JFlah's Blunders

Seems like a lifetime ago that I worked at Crown Craft designing baby bedding for their NoJo brand . It was a job that saved me from several bad life choices and helped to redirect me. But not only did it do those super important things, it helped me to see that I have decent design chops and each time I get in a spot where I think I'm invisible, or think that I'm not important or am not "good enough" I go check the status of the design I did at Crown Craft. The baby bedding set I designed for NoJo's Little Bedding brand is called Dreamland Teddy and since it took off and did so well, they've since made a pink version to compliment the neutral one I created while I was there. Surely they'll eventually phase it out - it's been selling for nearly eight years on walmart.com. On days like today, I go read the reviews of young mothers saying how much they love the cute design and I thank God that He gave me the ability and the opportunity to bless...

I have to admit I laughed crazy hard at this video when I saw it the first time and had just about the same reaction to it when I just re-watched it. Why, as designers and creatives, do we not value our time (the building blocks of our lives)? Why don't I value the creative talent and ability God's given? There's no way I would ask anyone to offer their services for free but I'm asked on a regular basis to do design for free or for crazy low rates. When will I do better? #saynotospec   Then there's this guy: Chris Do... talk about a person who knows how to think/talk/reason. Wish I could do that on the fly.

Here are some progression images for the upcoming summer worship series. The lineup for this year is stellar! Last guest will be Bradley Knight - my boss's friend and prolific Christian choral music orchestra-tor/arranger.   First one is from a sketch but I didn't like it as much as the disintegration idea so I'm working in that direction now.  The guys didn't like the butterflies (although thematically they work great), so I'm working with diamonds for the disintegration mark for the series theme.

Here's the "final" poster design. Might be tweaked a little more, but this is basically it. Made the angels subtle and the nativity prominent. Thankfully the boss was around when I was working on placement of the pieces. He helped me choose three angels and decided he wanted the nativity big. Here's the inspiration:

Paint and Pj's painting for this year. Haven't decided if I'm going to add text or not. Here's a close up of the cutie snowman. Saw this great article on Muddy Colors . I've come across this trouble so often that I wonder why even I have started to devalue my own work. Now I know that part of the reason that it happens to me with the regularity that it does is because I'm in a "cul-de-sac" design career - and to exasperate the problem, I work full time at a non-profit where the norm is that people volunteer their time/talents. "Photo by JS Choi of he-who-will-not-be-named doing his brilliant thing at Illuxcon. So perfect and hilarious." Picture and quote from Muddy Colors Blog This video perfectly illustrates what it would be like for someone to try to treat other businesses and professionals like many clients try to treat artists and designers. And I highly recommend that you read the whole article at Muddy Co...

Am about to launch off into designing yet another logo at work. The women's ministry has gone through a few changes and they're looking for another mark. The group's lead has asked for a heart and a cross. We can go that route, but those images have been done so many times over that they're hard to do with any originality. I hope she will be more interested in the other ideas. I'd prefer to have their new logo be a spin off of the new church mark. Anyhow, here are a few preliminary super rough sketches. Here are some more...

Can't believe that Walmart.com is still selling the infant bedding set I designed while at Crown Craft/NoJo . I was there for only a few months and they granted the the great honor to of allowing me to take this project and run with it. They even let me name it - Dreamland Teddy. It's done well enough that they have since made a pink version and I couldn't be happier about that. I've seen some of the reviews online and have to say that they're encouraging. When I'm feeling like what I design or draw isn't good enough or that what I'm doing looks juvenile or when I have any kind of negative thought about what I'm doing, I consider what a great success Dreamland Teddy continues to be even 5 years after I designed it and how uncertain I was about it even then. It's surprising how emotions so often prove to be unfounded in truth. Here're my mechanicals:

Black and white is always classy...   Brown is nice too - it's warm and inviting, but not as flexible in relation to design solutions. Who knew slat board could be so cool? The boss came back from a staff retreat and brought me the idea of using a slat wall as a solution for what I've jokingly called his "wall of faces" (loosely translated: it's a wall of pictures for the worship ministry). The pictures have been taken by one of our church members - a very talented photographer - they'll be grayscaled. If the idea is approved, it's going to be nice when it's done. The above images are two of the many mock ups I've done for this wall idea, and I have to say that I like the slat board idea so much better than any of the other media choices we've explored. It will prove to be the most flexible for future things too. Once the boards are up, it won't be hard to install and remove and rearrange pictures and such at will. Surprisingly...

Sketching is always fun when it comes to figuring out logos. I've been picking up as much freelance as possible lately so when a former co-worker dropped by with a request or two I was ready. He wanted a publisher template that his secretary could use each week and he needed a logo. I've been working on the logo for a few days - thinking about it, sketching, doing rough layouts. Here are some of the results. These are the first set of logo roughs This is something they can put on the front of their bulletin each week. Layout is adapted from a GracewayMedia template .

Have to admit that the arms don't quite work there... and the contrast of painting style from the fuzzy tail to the smoother looking arms and head... Ah, well, for a quick job, he's pretty cute. Got a request from a preschool class teacher for a few cards featuring a raccoon. Here's one of them. Had fun working on these and wish I had need to do more. Took longer than it should have - probably 3 or 4 hours from concept to completion. I'm slow... Couldn't decide what I wanted to do for the card so I drew the arms last and combined pieces in photoshop.

So, yeah - we're re-branding now that the new boss is here. It's past time for this and I'm excited to freshen up the look we've got now. I created the last logo about four/five years ago. They said they wanted something traditional but more corporate looking than the last logo. Here's what I gave them last time:  This time the boss wants something uber modern but he doesn't quite know what he means by that. Every time he sees something else that he likes he wants to scrap the direction we were working in and run in that new direction. It's a challenge - a good challenge - and although I'm not sure I'm up to the task and am unsure if I will be able to provide the kind of logo he wants, I'm enjoying working on it - especially since the media director is handling the new web site stuffs right now.  The plan is to launch everything for the first of the new year - the new logo, the new website, the new slogan/mission statement and focu...

This is the logo I put together for them - sketches are HERE .   Lots on my creative plate right now - just got done face painting at the fall festival (that was a joy) and now one of the next things I'm working on is something for our preschool ministry. I designed a logo a while back (see above or go here ) and now they're putting the characters that are in the logo onto the fence they have in the preschool worship area. I don't know how long it will take for everything to be completed, but I can't wait to see it done. The preschool coordinator dropped off some primed wooden pieces and some paint, so I'll be working on that off and on for a little while. It will be a challenge to adapt the logo to the wooden pieces because the outline shape isn't quite the same - but that won't matter when they're done - they'll still be super cute. Gettin' started...

A former co-worker called earlier this month wanting to know if I'd do a logo for them. They home school their kids and having a "school name" helps them in the state they've moved to. I'm such a slow designer. I didn't sketch anything for this one - mostly because I thought I could work faster if I just edited some open source stock art I had. But the process was still slower than I'd have liked. I spent a good long while on research and looking for inspiration, more time gathering useful bits and pieces, and then at several hours fiddling with things to see what direction I should go in before I had anything worth looking at. So yeah, this project has a lot of time invested in it - which for a simple design like what they wanted, is pretty normal. I'm glad I didn't need to sketch and then digitize because I'm even slower when it comes to that now that I don't have access to a graphics tablet (boo-hoo - I really miss that tool - ma...