Personal Sketchbook

Some pages from my sketchbook. Lots of imperfection, but I ought to start somewhere.

Wannabe Moments

The moment when you squeeze your fist tightly and whisper longingly to yourself "I wishhhh I could do that!". Been having few of those lately thanks to these folk:

DKNG Studios

Chossid Gone Hipster Prints

At last, Arch Design House has printed the Chossid Gone Hipster posters! It came after some requests from facebook fans, and we now have the beautiful posters in hand. This is the first screenprint we've done and we used the incredible printing service of mamas-sauce.com. They've been a pleasure to work with from start to finish, even though we had a few major bumps in the road. I chose them mostly because of their very informative FAQ section on their site that explains their various printing processes, color, paper and how to set up files for print—allowing me to speak the same language and make knowledgeable decisions. 

Exploring Illustration

Currently playing around with hand-drawn sketches and tracing them in illustrator with the pen tool, followed by photoshop for the texture. How do I think I did? For the bow and arrow, I love the concept but don't think the design is strong enough on its own. And if I were to touch it up, I'd make the text all go in the same direction (the way I initially had it, before aiming to be user friendly :). For the Tune In poster, I really like the way it came out and how the colors balance out the overly buoyant design. I'm not crazy about the typography but it's good for starters. Click on the images for detail

Spheres: Digital & Analog

Exploring shading using watercolor paints and the ipad.

3 Designer Heroes

Paying tribute to 3 designer heroes: Menachem Krinsky, Yossi Belkin and Chaya Mushka Klein.

Chossid Gone Hipster

Went illustrator happy with this one. Some of the illustrations are based off of icons from thenounproject.com, a great resource for basic black and white vector icons. Here's a little video about the noun project.

Von Glitschka the Vector Guru

Von Glitschka. He's so good that Adobe Illustrator includes his work as a tutorial that comes with every copy of illustrator showing the user how powerful illustrator can be. Von Glitschka is a vector guru. Here are some of my favorites from is work: 

Jewish Genealogy Poster Contest

The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies holds a yearly contest for a poster design announcing Jewish Genealogy Month. Although both my posters were finalists, I didn't win... here are the two I submitted.

Poster One

Shayna Bracha Award

Card design for the Shayna Bracha Awards. This project done pro bono, is in honor of a beautiful girl named Shaina Bracha a"h who passed away—while still in her teens—from cancer.

Front

Life in the Heights - Logo

A logo designed for an organization in memory of Shayna Bracha Borowitz a"h. It's targeting girls int their teens and early 20's with the idea of self growth, networking and developing oneself spiritually. There's a shin and beis in the tree being the initials of her name, see if you can find them :)

Spotlight for Turnstone

Entered this video into the Turnstone contest for an office furniture makeover. We didn't win :( but the video was exciting to put together nonetheless. First time using premiere pro :)

How to Design Cool Stuff with John Mcwade

I read the "Before & After: How to Design Cool Stuff" book and found it to be an educational read with clear visuals of important design principles. The auther John Mcwade takes apart a design that you know looks good and then breaks it down and explains why it's visually pleasing. You can watch his free videos - short and with super useful techniques. Here's an example of one I love:

Jewelry by Rivka Friedman

Came across Rivka Friedman's Jewelry on Ruelala.com the pieces are very affordable since they're only covered in 18-karat yellow gold. Here are 3 of my favorites from the collection.

Midnight Bottles - Oil on Canvas

First oil on canvas titled 'The Midnight Bottles'. Painted at Mussie Greenberg's art studio.

 

My Mini Moos

Here's a set of mini moo business cards I designed for myself thanks to winning them on web design shock. I got inspired by this set that uses quotes from Seth Godin's books, and so I put together quotes from designers I admire. The cards came out nice, only thing I would do different is to make the front text legible. As of now it's really small and you can barely read it... didn't realize just how mini the mini cards are.

JPC - Noooooooo!

Good going JC Penney. Here's their ad campaign announcing a new system to hit their stores. People apparently freaked out about it, but I just love it. It shakes the established system, setting grounds for a totally new look and feel.

30 Illustrator Video Tutorials Every Designer Should See

Chris Spooner does another wonderful roundup of illustrator tutorials here. I know the basics and perhaps a little more but there are treasures in illustrator so I'm linking to his post in the hopes that I'll get to go through them.

Coloring in the lines

I was creating this postcard for a Tu B'shvat wine and cheese tasting event and found that the line art in the cork was begging to be colored in. I used the wacom tablet with the brush tool in photoshop. 

Digital Painting Challenge

I gave myself homework in a previous post to use the wacom tablet and just paint. Not enough to have this fancy device sitting on my desks. So here is what came out of blending the colors using the tablet's sensitivity settings in a half hour's time.