Color, Composition and Beauty

As I rushed out of the office last Friday to beat rush hour traffic and to catch a flight PDX bound so I can attend the loveliest wedding ever. I took one last sip of coffee for the extra kick I needed to make it through the night! I left a shallow glaze of coffee in my cup! To my pleasant surprise- Monday morning I'm greeted with this pretty darkly stained @ the bottom of my cup. The gradation between the dark and the light areas reflecting on the white ceramic cup is quite pretty I'm hesitant to wash it.

-Minty

UPDATES* Distinguished Anarchy

Today I free'd up sometime to print out some neat color way. Still designing around the distinguished gentlemen vision. I chose very neutral colors and added a single color pop. Check out the proofs. Sorry these were taking with my iphone so it may not be as clear.

-Minty

Its time to have a MINTY logo.

To whom this may concern, So I've been writing and designing for CRESES crew for awhile now and have been using the alias Minty for all my postings/work. I think it's time for a logo don't you think?

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Always carry a pocketbook

It is to be expected that this little sucker is something I carry around with me everywhere I go. As we all know some of the most interesting ideas come out the blue and as far as my short term memory goes I rather be prepared to jot/sketch a quick idea down rather than forget. --If you're wondering about "all the way live" check em out on facebook

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It's been quite awhile since i've been able to sit down and get creative, isn't this what creative session'ing is about? Well tonight I finally had the chance to browse this little pocket book to go over the ideas I've jotted down these past few months. Lets just say we're going to get busier real soon- we have a few interesting projects to finish up then we'll kick start the many ideas in this booklet before summer end.

Keep posted though- we just finished a project with Hieroglyphics and a pretty big gig with intel. Sorry we will not be able to post any teasers images yet but soon.....

-H.Minty

Featured in Style and Trend Magazine in DUBAI

Its exciting for us here at CreativeSession. We've been working hard at putting out our designs in our minds eye. Its such a good feeling to be recognize. Here is an article in a magazine in Dubai:

Find out more about this project via : http://www.creativesession.us/2011/04/01/serendipity-social-network-dream/

hoang

Down Time Get Down

So I had a little bit of downtown in between the renderings Ive got to get done for work. So I did some quick shoe sketches to get by. Peep:

I've been using these pens for a long time now. The "Stabilo point 88 cool gray" & the "Staedtler triplus fineliner" I find it really sexy to start with the cool gray to knock out the general design and coming back with the fineliner to accent and darken the more important details. If you're looking for a good set of sketching pens! try these:

Taken with my Iphone so it's a bit blurry. Photoshop helped a bit:

10 Minute Logo Challenge 3/31

I have this knack for graphics. I"d like to think that I can do a little bit of graphic design. I wouldn"t go as far as saying I"m amazing at it, but enjoy giving it my best. Its so bizarre how so many people do not know what industrial design is and infer that since the title is paired with the term design. I should be able to design anything.... "could you make a logo for me?" "How about a website?" "What do you design then?" Although I"m not offended, I wonder if my peers are?

So here is the story: lately at work we"ve either been buying up new companies or I"ve had coworkers want to start their own. Which leads to them needing a logo to support their identity. Since the industrial design department is the only design department in the whole company, most people ask if I could design their logos. I shrug and tell them I could try. Although the results of these designs can not be shown to the general public, I"ve decided it would be fun to start a series of 10 minute logo design exercises. These exercises are to stimulate my graphic skills and could become a neat collection in the end. Hopefully this well be a weekly thing (stay tuned).

So a few weeks ago, my friend Mike and I were talking about his new startup called "push2start", a mobile camera booth that caters to events targeting EVERYBODY. So if you need a photobooth at your next event, check them out here. SO CAL represent.

Here is their current logo:

Quickly, I sketched out a few ideas. I"ve gradually adopted the "less is more" aesthetic. Most people whom have followed my design career will know that I tend to get a little overboard with adding in details. Usually every time when I"m done with a project, I"ve already added ten totally unnecessary things.

and the sketches:

Took these into Illustrator and vectorized them:

Concept 1

Concept 2

Bird"s eye view, concept 3 to the farthest right

Here they are a little bit cleaner in 2D:

CRE SES Photoshoot Outtakes

We just had our first photoshoot last Tuesday. Hopefully you've all had a chance to check out our hoodies and sweaters before, and now you get a chance to see them on us. Being a startup, we don't have the luxury like other companies to hire models, so we used ourselves and some friends. We wanted to really give everyone a raw internal look into who we are as a company, and we tried to do a less-than-traditional photoshoot. We just made sure to enjoy ourselves and show us as naturally as possible.We want to thank Andres Quiroz for taking these pictures for us; we're loving the photos he took, and we're glad he was able to deal with our general craziness. Our photoshoot took place at Astro Studios in San Francisco. Gotta thank Anh for letting us use the space. It was definitely more fun than business, and that's how we like it.

-Steven

"Earn Your Stripes" Hot Off The Press

Yo, one word. Keith, that's the word. So, we've been working hard for the last week just to get the Karmaloop promo video ready. Even though it was tough to put together, we had enough time to get these "EARN YOUR STRIPES" shirts done.

For serious, holler at Keith via keith@creativesession.us. We're all about making shit happen. After a hectic week, we slipped in a couple hours of work to get a few CREATIVEsession shirts to pass out at the KAZBAY party.

Check out the details, you should know we love to be a part of every aspect of our designs. From designing to screen printing; whatever the endeavor is, we want to connect at all levels.

Steven came after work to see the process through. Steven is about the business aspect of our company, we admire that he wants to understand every detail of the business from designing, printing, and to marketing.

Make sure you make it out to Atmosphere on Friday, October 15th to grab a CREATIVEsession sample shirt. We've got so much in the works. Just stay tuned.

-Hoang

Karmaloop X SF Brands Collaboration T

As we get closer and closer to October 15th (Karmaloop's KAZBAY Party in SF), we thought it'd be nice to update the readers with a detailed image of what the collaboration t-shirt we made looks like in its full glory, then speak a little about the process of creating and designing it. Coming into this project, we knew that there were more than 13 brands who would be attending the party; these brands are all separate entities, but will be coming together with the same intentions: to promote brand awareness, to network, and to have a wonderful night.

It'll be a party you shouldn't sleep on.

Conception: When we first started the project, NASCAR and the massive amounts of ads that are applied to a each car came to mind, since we would be working with over 13 logos in the design; thinking of NASCAR made sense at the start.

The thought of the amounts of logos to put on a t-shirt design AND make it appealing was overwhelming. Maybe we'd have to change up our idea of how to go about this design.

We decided that NASCAR frame of mind for the design wasn't going to be attractive or appealing to pop culture, and definitely not something popular to used by the urban heads in the KAZBAH store. The question was now, "what could we use?" What popular product, vehicle, or character would suffice for this job? We dug back into our youth and the idea of Transformers came to mind - then Voltron. Voltron is a classic figure that most of these brands could gravitate towards.

Quickly after vectorization, we realized that trying to fit the Voltron figurine on a t-shirt and have enough room to fit 13 plus logos on it as well would be quite difficult, especially if we want each and every logo to be clear. That idea was tossed.

Then it came to me! Why not mix these logos into a nice sleeved tattoo design, but with a twist. We would use traditional japanese tattoo sleeve imagery, but mix in images that all these brands could relate to, such as things they sell; we wanted to include products like hats, shoes, ect.

The following are sketches, images and progress jpegs.

KAZBAY Promo Video Shoot

Hopefully by now, you've all seen CREATIVESESSION's Karmaloop's KAZBAY promo starring Arnelle (and if not, view it here). The process behind it was grueling and tedious, but also a lot of fun. We all enjoy each other's company, so even with a lot on our plates, we always manage to have fun while doing it.

With Hoang behind the camera, you never really know what to expect for the end product. We had the camera only on Thursday night, so we had an extremely tight deadline, so we were only able to film for one night with very little time for scripting. But in the end, with lots of filming and many hours of cuts and editing, we ended up with a video that we could be proud of. You have to hand it to Arnelle; she was really great on camera. Now we just need to see everyone on this Friday, October 15th at Atmosphere in San Francisco!

Here it is again if you want to see it:

Karmaloop Kazbah - Kazbay party - OCT 15h 2010 from CREATIVEsession on Vimeo.

-Steven

Word Vomit.

This one is called "Word Vomit." Haha. Pretty straightforward concept, right? It's a literal translation of the phrase. Quite simply, "word vomit" is used to describe when we pretty much blurt things out before thinking about what we're saying. Then because of this, we usually almost immediately regret what we said and wish we didn't say it. There are a million things we say in our lives that we speak on impulsively that probably would have been better left unsaid. This piece communicates that clearly. I think it's rather funny.

It's a mixed media piece. I drew her face with a regular ballpoint pen, then scanned the image in to the computer, and built on it and effected it in Photoshop.

I was smiling the whole time while I was making this. I hope it does the same for you when you see it.

\\ Arnelle

Another day of PROGRESS!

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”- George Bernard Shaw

Today was another day of immense growth for CREATIVEsession. Not only have we broken 100 barrier in terms of Facebook fans, but finished our first video, and we have a lot of other things falling into place, as we're planning for a large event soon. The planning is getting infectious and all members of CREATIVEsession can't help but get together every night to keep working on it.

For Facebook fan #101, we promised them an iPad. Since we can't actually afford that right now, we decided to give them a sketch. Since Hoang and Anh were MIA at the moment, I (Steven) took the reins of this project. Check it out below: Definitely not my best work, but Janine seemed happy. For Facebook fan #54, we promised him an iPod Touch sketch, since sketches are better than the real thing anyways. And this time Anh was readily available to put in work:

And a close-up: So to Facebook fan #54, this is for you, hope you enjoy it.

-Steven

Doin' Work!

As you can see below, the CREATIVEsession team is hard at work here trying to make magic happen. I can promise you that this is a familiar scene; we'll spend many nights just camped on this couch, collaborating and brainstorming ideas. Last night, we stayed up late with our team, camped out on the couch just like the picture below, and launched our Facebook Fanpage. After an exciting and exhausting night, we already have over 85 fans!

Here's an example of some of our work; watch as Anh of CREATIVEsession changes this image below:

into...

Amazing, right? We'll continue working on more projects and we'll update you here.

-Steven

What to Expect HERE!

This section will be divided into current events and projects. We will attempt to capture our work, our thoughts, the process, the arguments, the love, and the odor in the room. We wish for this section to become a novel, an enjoyable one in which you, the reader will want to investigate more about us, stalk us, but mostly continue to be curious about us.

Sony Eclipse

A few weeks ago, Anh and I had a chance to sit down and brainstorm some fun conceptual projects that we could whip up quickly. We like to do these quick projects often to brush up on our design thinking - but also keep our minds fresh and to spice up our portfolio. The Sony Eclipse was the result of that weekend. Like the analogy of a name - The Eclipse lives on your window and collects energy to power itself.

Watching a full solar eclipse is something that rarely happens in a lifetime, and this concept draws inspiration from such a situation.

Drawing inspiration from a solar eclipse, we designed a personal media player. The media player draws on a set of photovoltaic cells on the back panel, harnessing the power of solar energy and providing a renewable and sustainable power source that can keep the device working through the night.