Spec work Hall of Shame: Egency’s Design Challenge
Every so often, an “opportunity” comes crawling into my inbox. Sometimes it’s an offer to collect UK lottery winnings, or facilitate money transfers to Nigeria. And sometimes, it’s an offer for me to do design or illustration work and not get paid for it. Egency, a new arm of Agfa Graphics, will offer stock marketing … Continue reading
Denver Broncos endzone pattern
I don’t follow football, but while I was at the gym I saw a recap of the Broncos-Chiefs game that showed, in the endzones of Invesco Field (aka Mile High Stadium), a retro blue and orange diamond design. Color me impressed. Not only did it look great on TV, it did two other things. One, … Continue reading
Old-school photo line conversion in Photoshop
It all started here: I was mesmerized, not by Steve’s mustache, but by the graphic, vibrating, toothy line screens he promised. Decades ago. Design history books had shown me the quick and dirty magic worked by slapping one of these babies on a photo. Goodbye boring, hello instant illustration. And we can keep it a … Continue reading
Hand-tinted silent film promo cards
This post is dedicated to dear friend and film buff Charlie Fisher. Long ago as a junior copywriter à la Peggy Olson, he penned a tagline for Oreo knockoffs—”the black and white cookie with the Technicolor taste.” The silent films here were shot in black and white, but their promos are certainly speaking Technicolor. Click … Continue reading
Columbo capsalong: Cindy Sherman edition
Columbo: kindly, sage, disheveled, indirect. So interpersonally astute he needs no CSI to solve crimes. He relies on being underestimated, historically a feminine strategy. He’s like the woman behind his own throne, but he’s a man, so he gets to be a detective. And indeed, a lovable one. I always root for him. Except for … Continue reading
Collected words #1
caryatid • sculpted female figure serving as architectural pillar or column omphalos • a rounded stone in Apollo’s temple at Delphi—to the ancients, the center of the world; a central point fulgent • very bright, radiant anneal • to fire or glaze as in a kiln; to heat (glass/metal) + cool slowly to prevent brittleness; to strengthen … Continue reading
Crop circles & Fleurons of Hope
Fleurons of Hope is a font created as part of Font Aid III to benefit the victims of the South Asian tsunami of 2004, an effort coordinated by SOTA. It is no longer available on myfonts.com, but can be found packaged with Building Letters Three. I collected the images of crop circles and type ornaments … Continue reading
Balloon of doom
P and I are big fans of the original Prisoner series. I once showed an episode to my dad, and he paused thoughtfully and labeled it “delphic,” by which I believe he meant pointless masquerading as profound. Well, in my book, “I’m not a number, I’m a free man!” is at least as good a … Continue reading
pinteresting
rebecca henretta | design » into « words 