Animation

City Breaths Promo



Created using Final Cut Studio 2, this animation was created as a teaser for the 2008 Citywide Poets anthology, City Breaths.

Article# 125, Created Apr. 14, 2008

About me

Contact Me

You can reach me at

my first name @ the domain





... I hate spam.

Article# 124, Created Apr. 9, 2008

Books

Citywide Poets 2008 : City Breaths


The latest CityWide Poets book cover, City Breaths is done! I struggled with this one for a little while. At first, the formless nature of breath led to designs that looked too much like literal smoke, which I knew was not going to fly. I searched and sketched for different ways to represent vaporous things, tucking those away as I went.

I kept pressing the question, What is 'city' breath, and what would it look like, anyway? How would it be different from anything else? That also seemed like a dead end of urban environments, gritty and strong, but sometimes unsettling. And sometimes too much like a hip-hop album.

Then I thought, Wouldn't city breath be... fresh?. I suppose it dates me a little bit (the horror!) but I felt I could make that work. I started with Andes mints, remembering the iconic mountainside that they use. I would replace the mountain with a cityscape. When I tried photographing the mints, there was something underwhelming about them, and the outline of the city on the mint I didn't think would work.

Taking a break I found an old Altoids tin, instead of the "old timey" design, it had the strongman on it, and the type was set in Myriad and a Slab Serif. That's when I got the idea here, I photographed the tin and photoshopped the cityscape and spirals representing breath, making the solid connection with the mints such that it didn't come across as smoke.

The spirals carry throughout the book, and thankfully I was able to get full-page photographs of a number of the Citywide Poets, just like with ZerO Gravity.

I think the result it successful, pairing the tongue-in-cheek humor of "fresh breath" with "fresh words" and stealing a bit from Altoids "Curiously Strong" campaign that just about everyone can relate to.

The type is Myriad, with a slight modification to have the "r" reaching for the "y".

Article# 122, Created Mar. 30, 2008

Books

House by Mariela Griffor

A dear friend Mariela Griffor chose one of my photographs for her book, House.



It is called Mid Michigan Palm and it was taken just outside of Ann Arbor on a frozen lake one Sunday morning.

Article# 120, Created Mar. 11, 2008

My News

Masters (of the Universe)

While not "official" I've made the mental leap to seriously start pursuing a Masters Degree from the School of Information in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) .

Admittedly, right now it's mostly an idea. Meaning, other than the fact that I know what classes I can take and that I have to take the GRE and I'll begin working on all that... this is just the first step.

But that mental leap was a big first step!

Article# 117, Created Jan. 19, 2008