"Woods Lake"

A demonstration of how I turn random "doodles" into Digital Art :

Who The Heck Took The Pic??

The following are ads I've made using my own "photography":

This Farmers Insurance ad started out at a spec that was a full page going into the "How To Guide" special section that ran this last July. My rep didn't give me any details or ideas of what she wanted, so I was free to come up with whatever I could. I went on the internet looking for anything related to the Grand Valley and just decided to use one of my own pics. My rep had a very hard time selling it and it eventually came down to deadline. She ended up convincing the person in charge and that person convinced each of the agents to buy part of the ad so they could afford it.
The picture itself was one of the very first pics I took back in the beginning of June with my brand new Nikon Coolpix P80. A 10.1 megapixel, 18x optical wide zoom digital camera. I went up on the Colorado National Monument right after I bought it. The sun was just going down, and I thought it was the perfect time to play around.

This First United Methodist Church ad also started out as a spec. My rep gave me a piece of paper w/ a picture of Balanced Rock from the Colorado National Monument and the text that needed to be on the ad. She wanted a full color and a black and white ad so that the customer would have choices. I did a bunch of searching on the internet for images of Balanced Rock, and couldn't find anything worth using that wasn't already copyrighted. So I decided that night to go out and take my own picture. A friend and I ventured out at about 6 pm and found the rock almost too late. The sun had already started to set behind the surrounding cliffs, the rock was still lit, but only for a short period of time. (On a plus, I managed to convince the entrance ranger to let me in for free since I was only going about a mile up the road and would be about a half an hour or so.)
For this ad, I wanted to get the image to pop a little more, and give it a realistic yet not so fake look. So I applied a couple of different effects. The rock itself I isolated and there are actually two images, one on top of the other. The first layer is underneath and is the original picture. The second layer is on top and is the image of the rock that I applied the effect "torn edges" to. One looks real, one looks fake. I then took the top layer and did a "multiply" blending effect to it which blended the two layers with variations on transparencies. After that I created a background that I thought would look good w/ the rock and tada!
The customer chose to go with the black and white due to cost and it ran in last Saturday's paper and in this weeks Sentinel Weekly which comes out on Wednesdays

C M Y Knot???

Last week I had one of the most frustrating conversations up to this point in my working adult life. My adorable sales rep Judy came to me and and asked me which colors we could use if a customer only wanted to pay for one color. I said thats easy, we print in CMYK...Cyan, Magenta or Yellow along with the obvious, Black.

She looked and me kinda blankly and said innocently, "What color is Magenta?" I explained it as basically a florescent hot pink. Looking very puzzled as to why we would use a hot pink she asked, "well, what's Cyan?" I also explained it as yet another florescent bright blue. She looked even more puzzled. She asked me, "well why is it just those colors?"
The frustration begins. I had to try to explain to someone that knows nothing of the four color printing process why it is those four colors and not any other color (I am not certain how long she's been working in the paper, but I figured all reps would have to know this just for their customer's sake). Now I still don't understand myself why those colors, I just know that when they are combined they can make up pretty much any color in the alphabet.
Poor lil Judy tried so hard to understand, but without actually seeing the colors, she just wasn't grasping what I was saying. Which is understandable because I was definitely not giving the best explanation. I learned out of a text book which explained every step in maximum detail. So much so that I'm pretty sure I blanked out while ready and missed most of what the book was trying to tell me...(don't judge, I don't like to read and it was really really boring). We eventually called it quits.
Just yesterday, Judy came back to me, asking me what Cyan and Magenta are. To keep it simple I told her I was gonna make some swatches for her and print them out so that she and her customer would know exactly what they were looking at. I gave her a quick piece of paper w/ the CMYK colors on it and labeled them appropriately, and she said "Oh, thats what they look like." And off she went.
Still not satisfied with the example I gave her, I piddled around and whipped up one that is very clear. I even thought to include the RGB colors, just so she would know what that meant.Lemme tell ya, this seemed to help her out so much. I explained that when in any major printing process there are Four plates. One is Cyan, another Magenta, another Yellow and another Black. And that those four plates with those four colors are layered on top of each other. And once laid on each other, depending on the different percentages of each color, they combine to create any other color.
Like: 50% Magenta + 50% Yellow = Red
and 50% Cyan + 50% Yellow = Green
and so on.
After the visual explanation, she seemed to get it. She even said, "Oh! I had no idea that's what CMYK meant! We both still have questions. A major one being, who thought of Cyan and Magenta? (she is fascinated by these two colors). We determined that is was some man some time ago...but then we figured it was probably a woman...and we OFFICIALLY determined that is was a woman, a wife who's husband took all the credit for figuring out that these four colors are (what we now call them) the "MAGIC FOUR"
...on an ironic side note...I had to convert the example into RGB so that it could be properly viewed on the web. Because unlike Print, the Web works in RGB....wicked!

"Where's Your Flair...Missy?"

The internet seems to be coming a long way. I can remember my very first experience w/ it. I was in the 6th grade. Basically all I was taught was how to type in the url, and how to press the stop button. WOW! Now days its like a virtually interactive whole other life. And for kids these days well, it is their life. Facebook just so happens to be fully arming people for this "lets be socially active and have fun w/ our friends while avoiding the real world" lifestyle. But I will admit, being a "Y'er" myself. I do get a kick out of the fun little gidgets and gizmoos. Facebook's applications can be a quite amusing waste of time. And beyond that, one application in particular gave me a little inspiration to branch off and just make my own.

It is known to all as "Pieces of Flair." Basically you can browse around and find hundreds of buttons others have made or Facebook has provided, or you can create your own simply by uploading an image an sizing it into the interactive pre-made button layout that is provided (of course you must have Flash being that the interactive web is the future of the internet).
While looking for crap, I was inspired to well, make my own crap. With of course the hopes of someday turning them into real buttons to be warn by any who wants them.

Sentinel Sessions in B/W

This ad ran for one month in the paper. Every week the text changed, but the same graphic was kept. This was the ad that ran it's last week. To fit a female performer, the customer wanted a more feminine graphic.
This ad ran in the yearly special "Country Jam" section. This customer severely wanted her ad to be re-vamped. She loved it, had no changes and will be back next year. :)

This ad ran in both the "Rest Assured" and Relay For Life" special sections. It was originally a long shot spec ad and the customer ended up loving it so they bought it.
This company was not pleased with the lack of results they were getting from their previous ad which had ran for months and in many special sections. They were ready to cut their contract. My rep asked me on a long shot if I would spruce it up a little to see if we could get them to keep advertising. The ad ran once and they pulled all the ads scheduled for the next month. :(
This customer was also not please with his previous ads. I actually designed the previous ad based off the example he gave me. He loved the previous ad...I thought it looked to much like a business card...oh well. After his month running with the previous ad was up and he wasn't happy, my rep asked me to come up with a whole new concept for him that hopefully he would buy. He was very wishy washy about advertising in the paper and has not yet chosen to continue with this new ad. As far as I know, this spec is dead. :(

"YOU GO GIRL!!"

My dear artist/designer friend just recently burst into the GJ community with a logo that found itself stuck to the side of one Monster Mean, not so green, crime fighting Machine. This article appeared in todays paper and tells the story of the Mean Machine. But the article reads very newsy and no mention of how the most important part came to be. Her blog gives the details of the logo itself...
...CHECK IT OUT!! http://leannadesigns.blogspot.com/2008/07/down-to-business.html