Silent K Records: The Blanks

This is the second full assignment we had gotten in my web design class, and we were asked to create a one page press release. It had to be some kind of music release - so we needed images for a parent company or record company, and another image to put in the article, like a CD cover. So I (of course) used my Silent K Bunny, and stuck with a red/black color scheme.

I found a nice picture of a black and red Gibson SG, and threw some downloaded paint brush effects on top of it to serve as a giant (web-optimized) image for the background. The rest of the design was positioned to that one background image.

I created the album cover by taking a high resolution image of a Hulk action figure and applied a "Cut Out" filter in Photoshop. I then turned it red and messed with the Saturation and Contrast filters. The hardest part actually came from cropping the image of the hulk on the CD cover. Depending on how close it was cropped, it would have completely different looks and feels to the design, and I wasn't quite sure what I wanted. I asked for opinions, and narrowed it down to two choices, and wound up solving the problem by using them both! One extreme close up for a CD cover, and one cropped out a little further to be used for the DVD cover. I threw a glow effect on them and saved the .png so I could position it anywhere on the site.

The copy is all original content and contains a bunch of little "inside jokes" of my favorite musicians, directors, actors, and things from my personal interests. The band name itself - The Blanks was a two-man-band I had in high school. (The logo was also very similar, but I recreated it for this project). It a fun project, and I think this was the project that cemented Trebuchet as my favorite typeface (you are reading with it now in fact!)

Check out the fake site here (hosted on my website) Here.

Dee-Xign-A-Day Blog/Face Morph

For my web design class, we had to create a non-functional Blog-like space. I remember that it was just one of those days where a bunch of projects were intersecting, and I had to crank this one out in a few hours. I really liked the header, even though it was pretty simple - just a half-tone effect of red and black, and a cool font (Cooper!) in front of a simple bullseye shape.

We needed to come up with something clever to denote it as a design blog, and you know how those clever designers love spelling things differently, so I chose to spell it "De-Xign".

I divided up everything which was pretty monocromatic with blacks and grays, with red borders. It was right after this project that my teacher told me I needed to experiment outside of red and black... lol. But on to more interesting things: the face morph. The story on the site is true, so I'll just repaste most of it here. You can see it hosted on my site Here.

One night, I was working on some video stuff. I revisited an old project (Out of Batteries) to change a few title sequences and alter the credits a bit, but the process was basically done. Anyone who has ever worked with video editing knows that the last part of completing a project sucks - cause that means you have to spend a bunch of time rendering (especially if you are working in HD). To kill some time, I surfed Facebook, stumbled upon this picture of my friends, and decided to alter it.

It took about ten minutes and the process went very smoothly. First I Lasso'd the guy's face, Refined the Edge and copied it over the girl's face. With the Hue/Saturation tool, it was easy to get the correct skin tone, altering mainly the Saturation and Brightness.

After that, just took the Eraser tool and made sure the edge was highly feathered and I was done. It's real easy (especially if the copied face is right in the picture), and usually has a good effect for humor...plus it's fun to do and to kill time with.

There ya have it, perhaps one of my best face morphs.

Silent K Logo

I designed my first logo in my sophomore year of high school. Back then, I didn't even know Photoshop existed - so I naturally used whatever was on the old family Dell. I taught myself how to use Microsoft Picture It! 2000 and was pleasantly surprised years later to see many features integrated into Photoshop.

The idea was to use the logo for my garage band, Critter Jones (no, we weren't any good). I was getting into The White Stripes and punk art, so I was interested in high-contrast minimalistic designs. I wanted to play off the idea of a "critter" and for whatever reason a bunny popped into mind. I grabbed a guitar shape from google, because I still cannot for the life of me draw one freehand. (It's the curves! Screw up one side, and the whole thing is ruined!) I drew the bunny using a pen tool.

I had grand visions of the logo being used on buttons, round stickers, and painted on the bass drum. None of that happened, but I still wound up encircling the design with red - just in case merchandising would actually happen.

I actually thought it would be really cool and punk-rock to put an "x" in the eye to show that the rabbit was dead or a zombie or something. I started messing with the filters and one of them simplified the "x" into a soft circle. I printed out a sheet of paper with several variations in color and shape, and asked for opinions. I don't even think I went with the number one choice, but I picked the one that I use now.

I have been redesigning it on and off for a few years with a few touch ups. I simply call it "the Silent K Bunny". Once in a while there is some descriptive text saying it's a "Silent K Production" or something like that, but I happen to like the mystery of the logo - a textless bunny playing guitar.

Blue Orchid Typography Project

In my typography class, we were tasked with creating an artistic representation of a phrase, song lyrics, poetry, or dialogue. I chose to pick a song that was just begging to be made into some kind of project - "Blue Orchid" by the White Stripes. I was listening to the song a lot at the time, and it just sounded like something I could work with.

Jack White's high-pitched, forceful voice required a fluid, even slightly feminine typeface - I found a graffiti-esque font, by the name of Farfel ICG Felt Tip. Since White's delivery of the lyrics emphasize each syllable, I off-set each syllable and placed it in a vertical hierarchy - as if written on a musical staff - to mimic the changes in pitch. Some of the words had a certain accusatory "bite" so a grungier, bolder font is positioned behind the main script when necessary. Meg White's steady drumbeat is represented by the ever-present lyrics in the background, that have a much more rigid grid system than the main text. Those are a dark grey, which only pops out against the black a little bit, so as not to overpower the piece.

The paint splatters represent the blaring guitar riff, that come and go. I would have liked a brighter more electric blue, but It would have looked funky next to the blue "blood" dripping from the orchid. To create the effect, I made a very dark gradient of blue and used Liquify to pull down various parts on top of the flower. I then used Bloat to create more realistic "drops" on the flower. I added the white splatter to emphasize the end of the song a bit, and to make the blue stand out, otherwise it would get lost in the black. The picture I had didn't contain a stem on the orchid, so I had to make one up with some filters and shapes...It's the only part I kinda regret, but no one takes pictures of flower's stems on the internet it seems...

Check out their official video:

Poster: Shut It Down Sunday

Another project I had to do for my internship at 747 Productions was a poster for another event at Shots Pub N' Club - called Shut It Down Sunday. It is a contest for aspiring artists, where you pay an entry fee then get to sing, or rap, or whatever and the winner gets some cash and free recording time at our studio.

This poster was pretty simple, I just happened to have a bunch of really cool shapes to work with. I kept the format and fonts similar to the first poster I did. After laying down all the text I would need, I started making the composition which was basically a rowdy crowd leading up to the city of "Peoria". The skyline isnt quite the same...but I think it's at least obvious enough to be a city. I had a rapper outline and stuck him on the right, as if he were the special guest performer (Gutta ENT). I threw in barbed wire shapes at the top just to tie the piece together more using more white images. I dont know what made me chose orange for a color, but it goes nice with the black (even if it may be a little Halloween-y). I'm particularly fond of the contrast that the "IT" has in the middle of the title. Breaks it up nicely I think.

Poster: 2nd 2 None Sunday

The first thing I was asked to do for my new internship at 747 Productions was something I was very familiar with - making a poster for an event. I was given a list of info to include (the most I've ever had to work with) and was told to make it sexy and classy. It was a "ladies night" type of poster, so it had to appeal to Peorian females.

The first thing I did was to get all the text on there to get a basic hierarchy going. (This is how I start most posters). I made sure to stick with only three fonts - otherwise I feel it breaks the unity, and looks cluttered. I needed a woman, and I wish I remembered the search term I used in Google...but it was something probably like "sexy lady"... but I cut her out of the original image and feathered the edges after using the Quick Selection tool. I added a layer mask and used a gradient to gradually make the picture fade at the bottom and sides.

For the background, I chose a gradient that was a little feminine, but wasn't hot pink or lime green. To create the vector "starburst", I used a technique that I learned from the internet ages ago. First create and define a pattern with 2 differently-colored vertical stripes (like white and black). Then fill a layer with the pattern you created - duplicate that layer and merge the two to create a single raster image on a layer. Then go to Distort>Polar Coordinates and use the "rectangular to polar" option. There ya have it! I then enlarged, positioned and messed with the layer blending options to get the effect I wanted. I had some grungey brushes that I used on the corners, and added a "sponge" filter tothe background to create some gritty texture. After all that, I added a paint splatter shape that I found on the internet. I threw in a variation of my logo - this one has a semi-transparent "SK" which of course, stands for "Silent K".