Friday, November 30, 2012

At the Light Table 018

30,000 years ago, our ancestors were creating some fine work. Roger Lee didn't discussed any of this in art history class. Or he did and I wasn't paying attention.

Friday, November 16, 2012

At the Light Table 017

Uvic Continuing Studies' is hosting a series of sessions led by Genevieve von Petzinger entitled, "Becoming Human - The Origins of Art and Symbolic Behaviour." Ms. von Petzinger researches geometric signs at rock art sites across Europe and the world. Her work has been recognized by TED, who recently made her a TED fellow.

I first encountered von Petzinger's research in a New Scientist infographic.

One of the questions in the Continuing Studies' course outline is, "Where did this (creative) urge come from and how long ago did it start?" Having sat in a couple of sessions, it's obvious "when" is the way easier question to answer.

As von Petzinger describes "prehistoric humans," I wonder if we're really discussing ourselves. It's almost like asking, "Why did Rothko paint No.1 (Royal Red and Blue)?" or "Why would Ford put a blue oval on its vehicles?"

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Alzheimer's Forcing a Hiatus

Alzheimer's Disease continues to ravage my Mother's ability to manage day-to-day. As she requires more attention, I have to divert my attention away from the lab and toward her care. Posts will continue to be sparse for the next few months. Keep her in your prayers and consider supporting the Alzheimer's Society of B.C.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

At the Light Table 016

The Victoria Book Prize Society oversees the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and the Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize. The prizes honour literary achievement and showcase the talented authors who contribute to the culture of Greater Victoria. I myself was honoured this year to be asked to update the society's icon used to identify the prizes.
Initially, I used Google to take a look at the literary prizes and awards landscape across Canada and the world for inspiration.
With these icons and logos in mind, I doodled various roughs jamming as many concepts around books, printing, paper, folios and Victoria into the roughs as I could imagine. 
From these roughs, I refined a few favourites and sent them off to my contact at the Book Prize Society, Teresa Bubela of Orca Books, for review.
Teresa was drawn to the capital V with the pages. This concept retains a bit of the original Book Prize Society logo included in the landscape image above. I took this concept and went a bit over the top with roughs which included floral embellishments and other whimsy around the capital. This isn't the only rough, but I'm not going to reproduce the others!
The simple approach seemed to take hold, and with that I created a series of variations to explore various borders, textures and colours. 
The straight-ahead approach, which maintains a woodblock print's hand-carved appeal, was Teresa's preference. The call for entries for this year has been announced, and the icon is now central to the society's communications.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

At the Light Table 015

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Spring Festival begins and so does the Province of British Columbia's tour of the Chinese media outlets in Vancouver!
Mary Lo, my Government Communications and Public Engagement contact over the years for this assignment, actually scheduled this event in her Outlook calendar last January so we could avoid rushing the project this year. This is such a fun project to be involved with, and this year being the auspicious Year of the Dragon, we both wanted to create something that the Honourable Harry Bloy, Minister of State for Multiculturalism, would be especially proud to present.

This year, I retained the 11x14 layout developed last year for the Year of the Rabbit because it was so well received and cost-effective.

As inspiration, I drew upon a beautiful Vancouver cultural landmark, the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden at 578 Carrall Street.
There are so many patterns throughout the gardens, and I have such fond memories of visiting them when we lived in the Lower Mainland, that it was an easy fit to include many of these into the background design. The patterns became vertical strips that used the province's corporate colours (Pantone 130 and 288). This became a visual anchor for what was planned to be a very colourful dragon.
The dragon was too fun. I used photos of the Vancouver Chinese Lion Dance Association as a jumping off point for the mythical beast. The dragon came quite easily.

 Once the linework was cleaned up using a Sharpie, it was scanned and auto-traced with Adobe Illustrator.
Quite often the black and white "Simple Trace" preset delivers the truest tracing. This process is much like designing cloisonne because the colour wells cannot leak.
I usually use a garish magenta to identify cloisons and ensure there are no leaks. However, because I wanted the dragon to be colourful, the magenta suited it. You'll notice a few areas where this colour stuck!
Defining the colours was a hoot, but what was a bit of a challenge was deciding on a treatment for the linework.
All the elements were composited with Adobe InDesign.
Once again, our Graphic Design Unit's paper of choice, Legion's Moab Entrada ran through the unit's own Epson 3800 workhorse. The output speed was about 10 minutes a sheet. The length of time wasn't a concern because the results were wonderful and there was plenty of lead time this year.
The finished, framed prints were very well received again this year. Everyone in the office now wants their own copy!