me & the babies

me & the babies, originally uploaded by jake_mrtnz.

today was my last day of watching liam. it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with him. he and amelia had lots of fun playing together (basically squishing each other, drooling, and in amelia's case stealing toys from liam) it was a great week. and now, to get back to working on the business end of my life...

summer times.

YAY for summer!

amelia & i have been very busy now that i'm done with school & jake is back on the study train. we spent all of last week playing with my mom, and the two cousins, ben & liam. this week, liam is playing over at our house all week (grandma left & ben's outta town). its good times. we call it cousin club. well, i call it cousin club. i like to make clubs, so does my sister. it goes way back to the old days. other than going to the park and playing babies, i've been trying to finish up a project that's been going on since my typography class started. they're initial pendants made from a typeface i created. here's a picture. they're not quite done, but its a start. there'll be more about how i made them & possibly painting on the letters as i get them finished.





this is the letter f. for fun, francis, or fiona.

final finally finalized.

weesh.I didn't know if i was going to make it out of this term with all of my hair, as of this post (and maybe a few more organizational things) i'm done. hopefully. there might be some loose ends here and there...BUT-- My poster series is done, and that's all that's important right now.
I made a series of three posters based on the artist/graphic designer/illustrator/sculptor/accordian player Leo Lionni. he's a great fellow, and i really enjoyed learning about him. I based the structure of each of my posters on a design he did for the MOMA exhibition book The Family of Man (1955). I used it as a framework to show some of his other design work, illustration, photography, sculpture, children's books, and paintings. He really did a lot of stuff, kind of a jack of all trades, that Leo. The text that i used was from his autobiography (between two worlds) and from AIGA's article on him. I set all my text in Century School book because read somewhere that he really liked it.
here's me series:

so, i made these book covers a while back and i totally forgot to blog about the

frankenstein book cover, originally uploaded by bunnyjrobot.

The assignment was to pick three penguin classics books and design a set of book covers. I chose the scary set, dr. Jekyll & mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and Dracula. I chose them mostly because I had read the stories before ( well, in the case of frankenstein, i'd seen the bride of frankenstein... close enough) anyway, i felt like i had enough of an idea about the stories to be able to create some cool book covers.
i got my images for Dracula & Frankenstein from books in the library that were essays on each of the books. the frankenstein picture is my favorite of the bunch, its someone's weird interpretation of franken-people that came out around the time Mary Shelly's book did.
The technique i used for getting my images to look the way they do is a printmaking technique called Van Dyke. you get a negative transparency of the image, and expose it to paper that has the Van Dyke solution painted on it using a very high watt light table. i learned to do it this term in my intermediate bookbinding class.
I used bodoni as the typeface for my book covers in bold, regular and italic. I chose it because its got that classical feel, but still keeps things neat and simple.
I struggled with how to place the title on my book covers - you can see the different attempts i made by looking through my photostream. eventually i settled on this 'tag' set at the edge of each book slightly askew. i'm still not really sure if i love it, but eh, it works. i think this is one of those projects that i'd really like to come back to when i've learned a little bit more and see what i'm able to do with it. again, to see my progress in this project or to view the other two book covers in the series, please check out my flickr photostream.

making progress...

some type cards, originally uploaded by bunnyjrobot.

I finished my intermediate bookbinding class yesterday with a final critique that went pretty well. In the end I had 3 new books to show. I'm really happy with how my do-si-do book turned out. I'll be uploading pictures of it to my flickr later on.

In the meantime, I've been spending every spare moment working on my type cards, my leo lionni poster series and my final group project on rhetoric.

the next post will be about how everything is done, and i'm ready to start my summer break!

authentic tube sticker.

authentic tube sticker., originally uploaded by bunnyjrobot.

I'm so so so glad to have the portfolio review behind me, only now, there's the mountain of work that I have been neglecting and need to finish to make it out of the term in good shape.
I've got my poster series that I'm working on, four books that I need to finish making for the critique on Monday, I need to buy more 4x6 cards for the little term-long type project that I totally didn't forget about until the last minute, and I have a group project that needs some love too. I'll be updating to my flickr more regularly as the work starts workin' ... one more week left, & I can't wait for my summer break to begin.