Incase DSLR Sling Pack

So we've recently picked up a new DSLR for the office. We've been shooting all our stuff with the Nikon D7000 with great results. My only complaint is that the d7000 is a bit grainy in low light setting must be the lens? who knows. Anyway the 5d Mark II is an awesome camera.

I know, I know, the Mark III is out now but for what we' need it for dropping a little over 3 grand doesn't sound that appealing to me. This is my first full sensor camera and I'm still trying to get use to it but its been MAD fun learning on it. I'm not interested in doing a review for the camera (there are tons out there already) so moving on I'd like to share my excitement coming into the office today. I received a package from incase and this was whats in it!

This is the new "DSLR Sling Pack by Incase" Thanks for the hook up anonymous designer I know from Incase. Here are two quick images I snapped with my iPhone I'll take more detailed photos with the camera in the bag ect.

Homeward bound San Francisco

So if you've been following a few months back we started a collection called "Homeward Bound" the concept was designing graphics inspired by the city each member of Creative Session grew up or lived in. We started em off with the Oregon sweater ( read about it here ) The design became quite a popular peice. We still have people asking about them now- unfortunately being a small company it's tough to do everything we'd like to get done so we had a small run of those sweaters. We're working hard at getting everything we design to people whom admire our design.

Well following the success of the "Oregon" design we'd like to introduce to the world the "San Francisco" addition to the family. LAX and NYC are coming up next.

A little reminder image here:

A LITTLE VOLT WON'T HURT

Freshest shade out! Ever since pop culture has been reviving the whole 80's movement we've been seeing alot of neon color ways hitting shelves. Some brands just are over the top with neon but our friend Nike up north is doing it quite right. This probably has something to do with the classic air max 90's.

Nike Lunar Flow Woven

Lunar Flows are the heart and sole of classic Nike running sneaks! Luckily i was able to get my hands on a couple pairs, these things went fast! You can't go wrong with the highly underrated woven finish!

Nike AirMax 97 Fused

No lie, I was literally drool'n over these when they hit blogs a couple months back. As an ID guy I'm big a big fan of crazy manufacturing methods and Nike definately delivered on these 97s! You're staring at the marriage of Hyperfuse tech and AirMax 97s for a stitch free shoe! BOSS!

look what showed up in the mail

A few weeks back my friend Amy reached out asking if I was interested in designing their 2012's softball shirts.  Yes,I did design them and also wrote a blog posting about this; Titled "Free Work Free Exercise" -- scroll down a bit. The project was definitely fun to work on and a quick way of brushing up on my graphic design skills. Id like to remind everyone as we should take on non paid projects as often as we are able to. Being that they never have huge requirements and  you have unlimited reign on the final results. Its an awesome way to build confidence and add to your portfolio at the same time.

Any whom a mysterious package showed up in the mail today. I was wondering who this Michael McFeron was.....

Opening up the box I realized a project I worked on a few weeks ago had came back as a pleasant surprise. Amy and Mike had sent me a team shirt with name on the back- Mucho Gracias guys.

Now here is another lesson to keep in mind- when specking out printing detail be sure to make it clear to the print shop of what you want in your artwork file because verbal conversations get lost in translation. My original intent was for a black shirt with gold and white accents. Illustrator has no gold color so I used yellow as a placeholder. The print shop took my document at face value. :) Oh well, it still looks good.

Free Work Free Excercise

Sometimes doing free work allow you to be less self conscious about your design, let the ego down and have fun. [dropcap_2]My[/dropcap_2] long time friend Amy reached out to me the other day asking if I could design her 2012 softball team's jersey. They're called the "Banana Sluggers" and them fuggers are  a damn good team. So why not make it official with a well designed jersey.

Most years they get by with “Banana Sluggers” spelled in front a number on the back then names and sponsor carefully placed. They’ve never really had a logo so I thought maybe I should take a stab at it since it has become and annual thing for them. While Amy described the team my brain had already started crunching ideas.

 

The first thing that came to mind immediately was the peeled banana revealing a baseball bat! — I thought i’d run with that cause it’s honestly pretty clever. I wanted to add a silhouette of a softball behind the crossed bat but quickly realized it’s not going to be successful. The next thought was the baseball diamond and I think that is more successful.

Amy spoke a bit more about the team and the sponsors. Beaver Engraving and Suki Bar & Grill. My final thought was that we should keep the crossed bat with the baseball diamond as the base then add sponsors into the mix with each year as the sponsors change.

This year Beaver and Suki are added and this is result.

Keep in mind the design should be a two color print using vinyl. If there were no requirements I would want to add more detail to the beaver.

Jordans on my feet and in my bag

Jordan X "Chicago"

These came out last month but we've finally got our hands on them. Sorta slipped on reminding our selves to pre-order a pair of the Jordan 10's Chicago edition. But since we had an inside hook up. Went ahead and picked up a pair for our future baby.

C.S GIVEAWAY!

So you've seen this Mayo colored beanie with the custom leather patch. Do you want it? Well CS is giving one away. We've finalize the design of the leather patch and have a sample beanie with the original patch design sitting around! So we're giving this beanie out to our followers. -- (this will be the one and only beanie with this patch design.) Rules are simple- 1.LIKE us on facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/CREATIVEsession 2.Find this same photo and hit SHARE. Have your friends like the photo on your page. 3.The person with the most LIKES by sunday night. We will be sending them a beanie Monday Morning when we announce the winner.

I'm over editing videos

So nearly a month from today I flew to Portland Oregon to see family and to attend the 2nd Annual NW SNEAKER EXPO at the Roseland Theater. We were invited to sell some CS gear and to shoot a feature video. A day ago I finally finished editing the feature and wrote a recap - summarizing our experience. Here is the video I made-- I'm literally done filming and editing for at least a month! HA!

READ THE FULL WRITE UP HERE.

Beanie Business

So we've been sampling beanies from a few different resources. Working hard to really get what we like. I think we're getting close to something we are proud of and can sell to the general public! stay tune.

Patch Addiction

Ever since we"ve been toying with the idea of making custom leather patches to place on the back of our sweaters. We have gone a bit mad in designing new variations for upcoming beanies and hats that are yet to come.

I am really drawn to the last version with the bear integrated into the slots online cross. Something about that bridges the space for me. Our fans all voted for option 2.

2nd Annual NW Sneaker Expo

"Shoes can change your life. Just ask Cinderella!"

--Anonymous

RECAP:

**Special thanks to Paul Vu over at PaulVuPhotography for working with us.**

This past December, we spent some time in Portland, Oregon with friends and family for the holidays and to bring in the New Year by releasing our new "Homeward Bound" Collection.

We were invited to the 2nd Annual Sneaker Expo hosted by Ibeth Hernandez, Adam Illa Lewis, Blaze' Lamar & Jacob Robinson at the Roseland Theater. The team was definitely excited to attend the event and our expectations were high cause we know our friend Ibeth throws a mean party.

In addition to filming the event as a part of our "3 Minute" interview series, we also sold Creative Session gear. It was dope to be apart of the expo and to meet everybody who attended and/or was apart of the event.

The exposure in Portland was awesome; we had a ton of fun networking and filming. It was quite hectic, and our anxiety level went through the roof trying to capture everything at the event. I must admit I'm quite satisfied with the footage taken and the result of the final edit. We captured the essence of the show and hope this will excite viewers enough to attend the next NW Sneaker expo in 2012.

[SPECIAL THANKS] for taking the time to sit down with us. DjTj of BEATROX : http://thedjtj.com/ AyeLogics : http://ayelogics.com J Kin : http://jaykinlive.com Blaze' : http://whothatkid.com Sir Michael Rocks : http://sirmichaelrocks.com/

Here is the video:

Another element under the Creative Session umbrella was a photo booth area. Here are some photos taken of our fans, supporters, and new acquaintances – they sure had some fun with them. It was such a great opportunity to meet so many folks in the industry. If you took photos of the event, please Email us we will be happy to post them on our site!

Photobooth: [nggallery id=5]

Common sense

Ever since Hova & Yeezy's "Watch The Throne" Album has been released I've been hearing a little too much of watching your throne this, watch your throne that. This is an homage to the departure of the symbol of highness and keeping us grounded. We wanted to capture the idea that the throne is a temporary seat. Its a piece of furniture something you own and could discard at a certain point in your life. Now I do not want to disregard the emotions and the psychological attachment a throne has to a kings, queen or a kingdom in history but we can only fight one battle and I choose to stand firmly that its merely just a seat. Sneak peek:

we are also bringing back the "I CS SF" in this HEART OF GOLD version:

Goodbye 2011 Hello 2012

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."  ~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce

2011 has been such a successful year as far as brand awareness. Being able to work on awesome projects and grow together as a team is great.

We started the year off by re-crafting Creative Session as an industrial design lifestyle driven collective rather than a clothing company. Anh and I felt as if we have gotten too involved with apparel that we lost track of our fascination of product design and the website was going in a direction of a clothing company rather than an industrial design collective. In a sense I think we both have been grappling internally about the identity of Creative Session and what we want people to perceive us as. We both graduated as industrial designers and wanted to use Creative Session as a company that emphasizes on working with other designers to make cool projects. The results will be our SESSION- hence the Creative Session.

As the year progressed Keith, Anh and I worked on many different projects all the while bounced ideas off each other. The projects were anything from Album Covers, Music Videos, Graphics, Animations, Photography, Industrial Design to Logos and much more. At this point we realized the true creative session was between everyone in the CREW!! we've been having our own Creative Session this whole time.

2011 definitely brought us all together even more. We now work closely and the dynamics of the crew has become easier to define, we can work faster, more efficient and our roles have dictated when and where we're needed for any given project.

Anh and I do not stress about the types of projects we work on anymore but we're excited about the projects we all are able to make happen!

SPECIAL THANKS | they contributed to our growth big or small. Paul Vu, Siphavy Hem, , Steven Tran, Noel Andrade, Ryan Huy Nguyen

--

We ended our year with the "Homeward Bound" Collection. The collection is about designing shirts that is iconic to the state we all have lived in. We threw a release party to sell sweaters and shirts we made. Here are photos from our photo booth.

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Amping up toward the holiday.

NEW Creative Session lineup

Spent the evening over at Keith's studio AKA Baker Son's spot printing new and old Creative Session gear. Here are a few of sweaters and T's i'll be having with me in Portland when I come home for the holiday.  Hit me up on facebook or like our fan page for updates on how you can get a hold of yours. https://www.facebook.com/CREATIVEsession

Distinguished Anarchy's first batch

I'm really excited to update everyone about his progress. He decided to start slow by producing embroidered t-shirts and sweaters. This will help him and his business partner Anh to start promoting brand identity in Portland. I'm excited for the future for these guys.

A Few months back I received a phone call from Drew Amado of Distinguished Anarchy based in Portland Oregon. Drew has been meaning to jump start a sophisticated gentlemen's brand in Portland Oregon, He feels there are no labels catering to strictly classy men and wanted to start a cut and sew brand up there. Being Portland born I love to connect with entrepreneurial creatives from Portland. We talked for about an hour exchanging ideas about his brand and ideas for logos. About 4 pages of doodles and sketches and a week later- A tough decision but we settled on this logo you see here:

Mynority "The Wooden Tomb"

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