I love Ketchup!

Ok so I know I’ll wear out the “travel as an influence” theme very quickly if I haven’t already been dismissed as a pretentious showoff for bringing it up in the first place but really it is a major influence in my life and no matter how close I stay to home or far a field I go travel plays a crucial role in me as a person and therefore my design.
I pay close attention to things around me and as an aspiring graphic designer I did my best to look at things that were relevant to my field, one of the things that is easiest to spot and there are more than plenty examples of are packaging and advertising.
It is interesting to see there take on a particular brand that we also have since then you can compare the differences between ours and theirs, an example of this I found on billboards in the form of Heinz Tomato Ketchup adds. Now first off I can only really compare it to Southern California since that is where I’ve been living but I haven’t seen a billboard for ketchup for as long as I can remember but in Dublin they were everywhere. As well as being everywhere I also hadn’t seen the billboards even in magazine advert form before and I quite liked the whole idea behind them. The had a photo of a ketchup spill with a stem in it to make it look like a tomato growing with the tag line “no one grows ketchup like Heinz.” Quite genius I thought.
Here are some other examples of packaging and advertising from Dublin.

AND WE ARE BACK IN BUSINESS!

So after a brief hiatus I'm back
Well since this time I think we are allowed to include inspiration and influences I am going to blog about color as an influence or maybe since it is in the context of travel I should say I am blogging about travel as an influence but if I want to be the most accurate I guess I would say I am blogging about colors specific to locations. It is hard for me to pinpoint one color when it comes to a specific location but there are definite color themes when it comes to location. Sometimes it is more easily noticed when visiting somewhere unfamiliar to you.
So as I’m sure you could tell this is all leading up to my main point, though it was a long way to it. My point being I’m very influenced by the colors that surround me and everywhere I go different colors stand out for different reason. I was recently visiting Ireland and one of the things that I noticed first was the color of the doors of houses, apartments and businesses. A lot of the buildings are in drab neutral colors such as different hues and shades of browns and grays but more often than not the doors are painted in a vibrant bright color and not just the occasional red door you notice in California but almost all of them. The most common colors seem to be bright primary colors, sometimes all three will appear on the same building but even when on different buildings I noticed that they appear to be almost the exact same color like there is some standard for door color. Now that may begin to sound lame and unoriginal but trust me it’s not there are definitely variations on color and often the doors will be painted in any number of other colors such as vibrant purple or bright green. The combination of the dull colors of the structures paired with the bright door colors never ceases to wow me and as mundane as it sounds was one of my favorite aspects of my trip and therefore I believe it is fair to say it served/serves as inspiration. I have longed liked the effect of working with a combination of colors such as bright text on a dull background or even contrasting textures by working with a combination of different media to contrast not only color but texture and it was interesting to see this example in real life.

MOONLIGHTING RACOON SEEKS EMPLOYMENT

Here is a link to quite a spiffy interactive information graphic for The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?exampleUserLabel=nytimes&exampleSessionId=1236779321612.3347
I won't even give you a clue to what it is about, go see for yourself.
Over and out,
Admiral Chicken
PS: BE SURE TO RUN YOUR CURSOR OVER THE GRAPHIC!

GIVE 'EM BOTH BARRELS!

Currently in class we are creating a graphic with text that will help somebody understand something whether it be some form of history or rules/guidelines of something. In doing my research I came across directions for boy scouts on how to correctly display their badges and other boy scout rules. I found them interesting and helpful since they have a lot of very specific rules and they target a very wide age range (starting with cub scouts to the adults who are helping them or group leaders) therefore their directions have to simplify a fairly specific and advanced collection of rules and regulations. Here is a sampling just pertaining to uniforms and badge application for boys:I also found a girl scout guide from the 1920s which is interesting for the same reason the boy scout one is but it also allows one to see what things have changed since the organization started and see the graphic approach. Here is my favorite page of directions from this particular manual:
And it falls under the category of a wordless diagram!
you can see the whole book at: http://www.cabincreekcds.com/GScout1920.htm

IT'S A...AN ARMADILLO?

So I have 18 posts on the required topic under my belt so I feel I should be allowed one "off topic freebie", so here it is. Though it is not entirely insignificant to my blog, my blog URL is http://armadillohaven.blogspot.com/ so therefore this relates since it is about an armadillo.
Headline:

Baby news:Rare Zoo Birth of Armadillo in Minnesota

The entire article can be found at http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/travel/minnesota/40642777.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUycaEacyU
And on a closing note the gender hasn't been determined yet, I think I'll see if anybody is willing to place bets...

HARMONIES ON A HURDY-GURDY

Ok so usually I try to blog about information graphics that i admire, in this case I chose my pieces entirely by content. I admire the content not the design. These things are not easy to look at, though on the plus side the content is humorous and it relates to music which is why I chose them. I'm not sure on the origin, though I do know they all came from the same source. I think I found it on a blog...

BESEECHED AND BEQUEATHED BY A BUZZ BOMB

So the idea of this particular blog entry is to show my progression from initial comps to final project and all the bumps in between. Though it seems as it may not have changed that much there were many alterations I had to make even up until the very last revision. It went from two hands to five, the color changed and the form changed drastically (note it was an assignment and the requirement was to have a color and B&W version, the B&W is not shown from its original comps but just the final two steps). So here is my progress for your viewing pleasure...








Strangely I usually like my initial comps best, this is not an exception.