch this scene being progressively lit up, a scratch at a time, by the rays of an Xacto knife sun, was much akin to the experience of the awakening, glowing twilight hours depicted in the drawing. 

The sun, cracked across the edge of the sky, breaks and oozes into the cool dark expanse of night, leaking in its light. A burner clicks, and soon all begins, to sizzle and hiss.

I would say my favorite part of this image is the clouds floating, boyantly, beneath the tents dark canopy. Somehow, this image really satisfies me. It was also fun to watch the sun exploding through the tree in the front yard, and through the barn's hay door, perhaps harkening back to a brief stint working on a cattle farm in college. The chicken and the pumpkin were a lot of fun too.

USE/S:
I hope the gang down at the farmers market is able to get a lot of milage out of this image (as, of course, they are a lot of its inspiration also). It is meant for a brochure, newspaper ads, and a couple of banners. Hopefully we can also get it printed on some black canvas tote bags some day (though I am afraid alot of the detail could be lost in a screen print, but thats ok).
Below is a digital version of the image that  photographer Duane Hall had created for a newspaper ad. I had intentionally left the area below the table blank, so that the Farmer's Market could fill in time and date info as needed. While I would like to go in with Illustrator, and shift that darn pumpkin of mine over, so that the text could be better centered, I do like what Duane did with what he had, particularly the way he made the lettering at the bottom glow, reflecting what I was trying to achieve up top.
Hope you like it. Please let me know what you think!
Best, Travis

Copyright 2009 The Siler City Farmers' Market 

Painting Signs for the Shakori Hills Music Festival!

This Spring, I was entrusted with what I consider to be quite a high honor in my small world: to paint some signs for the Shakori Hills Grassroots festival.

This was quite a thrill for me, especially as I got to meet and paint alongside the creator of some of my favorite signs, that I have have found my self drooling over, over the past few years.

Here is Asheville Artist Leslie, working on a very involved sculptural sign she was making for the festival, similar to the one she crafted for the entrance gate. This woman has a lot of persistance and patience. (each leaf was hand cut with a jig saw).

I have to admit, it was a little bit intimadating working in the midst of a master. However, luckily, Leslie seemed to appreciate having some assistance in her sign making duties, and taking a chance on me, she doled out a few dutiful assignments: she handed me a list of various campgrounds, that needed signs to identify them. She also supplied me with a few blank sign boards on stakes, and some odd cans of paint, and pretty well left me to my own devices..

Deciding to take inspiration, rather than intimadation, from Leslie's awesome mixed media signs, I chose one called Old Homestead, and decided to try to hunt up some local rustic from around the farm...

First I found myself a good and weathered piece of old plywood, which a friendly fellow with some power tools kindly kut down to shape for me. I found some scraps of cedar that he had been karving away, and karted them away, back to our sign shack, and it was ON.

From the buckets of paint that Leslie directed me to, I chose a palette of earthy ochers. I first used a ruler I had brought along to measure and lay it all out (and this seemed this scored a few points with Leslie). Then I sketched out the letter, and layed in the paints. I tried to use the color and texture of the wood as an 'out line' color between the rusty red and greyish blue, but a lot of this tone was darkened beyond good effect when I layed down a sealent at the end. I used the cedar wedges as corner anchors. And to finnish it off, I pecked about the grounds, after the guinea hens, gathering up their spotted white feathers (what a jerk, they muttered). I drilled holes for these, and layed them in with some wood glue. Too much? Maybe for Siler City, but not for Shakori.

Well, I probably should have called it a day at this point, I had gained the tickets I was trying to earn, and probably several ticks on top. But I guess I felt needed, and was having fun, and so that pretty well sealed the deal. So, I did another one. But if there was any question remaining on the last one, on this one, it is confirmed that I got carried away..

From the list, I chose another campground needing a sign, this one called Middle Earth...

Middle Earth....seems so......Metal.

And then I painted, and painted, and it began to grow dark, yet still Metallica was ratcheting through my brain, driving me insane, I was deranged, techno/disco/metal, throbs my pain..

Bastard son,

I leave you now,

unto this Shakori world,

which may not want you at all.

As night pulls its veil

across my hooded eyes,

I wonder if, when the day arrives

you will find yourself despised.

But when the night subsides,

and I climb out of girlfriend's tent to arise,

I wick the dew from my chin,

and clamber back on my legs again,

and rub my bleary eyes...

In the woods, along path, on a mound, infront of a campground, my sign does stand alive!

I must thank Shakori Hills, for trying my sign on for size...