Back in November, when I posted the finished “Save the Date” postcard that Alyssa and I put together for our upcoming wedding, we still had not fully fleshed out the concept behind our actual invitation. But we did know a few things. It needed to be unusual, it need to reflect who we are, and it needed to complement (and hopefully surpass) the postcard. It would require an extraordinary amount of thought and effort behind it.

When we came up with the idea of the “gig poster”-as-save-the-date, we’d tossed around the idea of making the entire invitation set feel like music ephemera; LPs, fan club documents, badges, etc. The idea of a gatefold LP album cover felt like a natural choice for the invitation. But the size would be an issue, as we weren’t planning on mailing 12″ by 12″ envelopes. So we went with a half scale; 6″ square, folded, instead of 12″.

The design of the front cover came first. We were inspired by albums designed mostly in the 1950s through early ’60s, especially “floating head” style covers. I pored obsessively over the typography for weeks, but in a single marathon post-midnight photography session, we finally had the perfect cover portrait. Most of my experience is in panoramic photography and object photography, so I was initially intimidated by the notion of trying to pull off convincing  mid-century portrait photography. We pretty much made it up as we went along. Working with a black sweatshirt as our backdrop, we used a small clamp light as our key light on the left, and, next to her face, Alyssa held up an adorable battery operated blue LED nightlight that we got at IKEA. I would set the timed shutter release, and then run back behind Alyssa, and crouch to get my head in the right position. It took a few tries to get the positioning right, but with the proper underexposure, we were able to achieve the half-lit Robert Freeman cover portrait look with plenty of negative space for copy. But by themselves, our floating heads weren’t enough to fill the cover with color. So I took another shot of our lighting setup—sans Alyssa and me—deliberately out of focus. That gave us a great colorful bokeh effect that we would overlay on top of our portraits to produce the final effect. To simulate the “big foreground portrait, small background portrait” effect, we photographed a vintage caketopper in similar lighting conditions, and overlayed that image into some of the negative space in Photoshop. Voilà.

For me, a great deal of the fun was coming up with the tiny details, like the logos and markings that help to sell the piece as an album cover. Playing off of the “Glorious Dino Vision” joke from the save-the-date postcard, I added a Dino Spectrum logo. Then we came up with the fake “Syntony” record label, based on the defunct Harmony sub-label of Columbia Records. I’m constantly tickled by the over-the-top “STEREO” announcements on old album covers, so that was front and center.

Originally we had designed the “hits” sticker to be placed on the cover design in Photoshop, with a pretty convincing bevel/drop shadow/texture to simulate the look of a real sticker. But we found the exact same size/shape sticker available in pre-cut label sheets, which we printed on ourselves and applied individually to every invitation for an extra touch of detail.

The reverse side of the “sleeve” is an amalgam of early-to-mid-1960s album backs. The two biggest immediate influences were the back side of The Beatles’ Revolver, and a Laurie Johnson LP. Along with space-filling and semi-informative copy, there are plenty of in jokes and puns to keep recipients entertained, like a track listing that corresponds half-heartedly to the timeline of the ceremony and reception. The most fun I had was with the three fictional “you might also like” thumbnail album covers at the bottom: “In Exotic Hawaii,” “Polka Frenzy!” and my favorite of all, “Moon Farm.”

Like the front side, the back side shows plenty of faux wear and tear, including the unmistakable circular ”ring wear” impression of an old LP; I’m particularly proud of that effect. In order to make it as realistic as possible, I photographed my copy of The Beatles (the White Album), and after some Photoshop witchcraft, applied its authentic patina to the design.

Alyssa's original "RSVP" sketch, à la Rubber Soul.

We tackled the gatefold inside spread last, chronologically. For the left panel, I included a sort of figure-8-mitosis-space-helmet composition based on two other photos taken during the same marathon session as the cover shot. To us, this spread was really the meat and potatoes; it had to actually function as an invitation, so we tried to make the more important content somewhat legible and obvious. Along with the right panel’s whimsical nonsense text, we placed the RSVP details inside a montage quoted almost verbatim from the back side of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. Alyssa did some fantastic hand-lettering for the “RSVP” logo. Some of the photography came from the midnight shoot, some from our older files, and a few by our good friend Sakura Koontz. The finishing touch was the highly embarrassing shot of me-as-George-Harrison-as-cowboy.

Alyssa's original reply card sketch.

With the invitation itself complete, the reply card was our next challenge. We were originally thinking “backstage pass” or something more music-related, but Alyssa had recently found some gorgeous little vintage Cleveland bus passes on eBay. We loved the look of them, and based on the look of the bus passes, Alyssa hand sketched the design before we created the vector art on the computer. She also had the brilliant idea to make use of the “№” (numero sign) for the “No” checkbox.

To wrap everything up, literally and figuratively, we bought a supply of French Paper’s Pop-Tone envelopes in Sour Apple green. Alyssa created a “Handle with Care” linoleum block and hand printed each envelope with a metallic white ink.

"I Love the Beatles" badge

As a bonus, we threw in “I Love the Future Korwins” stickers, hand lettered, cut, and block printed by Alyssa. I love the Ed Benguiat style interlock lettering along with the couldn’t-do-this-with-a-font F+T+K ligature. The concept and colors are based on an “I Love the Beatles” pin from the ’60s.

This may be the most fun I’ve ever had on any design project… ever. For good measure, here are some additional close-ups and detail shots.

[View with PicLens]

For no good reason at all (or maybe because I’ve spent much of the day so far looking at infographics), I have decided that today is DIN Day. In honor of DIN Day, I have designed a birthday card concept that is also an homage to the talented Mark Weaver. I’m also just obsessed with the simple, utilitarian beauty of condensed gothic type. For the background I made use of a scan from a set of movie titling supplies called “Hollywood Titletters,” about which I will be going into more detail in an upcoming post, hopefully soon.

NYU Gallatin AlumniLink Mentor Program Brochure

I’ve been on a bit of a “ribbon lettering” kick lately. For this brochure/identity design, I was heavily inspired by a number of different sources, both old and new.

I wanted to conjure the notion of “link,” without using a cliché chain illustration in the process. The idea of roads and paths intersecting felt apropos to the concept of mentorship, and after doing some Wikimedia Commons research on such structures, I came up with a lettering style based on the look and feel of junctions or interchanges.

"Link" lettering, process

I wanted the composition of the piece to be simple and adaptable. For inspiration, I perused my copy of Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design (best textbook ever), and came across a simple-yet-gorgeous modernist poster by Lester Beall designed in 1937 for the Rural Electrification Administration. According to Philip Meggs, the poster was intended to be “understandable by illiterate and semi literate audiences,” and although my derivation was a bit more complex, I figured it would probably get the point across fairly easily to very literate university students.

After the basic concept was designed and approved, my brother Devin Korwin helped out with some last-minute Cassandresque shading, just as he had for the “Listening to Wine” poster.

I’m always looking for innovative ways to set text, and in the process of creating this postcard, I thought I’d give 3D lettering a try. I wanted to use a three-dimensional “ribbon” to mimic the movement of the pen or brush in the process of cursive writing. I also wanted to reinforce the feeling of papercraft in this piece, inspired by sophisticated pop-up books, especially given the recurring theme of Gallatin’s Alumni Day activities, “Return to the Great Books.”

While the process was somewhat laborious, it was interesting to play with 3D tools to create lettering in a somewhat unconventional way. It allowed me to direct the stroke through loops, and to tie knots inside of letters. There’s something rather Tron-like about it. Perhaps I’ll try “light cycle” lettering next time, or experiment with the smoke trails left by skywriting airplanes.

3D ribbon lettering, before red color was added

I was fortunate to be asked to provide some design and layout for Eef Barzelay and Clem Snide‘s forthcoming album, The Meat of Life, due out on February 23. The painting was done by my very talented friend Jen Uman, who has also posted some information about her process on her blog. The album is fantastic too—check it out when it’s available.

A reader wrote to me today to find out more about how the airbrush effects were achieved in the Gallatin “Listening to Wine” poster design. The design had been based on the feel of many wonderful posters by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, whose dramatic shading effects defined an era of 20th century advertising posters. As a holiday present to all who may stumble upon this post, here’s a quick and dirty tutorial to help you experiment with the stippled airbrush texture effect made possible by Photoshop’s dissolve blending mode:

1. Start with a new Photoshop document, with a blank white layer as the background.
2. Create a new transparent layer on which you will use your “airbrush.” (It’s a best practice to create layers instead of destructively airbrushing directly on the background.)
3. On the new, transparent layer, create a circular selection using the Elliptical Marquee tool.
4. On the Layers palette, click the “Add layer mask” button (looks like a shaded rectangle with a white circle inside). This will create a layer mask from your circular selection, allowing you to work on the layer without having to worry about losing the original selection shape.
5. Click on the Layer 1 thumbnail to make sure that the layer itself is selected and not the layer mask. It’s sometimes difficult to tell which is currently “active.”
6. Select the Brush tool from the tool bar (or press “B” on your keyboard).
7. From the Brush palette, select a brush that is soft, round, and large. The exact size will depend on the application, but you can use the [ and ] keys on your keyboard to scale the brush up or down while you’re using it.
8. Also from the Brush palette, use the Mode drop-down menu to change the brush’s blending mode to Dissolve.
9. Make sure that the Foreground Color is set to something other than white (black is a great color to practice with), and then click and drag your brush tool across the canvas. You should see a speckled effect on the feathered edges of the brush. If you were using the “Normal” blending mode instead of dissolve, the feathered edges would be soft and clean and would lack the texture that “Dissolve” offers.
10. You can vary the effect by changing the brush size and also by altering the Brush palette’s Opacity or Flow settings. Experiment in order to find the effect that works best for your application.
11. Use additional layers and layer masks just as you would use vellum and stencils in the real world. Layer mask “stencils” help to define the boundaries of the shading effect, but the brush itself defines the look. Another advantage to using layer masks, rather than simple selections, is that the “overspray” is accessible if the mask needs to be moved at any point in the future. It’s like having a stencil that can travel through time!

Star Waggons Holiday Card 2009

We just put together this year’s Star Waggons holiday card. It’s yet to be printed¹, so enjoy this 3D pre-visualization instead. We’re also dangerously short on snow here in Los Angeles, but if it were 30° colder outside, today’s rain storm would look something like the simulated North Pole shown above.

1. Actually it’s been printed now!

[View with PicLens]

My fiancée Alyssa and I are not typical when it comes to our wedding planning. For one thing, we’re getting married at an unconventional venue, the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. Moreover, we both work in design, and there’s no chance in heck that we’d buy any prepackaged save-the-dates or invitations. No sir. So we’ve spent the better part of the year planning out how our wedding will look, from the décor to the communications, and the first component of this gigantic undertaking is the “Save the Date” postcard that you see before you.

Original photographs that became our silhouettes (Photo by Sakura Koontz)

We want our wedding to feel like a party. Not just any party, mind you; more like a 1960s-concert-in-the-park-meets-prehistoric-hipster-safari. Or something like that. We’ve been scouting inspiration from far and wide, and one of the first ideas that hit us was to create a “gig poster” or a vintage-style handbill to inform our potential guests of the basic logistics in advance of the invitation. I’ve designed a whole bunch of save-the-date postcards for Gallatin at NYU (as you can see on the portfolio), but this was obviously a lot more personal. We decided it would be an adventure to silkscreen the invitations ourselves using the “split fountain” technique. It was a popular method of decoration for old concert or boxing posters, but it was usually used in the background to create a bright, colorful gradient on which black type would be set and printed on a letterpress. To stick with the theme, I used a combination of different type and lettering styles, some of which mimic the rough letterpress style of printers like Hatch Show Print in Nashville and Colby Poster Printing Co. here in Los Angeles. Other lettering comes from House’s Photo-Lettering site, such as the “Save the Date” script at the top. We referenced old show prints as well as movie posters (for the “Dino Vision” logo, a pretty blatant rip of the Cinerama logo and the Sinclair dinosaur mark. For the central silhouette illustration, we combined vector traces of two photographs taken by our good friend Sakura Koontz.

The process was remarkably smooth. We’d both done some screenprinting on t-shirts before, but neither of us had any hands-on experience with serigraphy on paper. The stock we chose is French Paper’s Mod-Tone in gray, which comes with a pre-printed pattern. We designed the card to be printed without bleed, 2-up on an 8.5″ by 11″ letter-sized page, allowing us to make a very simple cut and end up with a finished product. (We printed the back side on the cheap using inkjet). Using a Photoshop mockup of the design, we determined that Pantone Orange and Rubine Red would make a nice, yummy “Tequila Sunrise” gradient. Our comp wasn’t far off the mark, but the real-life result was far better than the digital version. Before we knew it, we’d printed up about 150 of them. The right side of the screen had some imperfections in the emulsion which led to some interesting artifacts, while the left side was nearly perfect. I think the variation between different prints is one of the beautiful and lively aspects of hand-printed serigraphs. So even though we sacrifice a bit of legibility, I think we’ve really hit the mark with our attempt at creating a vintage, imperfect look.

Tune in some months from now to see what we do with our invitation!¹

1. It’s done, see it here!

Where the Wild Things Are Pinstriping Art Tribute

Ever since we saw the Spike Jonze / Dave Eggers film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, my fiancée Alyssa and I have been a bit smitten. The exemplary, ultra-laid-back marketing campaign and the this-is-how-it-should-be-done film itself are a one-two punch of quality, so often lacking in mass-marketed entertainment. Right before we saw the film, we came across Terrible Yellow Eyes, a blog dedicated to Wild Things fan art, featuring loads of talented artists giving their visual perspective on the book / film. (You know the film has to be making huge waves if it’s generating this much inspiration.)

Alyssa's secondary variation

So over the past week or two we’ve been working on our own little contribution. Not sure whether or not it’ll get posted anywhere else, but we figure it should see the light of day one way or another. Besides the obvious reference (“Carol” from Where the Wild Things Are, we referenced hot rod pin striping art styles like those popularized by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.

In terms of our method: we were originally experimenting with Scriptographer, an amazing Adobe Illustrator plugin platform that allows for all sorts of scripted tools and filters. One of its scripts, reflector, allows the user to draw on one half of the artboard while the drawing is automatically reflected, in real-time, over the X-axis, Y-axis, or both. (Yes, for those Kustom Kulture purists out there, this is definitely cheating.) But in the end, Alyssa sketched out the final geometry with pencil on paper, and I scanned it in and vectorized it with bézier curves in Illustrator. There we added color, exported to Photoshop for some texture and experimentation, et voilà, out popped the finished design.