blog home

Chris Costello, Papyrus and My Poster

Posted by Jen in design & art on June 16th, 2009

papyrus_posterPapyrus is a contemporary font that has been broadly used in various art works for different types of occassions, due to its neat yet stylish look and great legibility.

The poster is sort of a typography study in Papyrus, merely composed of all letters of the alphabet and some numbers and characters.

More info for the font creator: Chris Costello

Chris Costello graduated from Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie and received an Associates Degree in Commercial Art, in 1979. While in school, he worked at Wambach Communications Group, in Rhinebeck, New York as a part-time graphic designer and was hired full-time after his graduation. During this period of his life, he was also very involved with music and played bass with several bands in the area. He eventually took a chance to follow this dream—he quit his job and joined a rock band that toured the southern U.S.

In 1982, he moved to South Florida to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, an art institute located directly on the beach. He won some awards and two scholarship nominations then decided to take a semester off and work in the field for a while. However, his job was so great, that he just kept on working and never went back.

Chris Costello worked at Group 3hree Advertising in Pompano Beach, doing graphic design, production and illustration. After about a year, he left this full-time position and went back to work for the same company, making twice as much money as a freelancer. He figured this was the way to go, so he hired himself out to ad agencies and design studios throughout South Florida. He liked the freelance idea because he could work on a lot of different projects and still had some time to hang on the beach.

After tiring of his vacation lifestyle, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts and worked for Brewster Advertising in Cambridge as an Art Director. After three years, he felt that he acquired enough experience to go off on his own again, so he left to pursue a career as a freelance illustrator and, a professional bass player. For the next six years, he had the time of his life. During the day, he worked at home, illustrating for high profile book publishers and ad agencies throughout the country. His nights and weekends were spent traveling to resorts and colleges all over New England to play music.

Costello became the Art Director for DPI, a book publisher in Woburn, MA in the year 1995. There, he learned computer graphics, web design, management and all about the publishing industry.

Three years later, he left DPI and became Senior Graphic Designer for The DeWolfe Companies in Lexington, MA. In 2002, Dewolfe was aquired by NRT and merged with Coldwell Banker Hunneman to form Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage where he was promoted to Creative Director in thier marketing department.

In 2003, he recieved a Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design and Visual Communication at Northeastern Universty in Boston.

Chris Costello currently lives in the Boston area with his wife, Anita, and his two daughters, Sheriden and Emersen. He still gets to hang on the beach every now and then… but mostly then.

Designing typefaces is a labor of love for him. After handlettered book and magazine titles for several major publishers, he thought it would be cool to produce complete character sets from some of these designs for all of creatives out there. Except for Letterpress Text, every font is inspired by his own imagination and most are inked by hand before they are digitized.

The complete list of type fonts that Chris Costello designed is as follows:
Blackstone, Blackstone Italic, Letterpress Text, Letterpress Text Italic, Letterpress Text Bold, Letterpress Text Bold Italic, Mirage, Papyrus, Virus, Virus Lethal

Chris Costello created the font Papyrus in 1983. This unusual roman typeface merges effectively the elegance of a traditional roman letterform with the hand-crafted look of highly skilled calligraphy. It includes an extra set of initialing capitals to enhance its unique style.

Papyrus is part of the Linotype Library. Papyrus is a trademark of Esselte Letraset Limited.
The font Papyrus can be downloaded at:
http://www.linotype.com/14649/papyrusregular-font.html

My Interpretation of Graphic Design

Posted by Jen in design & art, random thoughts on June 16th, 2009

graphicdesign_300Every person in the world is like a planet, lonely, but connected to each other in some way. Graphic design, a certain form of art and technology, is just like a media, a window, through which we convey messages. With it, life becomes colorful and meaningful.

image combination and creation - the power of photoshop

Posted by Jen in design & art, tutorials on May 30th, 2009

I’ve been amazed by the special effects created in Photoshop for a long time, and this time I would like to make one by myself.  Steps are as follows:

kevin_originalimage 1: boy and ground
layer mask to select the part of the boy and ground that I want. and clone stamp to create the ground and ground edge.
shadow/Highlight was used to correct the brightness of the image. use the sun image as the color match source file, to apply it to boy and ground.
seaimage 2: sea
free transform to stretch the pic and get rid of the sun. save it as the displace map. render light to the sea. and do displace of the sun shine. reflection of the clouds on the left side of the sea surface, filter used is motion blur and blend mode is softlight with opacity 20%.
sunsetimage 3: sky and orange clouds
clone stamp to create part of the sky and get rid of the mountain. Free transform, perspective and scale to have more depth and to get rid of the mountain and composite with the sea.
crystal_ballimage 4: crystal ball
techniques used: inner shadow, inner glow, linear gradient, sphere distort, hard brush, soft brush, square to polar distort.
sunimage 5: sun
techniques used are as follows:filters: render clouds, render difference clouds, find edge;
image adjustments: levels, hue & saturation;
blend mode linear dodge.

FINAL IMAGE - the enlightened universe:

enlightened_universe_final

Gestalt is well accomplished in here. I separate the image into 5 objects: the sky with orange clouds, the surface of the sea, the boy and the ground, the fake sun and a fake crystal ball. The first 3 are from photos, the last two are made up by myself with Photoshop techniques and tools. Now, all the objects look like in one environment.   I was trying to make the image match the color of the fake sun, since it is the shiniest part of the image. Therefore, the tone of the image will be yellowish orange. The theme of the image will be mystery. Sun is abnormally huge, the boy is standing in front of the sun on a high and steep ground, holding a crystal ball, just like a little witch.

There are quite some challenges I met in this project, like the colors of the original 3 images don’t go along with each other, the surface of the sea need to have reflection of the sun shine, etc. Therefore, in this project I would say this biggest effort I made is to integrate the objects to make it look like in one environment, which required the techniques in image adjustment and level adjustment.

Toy Room - Photoshop: brush, vanishing point transform and more

Posted by Jen in design & art, tutorials on May 27th, 2009

With given components of the toys, I designed a 3-D environment (walls and floor and window) and a colorful toy box with shadows and vanishing point, plus a photo frame.

giftbox_final_less

A few highlights of this photoshop creative:

The brush I created is for the surface of toy box.  The original brush is from the Assorted brush set, named concentric circles.  I basically modified its master diameter to 200px and  set the shape dynamics settings: size Jitter to 100%, minimum diameter to 15%. For the colorful background of the toy box, I actually customized another brush from Assorted brushes, called texture 6.  I modified its master diameter to a much larger one and added the color dynamics feature to make it vary in Hue and saturatioin as well. In order to make the white circles integrated into the whole painting, I used the blend mode Lighten and opacity 90%. Then I think the white concentric cirle really goes with the abstract background of the toy box painting.

customized_brush21giftbox_layers

I am using the CS version, therefore, I created the 3-point perspective all by transforming, without the vanishing point filter. I used the lines as the guide for the perpective, as shown in the image of the perspective box.

giftbox_perspective1

I set the environment as a corner of a room with a window on one side. I think this way, it will make it clear to the audience where the light source located. And having a little witch floating outside the window make the picture more interesting. Everything including the window, wall, floor and toys in the enviroment is transformed into 3-D.

The shadows are made according to the light source from the window. As the window is on the left side of the environment, all the shadows are heading toward the right side, except the shadow of the motocyle, because it is leaning on the left side wall, just underneathe the window, its shadow is on the wall.

The first frame is made from the texture of the roof on the house (one of the toys). The 3-D effect (bigger pattern in the middle, small pattern on the sides) are achieved by utilizing the technique of alpha channel. I like this effect, it looks pretty real.

How can you use words and pictures together to improve the unity of a design?

Posted by Jen in design & art on May 27th, 2009

shadow_titleWhen it comes to graphic design, Unity is also referred as Integration, meaning all the elements in the work appear to belong to each other, and make a whole of composition.  This is a very basic and important goal of any graphic design work.  Components in one design work are not supposed to compete with each other or hide from each other but rather support each other in a certain priority order to give a flow to the design to provide messages.

Type and images are two different kinds of elements in the design world, but equally important.  Type comes up with words to tell the message in a direct and straightforward way, while picture gives people more space to portrait it to a certain meaning with their own interpretation. And when we put these two elements together into one work, the design gets sophisticated and being equipped more dimensions. In a lot of design works, types are placed in front of the picture and stands out from the background picture to give a clear view for the audience.  However, there are also works that have type appeared more in an imagery way, by means of extreme dimension of the text and uncommon fonts, which are not so clear for the audience at the first sight to read text message. And in this kind of design, the image elements may in a major role of the work.  However no matter which element takes the lead, unity is always the goal to put them together, in which case, type can convert to image and image can also be shown in a type way (just like the type mask we did).  CONSISTENCY is one of the methods we use frequently to achieve the goal of unity, which include the consistency of color, style, alignment, etc.  Color – we choose a color that appears in the picture (usually appears repeatedly) for the color of the type.  Style – around the theme of story the design is telling, we choose the style of the picture and the font.  Say, the design is telling a happy story, we may use a highly saturated color image with a cheerful-looking font.  Besides that, POSITON is also a very important factor for a unity design.  This involves with the concept in our previous topic – space.  Usually for the type that is placed in front of the picture, we would choose to place it on the portion of the image that has less variety and more monotones, which is also referred as negative space.  Type on negative space can get the effect of not only standing out of the picture but also integrate with it.

I believe there are more principles than the above ones I mentioned to create a unified design.  However, the point is to achieve an integrated composition as we desired, multiple methods and principles need to be applied to one art work than just stick to one.

Sarah McLachlan & Surfacing

Posted by Jen in design & art on May 21st, 2009

Sarah McLachlan is a wonderfully talented Canadian singer/songwriter/musician. At a young age, she was trained at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Nova Scotia. She learned guitar for 12 years, piano for 8 years and spent 5 years refining her voice.

Her success in music leads to numerous awards, which includes: 3 time Grammy Award winner and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Visionary Award for advancing the careers of women in music. Sarah has sold over 22 million records worldwide since her recording career began with her debut release, “Touch”, in 1988 and has been profiled by media the world over including cover stories for Rolling Stone, Time and Entertainment Weekly.

Her music is featured of her pure voice and beautiful harmonies along with love and loss in a depth of warmth.

song_pr3The disc Surfacing was released in 1997 and come out of nowhere in a time when the teen pop craze was going on. It had sophisticated songwriting with great piano and guitar hooks and Sarah scored some great hits from this record that were in heavy rotation in 1997 and 1998.

I chose the album surfacing to design the CD cover for, because it is such a masterpiece of Sarah. It is a singer and songwriter at the top of her talent. I am amazed every time I listen to this CD. The design of the cover is trying to match the style of “Surfacing”. The black background with Sarah’s initial in dark grey, the type “surfacing” with reflection, and the feathered type of the name in the font of Mistral are all attempting to approach the depth of the music, the meaning of the lyrics and stunning beauty of her voice.

Type - THE element in graphics

Posted by Jen in design & art, random thoughts on May 19th, 2009

1464214643

Type is a very critical element in graphic design. The principle that applies to other graphic design elements also applies to typography. Those principles include asymmetry, space, contrast, unity, rhythm, emphasis and hierarchy.  However in addition to those common features of all the graphic design elements, typography as a special element has its own unique features.

Type that consists of the same letters can give very different look and feel and thus express very different emotions and convey very different meanings for the entire graphic work. Type can vary with its font, size, weight, capital/small character, leading, tracking, kerning, color as well as position to other type.  There are so many factors that can affect the look and feel of the type.

Among those factors, fonts can affect the type dramatically.  As we know, fonts have various personalities. Some fonts can be used in a very formal and official situation, while some can look very playful and childish; some are classy and stylish, while others are rough and heavy.  For some design works, just by looking at the font, the audience will be able to get a brief idea of what the design is trying to say, even before reading the content.

Due to so many attributes of the type, it can also be used to create visual variation in a composition design work.  Options for variation can be Italic versus Regular, Light versus Bold, Uppercase versus Lowercase, Sans Serif versus Serif, etc.

Special effects added to fonts can also lead to great results. Outline, Inline, Shadow are the ones that have been used regularly in modern graphics.   However, overusing those effects can result in a muddy, illegible message.

To summarize, type is an amazing element in graphic design.  It affects the look and feel of the design dramatically by all kinds of its attributes. To introduce the variation of type into the design, we should also be cautious to avoid too many special effects and variations. Because all the effects are just to support the design to convey a clear message.  Therefore, in most cases, a good design doesn’t have more than 3 types of fonts.

How can you use emphasis to improve a design?

Posted by Jen in design & art, random thoughts on April 26th, 2009

emphasis_mixfocal_points_2

Emphasis is the most outstanding element in an entire design work. It is also known as the Focal Point.  Focal point is a method used in graphic design to draw the audiences’ attention at first glance.  It plays a very important role among all the elements in the design work to create a design flow of visual hierarchy.

There are various ways to create the emphasis, and they will be used depending on the specific scenario of the specific design.  Positions, sizes, shapes, directions, hues, saturations and special effects as well can all be the factors to make the elements the emphasis or not.  However, emphasis is always recommended to be used on the small amount of objects in the design work, while the rest of the elements will be the supporting emphasis, meaning secondary focal points, a.k.a. accents.  And others will just display as a background (or negative space as we discussed before).  Emphasize on few objects, otherwise, eyes will be distracted with too many elements competing with each other, as a result the design flow won’t be formed.  Flow can only be created with different weights of the elements, in the order from the most important to the least.  Emphasis is part of the flow, but can never take place of the flow.

the black cat

Posted by Jen in design & art on April 16th, 2009

charcoal_cat_180

Charcoal and pencil drawing

Calla Lilies in Rain - color schemes

Posted by Jen in design & art on April 12th, 2009

Ever since the chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul published his 1839 study of simultaneous contrast, the effect that colors observed adjacently influence each other, artists have been influenced by his ideas. His theories (studied in the 2nd course 20B) formed the foundation for a modern color theory that later artists continued to explore. Less known is the fact that he is also responsible for describing a set of harmonious color relationships known as “color schemes,” or “color ways,” and these have become so widely understood, that they are used in many fields of study besides fine art, and can be found in advertising art, fabric, interior, architectural, and garden design. new variations have since been added to his original schemes.

Complement, Analagous and Triad are three different color schemes among all color schemes proposed by Chevreul. The following three paintings are created based on these three color schemes, to show the different effect for each.
Materials: Gouache paint

complementanalagoustriad