Go Vote & Stuff

Now, I don’t normally do this but this election is going to be a doozie. I try to stay out of the whole “Who are you voting for” scene because I don’t want some ass hat jamming politics down my esophagus. But I was approached by the #GoVote people last weekend to make something to encourage young/all voters to get out there and make their voice heard. I was futzing around with some textured fake hand done looking type (like the rest of the world is doing right now) then I decided, nah, I want to make this more interesting/comical. So this is what I came up with. A newspaper that has some quips about the debates as well as some incentives/excuses.

I watched all of the debates and have been following this election pretty loosely so I wanted to tie in some of that binder nonsense and with the help from the crafty wordsmith Chara we came up with the line “Voters in a bind, some in binders” and that was just too much for me to handle. I knew that I had to take this piece to the next level, not just toss it on the internet, but make it a 6′ x 9′ paste for all of Philadelphia/people walking past 9th and Spring Garden to see. So I did just that, with the help of two super amazing dudes: James Anderson & Tim Beitz. Couldn’t have done it without you kids.

Now to get into the semi sappy part of this. I agreed to do this piece on top of my already unbelievably hectic schedule because of how strongly I feel about this election. It is a perfect tie-in to the whole “Nom Now” street art stuff that I do. The “Nom Now” philosophy is to make your name part of the now and get involved with your life, via art or whatever makes you happy. It’s about just being 100% whole heartedly involved in it. As a US Citizen it’s your right to get out there and vote and make a decision that with affect your life in one way or another. So many people just sit back and say, “Oh, I don’t live in a swing state, my vote doesn’t count anyway.” Like hell is doesn’t count. If you support someone, THEN GO SUPPORT THEM. Back to my point, I was more than pleased to make something that would encourage people to get up and do something about their life and still make fun or whatever. I just want people to see this and lol for a second and then say, “Shit, I probably should do that.”

The whole point of this #GoVote project is to flood the internet with interesting designs that encourage people to get out there and make their voice heard, so feel free to share this on any social jam you’re working with. Try to link it to this post or my website but if you don’t it’s not a big deal either, do you boo boo.

SO HERE ARE SOME OTHER THINGS THAT I’VE BEEN MAKING!

I’ve been doing some work with an awesome company called Art-Reach, they help make the arts accessible to underserved peeps here in Philadelphia. It’s a great organization doing some truly amazing work. They asked me to make an invitation for their annual jazz brunch and this is what magically came out of my computer.

I also got to attend said jazz brunch and it was AMAZING, super beautiful and grand and served probably the best cheesecake I’ve ever eaten. Big thanks to Katie Phillips and all the people at Art-Reach for listening to my bullshit reasons as to why to tell the printer to fuck off.

I finished up my 3rd brand concept at 160over90 and wrote a gigantic blog post about it over on their blog, so give it a peep if you care. If not, there are some photos below.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

I got to design this wedding invitation for two of the most special people in my life. I met Matt & Kirby my sophomore year of college and ever since they have always been Matt & Kirby to me, never one without the other. They came over to my mom’s house to carve pumpkins and ever since then I’ve declared them my second set of parents. They’ve been there with me through the worst times and the best times. There are no other people in the world that I would trust more than them, they listen to me bitch and complain about every single thing that happens in my life and then offer a valid, considered, and sane response that I don’t want to hear but is always right.

Matt had told me in college that he was going to marry Kirby, and this is something we all knew. When he told me that I immediately said, “I want to make your invites.”  The engagement came and the challenge was ON. Now I’ve made wedding invites before, but nothing like this. This is the wedding to conquer all weddings so a proper invite was essential. Like I had mentioned before Matt & Kirby know me better than anyone else in the world and I’d like to think that I know them just as well, so I decided to go this hands on native american look. Once the invite took shape everything else just sort of started to fall in place.

Now, I held nothing back while making these invites, Envelope liners? Yup. Customizable hand stamped reply cards? Yeah, that’s happening. Letterpressed Invites? Is there any other another option? Special ordered envelopes with every name hand set on each one? Of course, toss that into the mix. And did almost everything go wrong while making all of this? Hell yeah, nothing good comes easy and, jesus christ, it wasn’t easy. Anything that could go wrong went wrong. But hey, you wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t just write it.

I knew from day one that I wanted to letterpress these bad boys. I never had a REAL reason to get anything letterpressed before then and I had talked with Scott McClelland for a little bit about possibly working together. So the day finally came where I gave Scott the word that I was ready to go. He invited me to come down and check out his presses and learn a little more about how the whole process works. I was blown away. Such beautiful machines making such amazing art. I left thinking, holy shit. I’m going to letterpress every single thing I do from now on. BUT I don’t know if I could afford that. Scott’s attention to detail and ink matching precision was amazing to see. I have the utmost respect for people that not only do their job well but love doing their job. They eat, sleep, and breathe it and he was the definition of that. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out. Thanks a ton for your patience man.

I decided that I wanted to work in the reply card stamp because every single person invited to this wedding is someone special, someone important to Matt & Kirby and they deserve more than just a print out. Every reply card was stamped individually on both sides with a custom ink formula (aka: 3 pushes on the black ink pad and 3 pushes on the blue ink pad, real high tech stuff) This is a small wedding so we had to figure out a way to include a seat number with each reply card, which was going to be difficult because we were hand stamping every reply. What we ended up doing was leaving a big enough space in one stamp to leave room for a very small one or a two depending on how many seats were reserved for that particular guest. Stamping those little one’s and two’s was most likely the best part of this entire process.

After weeks of waiting to instagram the shit out of these, I said to myself, “Okay, I held nothing back with the execution of these, I worked with an amazing letterpresser, I’ve spent hours upon hours with Matt, Kirby, and Nick getting all of envelopes lined with the addresses printed on them, all the replies stamped, and all the direction cards in place, now it’s time to photograph this stuff, I’m not going to hold anything back here either. I’m calling in the king of wedding photos; Pat Furey.” I cruised on over to his apartment where we set up shop infront of a window and he banged these photos out in under an hour. I was shocked with how amazing the photos turned out and I am forever in his debt. The man knows what he’s doing.

That’s about all I have to say about this experience, it was amazing and tested my patience more often than not but in the end it was all worth it. I wanted to make something that was just as special as the people that I was making it for. The blood, tears, and sweat that went into this was all out of love and compassion for the two people in the world that I know would do the same for me. All that’s left to do now is to go to this wedding and have the best time of my life. I would wish best of luck to you two, but I know you don’t need it. Both of you will be happy forever, that’s a fact. Thank you for everything you’ve given me, from the haircuts to the hugs I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you two.

The Internet Will Never Love You.

I got asked to do these editorial illustrations by Philly Mag for this really great article called, “A Non-Cynics Guide to Life”. The article itself is very inspiring, it makes you realize how much of our daily lives are wrapped up in devices and the internet, when, in actuality, the internet doesn’t really matter at all. It does exactly what we want it to do without hesitation but it’s slowly but surely disconnecting us from real emotions/human beings. The article also emphasizes on taking your time, really being grateful for what has been given to you, and realizing that you are a very very small piece of a giant whole. So because you are such a small piece, you should really take the time to be nice to other small people around you, just because you should. It talks about really letting yourself go in someone, letting yourself be exposed: your body, your feelings, your desires and fears, because thats where real life is lived and I couldn’t agree any more.

As for design this was the first pull quote I had ever done so I wasn’t sure what to expect but it consisted of super quick turn arounds and really awesome and concise art direction. It was a great experience and I’m pretty excited with the final pieces. Hopefully it’s a first of many. Go scoop a copy for yourself pépé.

East vs West

Next Thursday I’m headed out to good old San Francisco to meet up with some family, finally see the lovely Casey Catelli, and to do massive amounts of exploring. I haven’t taken a vacation in years so something like this has been a long time coming.

BUT, I need your help! I’m looking to get some suggestions for cool/hip/radical stuff that I should do/see/hear/eat/whatever while I’m out there. I’m looking at all you design/artist folks to help me out, I want your “Must See” lists. Bars, Art thangs, Tourist thangs, etc. LAY IT ON ME. And if anyone is looking to grab drinks/hang out/be my tour guide shoot me and email and let’s make it happen!

Also, I’ve got a huge paste planned and some new stickers burning a hole in my pocket, so if you see some idiot putting these up all over, it’s me.

Hip City Veg Now Open!

I wrote about Hip City Veg a few weeks ago and today it finally opens! If you are a vegetarian/anyone that likes good food in Center City this the place is for you. I had the opportunity to go to a friends and family opening to taste all the food and let me tell you, I’m not really one for vegetarian food, but this was amazing. I highly recommend getting the Ziggy Burger, unbelievably delicious.

Like I had mentioned before I have been working on the branding for this restaurant for a little while now and I am so excited that it’s finally opening up to the public! If you’re looking to scoop some tasty vegetarian treats it’s located at:

127 South 18th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (Rittenhouse area, right across the street from Serafina/Anthropology)

You can view a pdf of the menu with all the descriptions & prices here.

Sidenote: If you don’t feel like leaving your office, no worries! They deliver!

A Little Affair Album Art

I used to play piano/organ in this band a few years back but faded out because of time issues and realizing that the musician lifestyle wasn’t quite for me. But I stayed in touch with Ryan and he asked me if I would like to make the art for their newest album. After a long year we came up with this foggy/sunny cover and I’m pretty excited with how it turned out.

A little over a year ago, when I was living in New Jersey, I woke up one morning and the fog in my neighborhood was so intense so I took a few pictures of it and moved on without thinking anything of it. Ryan had given me a few songs to listen to from the album and the more I looked at the fog photos the more eerie it started to feel and the more sense it made to try to incorporate the photos onto the album cover. I took two of the photos, combined them and then worked with some various color overlays. It ended up feeling like a sort strange but hopeful space so I felt like it fit in with the tone of the album.

My favorite song off the album is Take My Hand, you can listen to it here or head over to the A Little Affair Bandcamp page to give the rest of the album a listen.

Great work guys.

Sometimes I Take Pictures.

Photography is something that I have always been interested in but never wanted to exploit. I always just wanted to keep it a little hobby; something on the side that was pure and fun. I’ve tinkered with a few different digital cameras here and there but never ventured into the 35mm world so a few months back I asked my Dad if he would let me borrow his Nikon EM, a super light little guy with a solid 50mm 1:8 stock lens on it. It’s easy to sling over your shoulder and trek around with, it’s not like an anchor around your neck. I messed around with a few color rolls; one turned out okay, another I completely fucked up, and the other had a few gems on it but nothing to write home about. My mom bought me some black and white film for christmas so I figured I would give it a shot. I usually steer clear of black and white photography because of all its bullshit connotations of being automatically “artsy” but I tossed it in there and hit the streets this weekend. I’m pretty happy with the shots that came of it and maybe i’ll stick to black and white for a bit, who knows!

Everything in Excess

This was a piece that I put together for the Everything in Excess show tonight at Masthead Print Studio. I could go into some crazy deep meaning about all the icons/phrases on this piece but I would totally be lying. Shawn had asked me to put together a paste for the show and I really had no idea what to do so with the help of Julie Frey we gathered up all the unused icons that were floating around in our illustrator documents and threw them into one 4′ x 8′ piece. There are a few gems in there like; Ass-N-Titties, Skate-or-Die, all the classics.

I’d also like to say that I had a great time making it, but that’s not totally true either. At one point, I honestly thought there was no way that this thing was going to get done on time, but after 3 late nights it all worked out and I think it came out pretty cool. It’s definitely not what I had planned for the piece but ya win some and ya lose some. I don’t know if I would consider this a loss or not we’ll see.

Also, I made an iPhone version, you can download the Lock Screen here & Home Screen here. Give it a whirl why dontcha’.

Work in Progress: Menu Madness

I usually don’t post things that I am in the middle of working on but there’s a first time for everything. I have been working with a client branding her restaurant called Hip City Veg for a few months now. It’s an all vegetarian fast food joint that is opening up in Rittenhouse sooner rather than later. She had first brought me on to design the logo and then reached out again to help out with the menu. I was more than pumped to take this on because the only other time that I had the chance to design a menu was in my undergrad days where you mock up one menu and then bull shit your way through a crit about how it works and why you chose this color or that color and it’s all fake. This was really exciting to know that people are actually going to be holding and interacting with these menus. So I wanted to make them as enticing as possible, something that screamed to be opened, that’s why I went for this gate fold jam. You usually don’t see things like this in fast food joints because 1. they’re expensive and 2. most people are looking to order and get out of there almost immediately. But I wanted to change that a bit. I wanted people to take time with this menu and pick what they REALLY wanted to eat. Anyway, this is just a mock up and I’m sure i’ll update the site once the real ones are out the door. Keep your eye out for this exciting new place, it’s going to be a really really beautiful place with some really good vegetarian food.

Also, over the weekend I found out that the B3Ar FRUIT sugar skull shirt that I designed a few months ago is now being sold at Zumiez all over the U.S. Check it out here  or pop into your local Zumiez to grab it. See if you can spot the little Nom Now logos on it ;).

Steven Powers: A Love Letter for You Tour Jawn

I figured this was appropriate for the Valentinesers out there.

I had been meaning to go on the A Love Letter for You tour for close to a year now. I even won tickets from Phrequency to see the movie but I never got around to just getting up and getting out there, I guess I just didn’t know exactly where they were. Last weekend, I said fuck it and paid to go on the tour. Bad Idea. The tour itself is not worth the money you drop on it, you whiz by most of the murals and miss a majority of them. SO, what I did, is I went back out there on my own, got off the El and walked it. These murals are AMAZING to see in person and every single one is somehow tied to the building that it is on. Everything is super considered and has a little story. They are starting to fade a bit which is nice in a way because you can feel how personal the pieces are, they aren’t painted on some primer-ed wall with paint that will last longer than our life time. It’s just spray paint on a wall just like any other artist out there.

Anyway, like I said I walked out there on my own and really enjoyed it. See Me Like Beautiful I See You is one of my all time favorites and it was something else seeing it in person, you can look at pictures online all day, but you’ll never get the real experience until you see on the side of a wall towering over you. I would HIGHLY recommend doing it to anyone visiting or just anyone that is interested. You pay 2 bucks to get out there on the Market-Frankford line, take it to 52nd street, get off and walk towards the city, cross the street turn around go back to the station, pay 2 bucks to go home. $4 to see some truly inspiring pieces, from a truly inspiring person. Get out there sooner rather than later before they fade too much.