Herbert Lubalin

Herbert Lubalin was an american Graphic Designer who worked with American author, editor, publisher and photo journalist Ralph Ginzburg on three of Ginzburg's magazines Eros, Fact and Avant Gard. He was responsible for most of the visual creativity of these three publications. He also design a very influential typeface which was named 'ITC Avant Garde'.

After working with Ginzburg; Herbert Lubalin went into his own private practice. Since Lubalin had his own studio he had the freedom to design for a wide variety of projects which would include poster and magazine design to packaging and identity solutions.

After 10 years or working alone in a private practice he worked on a wide variety of projects. He also managed to create a Typographic Journal for U&Lc magazine which would serve as not only an advertisement for his designs but also a opportunity for further Typographic experimentation. Lubalin enjoyed the freedom his magazine provided him; he was quoted as saying “Right now, I have what every designer wants and few have the good fortune to achieve. I’m my own client. Nobody tells me what to do.

Here is the site that is a tribute to the Great Herbert Lubalin...
http://www.typogabor.com/herb-lubalin/

Margo Chase

Margo Chase is an American Graphic Artist/Designer. Her original aim was to one day become a veterinarian but she soon realised she was meant for the world of Design instead. after lacking in solid work Margo founded 'The Chase Design company' which turned out to be very successful. The company had been founded almost 20 years ago. Her company has gone on to create branding for numerous entities and she's also created logos for Teen-Horror shows Angel and Buffy The Vampire Slayer aswell as working for big singers such as Cher and Madonna.

Here is a link to the home page of the Chase Design Group. On this you can view their portfolio where you can find designs created for Animal Planet, Madonna, LA Ink and others...
http://www.chasedesigngroup.com/la_ink.php

Front Page enhanced

The front page of my 15 page booklet after I loaded it through Photoshop and the centrepeice.

The Centrepeice

This image may not need an explination as to how I did it but it's something I never tried before and it's different. Firstly I took a picture of myself. After doing so I put it into Photoshop, upped the levels, contrast and took a small amount of the brightness down. This would in turn make the photo look obviously darker but more mysterious and it was crisper. After doing this I went into the Filter Gallery and then onto Halftone Pattern and made sure it was dots and neither of the other to (because they're rubbish). The filter gave the picture a sort of blue shade to it. I then printed out the picture got a wet paintbrush that had recently been dabbed into black watercolour paint and went over the picture (especially the darker parts). After this the photo was damp and looked useless. I then got out felt tip pen and went round different darker parts of my face so you can certain details and the outline of my face. After doing this I flipped the picture over, at this point it looks almost like a watercolour painting and then lastly I glued it to my collage.

Front Page of 12 Page booklet.

...and I'm going to do 15 pages. And I don't know where I'm gonna get the time to do it!

Oh and the white excess bits with the black paint slashes on either side will probably be cut out when I actually put it through to Photoshop and InDesign.
The image itself will also without a doubt be enhanced.

Jamie Reid

Jamie Reid is an anarchist and a british artist and designer. His speciality is using cutouts from newspapers and often photography cut out from newspapers to create punk rock style style abstract images, which are often crude and/or will seem offensive to some. This is mainly because he uses the Queen as a centrepiece on a lot of his pieces making her look like a punk (I'm sure she'd love that). In the majority of his peices he uses cut out letters from newspapers also which resembles ransom notes which I personally think is pretty creative. Jamie Reid is most famous for his artwork for The Sex Pistols and many of their albums artworks.
Here are some of the artworks he has done, including the Sex Pistols artwork...





As I cannot find a youtube interview with Reid to embed into my blog instead; I found an interview with The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/feb/28/artsfeatures.sexpistols


To find more information about him here is his site which is currently under construction, unfortunately. For me anyway... http://www.jamiereid.org/

Typography Poster 3: Science Controlled

Of the 3 Typography posters this one is my favourite. My only plan for this was to make something different with the Mirror Shine photos. I didn't know what to expect. First of al I got one of the Mirror shine photos and then inverted it to white and grey and used the grain filter to make it a reliable background. I then wanted to create my initials myself using ether a lasso tool or the pen tool. After trying this out it didn't work but I thought it would look good and would give a sort of unique shape to my initials if I just made my initials out of actual letter-fonts in photoshop. So that's what I did. And it is also very noticeable as messy creations behind the initials (especially the 'S'). After doing this I noticed that the piece up to now was too light, it needed to be darker and I need to hide my mistakes and highly noticeable brush tool that didn't quite work. So I then put the same poster (Mirror Shine) in again but this time I put the levels up so that the letters and shapes in the image were black giving it a sort of character to the piece. All of the black bits in the piece are what I just told you. It turned out to look a lot better after I did this. The piece was more or less done but I wanted to have full words instead of just my initials. So I just thought of 'Science Controlled'. And I think the white text on the messed up black and grey background is very effective and completes an extremely eye catching piece.

Below is photo used to create this piece...

Typography Poster 2: Cream Cracker

It would've been a lot easier for me if I had just taken a photo of a cracker on it's own but instead I had to use the clone tool to erase all of the jam on the cracker from another piece. This took a lot of time to put right. After doing this it was simple, make a 'C' out of the cracker. Using the lasso tool I would cut out a part of the cracker which make it resemble a 'C' and to some it would look like a bite mark. I then copied and pasted certain small parts of the cracker around it making them look like crumbs. The overall idea is pretty simple by the way. After doing this I would then cut out an 'S' from my Mirror shine piece to go over the top of the cracker. The end result of the piece wasn't as good as I initially planned but I suppose it is better than nothing. I then added a light bevel and emboss to the 'S' to make it stand out a little more. After doing this the piece was more or less finished but I didn't want just a plain white background (although it didn't require anything else I the background because the picture itself is a sort of centerpiece) so I just used the pen to to make sorts of metallic lightning bolts with bevel and emboss texture to slash across parts of the background. After doing this (and it's not great) the piece was finished.

Below are the photos used to create this piece...

Typography Poster 1: Sacred

The S and the C in this image are hand drawn in another piece. I used the S and the C and decided to use jam from my Jam and Crackers piece and the smudge tool to colour the letters in. It didn't occur to me at the time to just take a picture of plain jam which would have been useful. I then used the pen tool to make slices down the edges and sides of the letters and then I used a grainy brush to rub out inside of the slices. I then used the pen to cut out parts of jam jars (which aren't that noticeable) in the background with some other colours to make it less plain. But after doing all of this and adding slight brush to the initials I wanted to make a word out of the two letters. So I used the word 'Sacred' as the finished piece. Even though the word has nothing to do with Jam, Jars or any other random pen tool structure I just happen to think that 'Sacred' is a very beautiful word.

Below are the photos I used to create the piece....