The ability to easily distinguish the season of the card is easily addressed by each card (for each season) having their own color throughout the design.  The respective colors relate  to each other using similar saturation and tinting in conjunction with the neutral muted background; therefore, when viewed together they have some sense of cohesiveness. The chosen color for each season was also chosen to relate to the respective season (i.e. burnt orange for summer, cool bluish for winter). I tried to choose colors that weren’t too cliche for each season but still captured the essence.

The duplication issue was addressed by the use of foil stamping the ‘BruinGo! Flash Pass’ text.

This is the Final design for the passes.

Below was an earlier version (not approved) of the winter pass.  If approved I would have continued this type of style through out the rest of the seasons…

I’m excited to blog this post as it’s been a long time in the making.  So you’ll have to excuse the novel about to ensue…

You may remember me blogging some of the process photos for the making of On Ensemble’s music video Yamasong here, here, and here.  Oddly enough, I don’t even know where to start talking about this design.  It’s been through lots of iterations, edits, and versions under director,  Sam K. Hale’s art direction so there’s a lot on the cutting room floor that in itself could probably make for a fun post.  But I guess for now I’ll start on the final design .

The overall concept was to mimic the aesthetic of the film going from dark to light, just like Nani’s journey going from being asleep to waking up and entering into her alternate reality.  So the cover is a darker scheme (like the beginning of the film) and when you open up the case, the lighter/warmer tones on the disc are more like the dreamworld.  Note: You’ll have to watch the film to know what the hell any of that just meant.

For the cover there are two main elements; 1.) the bird’s eye view (from the film) of Nani looking down into the milky-blue cauldron and 2.) the hand made ‘Yamasong’ title treatment. The shot of Nani is from screen capture of the film – the problem was only half the cauldron was visible in the shot  so I had to clone and retouch the remainder of the cauldron in.  Next was the type: I hand-drew the letters, traced them onto tracing paper, then scanned it into Illustrator to “clean it up.” Actually it was more of a ‘dirty-it-up’ job as I wanted to match the organic hand-crafted approach of the film.  Once the typography was looking nice, I brought it into Photoshop and applied used various textures, effects, adjustment layers, masks, and painting to help it stand out from the background.

The other main elements that we incorporated were the ‘gnarly tree,’ as Sam dubbed it, and the Mountain (”Yama”) both of which were reduced down to 3-color illustrations and juxtaposed to create a sort of Yin-Yang effect.   Anyways, this was probably more detail than anybody really cared to know; but, it’s fun to look back on this project which has been more than a year in the making.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes.  I just finished helping my good friend, Eric Miller of Euna Design, construct an informational website about domestic violence (which I will post on here as soon as the site launches).  No sooner did I finish that project that I got a request here at UCLA to create bin wraps supporting the same cause.  I wanted to use the same colors and clean typography that Eric used in designing the site, so in some ways, these bin wraps are a sneak peak of the website (launching soon).  We haven’t applied to graphics to the bins yet but you’ll be able to catch them at upcoming UCLA Men’s Basketball games collecting used cell phones and batteries.

I also picked up the prints from my first experimentation with Ilford Xp2 Super Black and White film which I am ’super’ excited about.  I’ll try to do some scans and post some pics later this week.

A little background on the project: A while back I was asked to create an ad to coincide with the ‘Give Me 3′ campaign launched last summer by Mayor Villaraigosa and the LA County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC). After some back and forth with the LACBC we decided to create our own artwork to support the campaign.  I should add that I was a little intimidated  seeing as Geoff McFetridge had created the original LACBC version.  At any rate, it turned out to be a fun project – fulfilling to finally see it installed on the buses!

As a kid, I remember collecting various lapel pins and proudly using them as pushpins for drawings on the cork bulletin board in my room.  The graphics ranged from football team logos to Sam the Mascot from the 1984 L.A. olympics. I’m not sure I even owned clothing consisting of a ‘lapel’ at that age so, naturally, displaying them in my room was the only way to go.  Eventually, my bulletin board filled up with drawings and pins and I started accumulating them  in various containers on my shelves (this is probably  should have been an early indicator of my hoarding tendencies).  I don’t remember the exact timing of it all, but soon thereafter I made the decision that I didn’t need any more lapel pins and I stopped collecting them.

I have no idea what happened to my old collection but I wanted to share this tidbit as a part of this post because I realized how much fun I have designing the annual Fleet and Transit Attendance Award pin.  Something about deliberating about sizing, shape, textures, colors, etc. and getting the final piece and having it turn out just the way you had planned is a really gratifying experience.  That’s not to say that I might not have done some things differently; but, I guess I have next year’s to look forward to!

Graphite Pencil on Strathmore 2-Ply Vellum Finish - 18x24

Just finished a hand drawn poster called ‘Design is Dangerous’. The concept was for it to be like a tongue in cheek OSHA poster about occupational health hazards in graphic design.  I created the piece for a final project in a drawing class; however, I had come up with the concept long before and it was something that I had been wanting to do for awhile so I’m glad I got to finally put the pencil to paper and make it happen.

An eerie side note:  the person I used for my model in the ‘Accidental Fingertip Dismemberment’ illustration indeed almost cut her finger off a week after I took her photo.  Literally she had to go to the emergency room to see if she needed stitches.

Make sure you check out the site and look for Anthony’s name attached to your favorite films sometime in the near future.

Business Card