I’ve really been enjoying the work of Mr. Armstrong lately. He does all kinds of wonderful large scale art deco architectural wonders using a variety of media & techniques. While the site is a little tricky, just be patient and click on the dates at the top to navigate through the various works. I also really love his drawings as well, definitely need to visit his studio soon.
San Diego is classy, Michael James Armstrong is proof.
Back in February we got a nice call from Catherine Owens, long time super creative director for the uber-famous band U2. Catherine came across our video This is Agostina and knew she found the team who could help rock some video/visuals for this years U2 360 world tour. For the past few months we went to New York for meetings, came back to the Bangkok studio and have been rocking on over 200 video clips for the upcoming show. The concert opens in Barcelona on June 30, 2009 to a sold out crowd of 90,000 fans. For complete tour details you can visit the U2 Tour schedule. To get an idea of stage and the size of screen we created video work for (its MASSIVE), you can check out the U2 360 website.
As we come to wrap on this project, we are really excited/anxious to show everyone the video we contributed to the project. As soon as the tour gets rolling we will release more details (permitting all NDA rules of course). Till then, just go check out the show, I am sure U2 will give you one hell of a show!
We caught up with the hard working Will “Mr. Fancy Pants” Bryant this past week. He’s a freelance illustrator and a new “student” at Public School, a collective that we’re excited to see develop.
Run us through a typical day for you.
Now that I’m married and the wife has a solid job I’m slowly becoming a morning person. I wake up around 6:30 AM, zombie around in my undies and then make my wife’s lunch. I usually stick around the house, make the bed, and get things in order before going for a run or heading into the studio early. I try to arrive at Public School around 8AM set the coffee for 9:10AM, attempt to catch up on e-mails and get my Things.app organized so it will tell me what to do for the day. Sometimes I catch up on my blogging duties in the morning and then just set sail into the freelance ocean. Sadly, i’m a slave to the inbox so I’m constantly checking it throughout the day (while working or pretending to work). There’s loads of interaction and male bonding while working until I head home at 5:30 PM to greet my lovely bride. In the evenings we might go for a bike ride, cook some yummy food, watch the Cosby Show or Friends or Diagnosis Murder or Home Improvement while the kitty lays on his back to air out his belly. Throw in some giggles, snuggles, and maybe some late night e-mailing before bedtime.
We really like your MSNTCE work. How did that all come about? Is it easier making something not that cool? Do you set a time limit for yourself?
Thanks! I think I was camping at the wrong blog when the MSCE came about. I kept seeing all this awesome stuff coming from all over and felt a little bummed that I missed it. So I decided to just start making stuff under this crappy umbrella and I feel no pressure about uploading these sometimes terrible ideas/executed thoughts. It’s so easy! You’re already admitting, yeah this isn’t that cool, but it made me laugh for a bit. Plus it forces me each day to experiment with something. I haven’t really set a time limit, but I’ll quickly kick my own shin if I get caught up in some minor detail. Most of these pieces have been created in a last minute rush (as if you couldn’t tell). You should join!
Maybe we will! As type dudes ourselves, we’re always curious how people find this weird practice. How did you get into graphic design and specifically drawing type?
I honestly feel like my life was constructed and composed before I even knew what design was. Little circumstances and experiences have led me down this incredible path. What got me started on type derives from two people. Kate Bingaman Burt sensed my interests in undergrad and totally took me under her wing. Her enthusiasm and aesthetic poured into my work from the beginning. Then she goes off and brings in Mike Perry to be a judge/guest lecture at Mississippi State in 2006. I was able to meet him and he critiqued what little work I had at the time. I was working on my first (terribly unsuccessful) threadless submission. It was all hand drawn and Mike encouraged me to keep with that, then my soul was glowing from his lecture. I had never seen such wonders and coolness! So that experience definitely had a HUGE impact on me and my work.
S’s are really difficult to draw consistently, what’s the most challenging letter to draw for you?
S’s are tough! They never look the same. I really just love drawing all the letters, but I think C’s look stupid. Well, i mean that, unless there’s some goody face or drippy goo hanging out in the counter space.
You listen to a lot of music, what music makes you the most productive?
Oh man I do listen to loads of music. It’s somewhat slowing down, but i’m still finding treasures everywhere from running the music blog. If I HAVE to focus and really fire something out I really on psychedelic droning jams from Black Dice, Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Junk Culture, Pocahaunted, White Rainbow, etc. On the other hand sometimes I have to bring in the sunshine with Caetano Veloso, El Guincho, Dent May, Devendra Banhart, and Beach House.
We noticed on Public School’s Attendance list (your members) that most of you have moustaches, what kind of school is this!?! Do you have a moustache (yet) or is that a Senior thing?
Before I moved in there was a one month period where everybody grew mustaches, but a couple of the guys couldn’t. Within the school context it sure puts the creep stache into perspective! haha. As far my stache, no chance. It hardly grows now and it’s like a reverse hitler with a big space in the middle. It’s sad.
What’s coming up for you and your schoolmates? What are you looking forward to working on?
We’ve got a Public School Exhibition at Thunderbird Coffee in August and I’m very excited to display work here in Austin. Everyone here is a freelancer but sometimes collaborate when the project calls for it. So i’m definitely looking forward to collaborating within the same studio! I’ve loved working with great people over the internet so I’m sure this will lead to some good stuff as well.
You told us you really enjoy home cooked meals, do you have favorite recipe?
YEEEES! The wife cooked some awesome mediterranean quesadillas recently. They were full of flavor and ultra satisfying. Ingredients: costco’s frozen chicken breast, onions, classy tortillas, greek dressing, olives, feta, oregano.
Sounds amazing! Explain your nickname “Fancy Pants”.
One the first merch gigs I landed was for Rare Device. I drew this rad old man and a speak bubble that said, “Oh, Hello Mr Fancy Pants!” Then a few months ago this blog was confused by the wording in my bio and assumed I called myself Mr. Fancy Pants. I thought it was so ridiculous that I quickly took it and i’ve now got my own tax ID as Mr. Fancy Pants!
If you weren’t illustrating or designing, what would be your next choice for a career?
Realistically, I could sell shoes. I worked at a cool shoe store during high school & college summers and was pretty successful in knowing the products and interacting with customers. But, why be real? I’d TOADALLY be deejaying, painting murals, and running my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s pizza place. I’d have to get the rights, but how sweet would it be if all the characters worked out the hip restaurant and the Foot Clan delivered all the pizzas. Just imagine all the decor, well designed menus, and themed drinks!
Some updates over at HORT.
Just a heads up you After Effects users on mac. Be careful if you run the latest updates from Apple, which include a quicktime update. Just like a year ago, this update brings After Effects to its knees, leaving users like myself opening your project to the pinwheel of death. Such a death requires an actual reboot on the machines button Since I hit this problem last year, I never run updates. But today I got trigger happy and updated, ergh. Thanks Apple!
Espen Friberg, a piece of Yokoland, appears to have updated. I may be way off with this post. Either way, one of my faves. Add Espen on Flickr as well.
I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile now but perhaps you’ve already seen the work of AWH in Wallpaper, Monocle, or Men’s Health. No? Well go check these guys out, can’t get enough of the simple illustrations/icons and all things big juicy colorful maps and diagrams. Also check out Elsa’s work too, she’s 1/2 of the studio and has more tasty goodness to see.
I am not much of a rock band player, but I did recently have a little jam session when I was staying with some friends in NYC last month. Today, I stumbled across this site with this new promotion for the Beatles version of rock band coming out later this year. I have to say, this is one of the best animations I have ever seen, if not the best. Why? Well for many reasons. Of course working with the Beatles as subject matter only helps push the work to the forefront, but I wont deny the intensity of this work. Overall, the style, the story telling of the bands progression from pop stars to experimenting with drugs, is all so obvious in a very unique way in the promotion. I could go on for many words here, but overall, this animation is just 100% kick ass. See for yourself…
We are proud to be a sponsor of this year’s TypeCon 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. If you don’t know what TypeCon is, it is the leading conference in America on all that is Type.
On top of being one of the main sponsors, we are also curating a poster exhibit at TypeCon again. We are looking for your best poster work that has excellent usage of Type on it. Last year we had enough room to show all the posters that were submitted and the work was amazing. As a bonus a local gallery took all the posters as part of their permanent collection in Buffalo. The time before they travelled around at ATypeI and some other places.
To clarify some issues: There is no specific size requirement for your posters. You do not have to create the type shown on the poster and anyone can submit. Feel free to pass this information to everyone you know, the more the merrier.
What we need from you:
Two copies of each poster design submitted.
Fill out page 2 of the pdf and print it out twice.
Ship to the address on the pdf by July 3rd.
Download PDF by clicking here (Right click)
We just got in Corporate Diversity after having it on order for many many months (before it was blogged etc). This is by far one of the best books we have ever had.
For the month of June, 50% of proceedings of ywft bestseller Black Slabbath will be donated to Justin Van Hoy as he bravely battles leukemia.
Buy Black Slabbath, attend a Dutch party in a city near you or donate directly on his website.
One our most common customer service questions is ’how do I get the swash items to show up in Adobe Illustrator.’ Well, we suggest you read these tech notes from Adobe which will easily show you where and how to use these extra swash characters in fonts like Agostina. For more information on the OpenType format, check out Adobe’s OpenType Page. Each Adobe application handles OpenType a little different, so check the specific application help docs on how to view the opentype options, Adobe has all this clearly listed in the documentation.
For OpenType development and technical details, these links provide a wealth of information: Microsoft, Unicode.org , Gallery of Unicode and Fontlab.
