We've been jamming Big Krit for a long time now, Krit's a natural lyricist, he touches you through his life experience and does a great job at putting his emotions into music. One of our favorites from Krit is: The video is conceptually shot so cool, and the lyrics have a ton of embedded wisdom.
(Final Image)
Some of you may take my advice as common knowledge, but everyone else should make it their routine to generate in-context photos of their work as part of their process. CS RECOMMENDED!
I can't emphasize enough how important it is to use in-context images for your work. Whether a product design or graphic project, you've already spent "x" amount of time designing it; SPEND! that extra minute to render or Photoshop your awesome design into place. Your clients and viewers will appreciate the effort. Remember that a percentage of people are not DESIGNERS and will have trouble imagining how awesome your design looks in it's appropriate environment.
I just wrapped up a branding project for Tre Redeau and wanted to share a quick in-context process. One of the image I generated was the idea of a promotional vehicle for the client. Rather than a regular van I suggested the idea of a mobile concert station using a step van.
Concept: Since my overarching theme was black and gold, I imagined a photo of a black step van taken under some sort of street lamp at night or with a dark background, with Tre's logo on the side. My request was a bit too specific so I searched three different images that I can composite together.
A good site to find royalty free images is: www.compfight.com
Step Van I used. Although this wasn't black its at the right angle and a dark hue:
Of course the step vans background isn't very attractive, I wanted it to feel parked in a fancy parking structure.
So top two choices were the Wulai parking structure and the San Francisco Mission Bay parking structure. I used both. LOL
photo courtesy of QLAB
photo courtesy of QLAB
Firstly I blocked out the step van, blocking out the van in a dark color like black will let you revisit the shape when you need to. This way I can use the lasso tool if I ever need to go back and pick up the shape again.
Isolating the van I kept a bit of the ground in the image because you can blend the ground later and it helps with perspective.
I moved the van to where I needed it to be and desaturated the colors. This keeps it neutral to my black and gold theme. As you can see I blurred out the ground and added more darker shadows to the rear wheel-well.
Next I added the Mission Bay lot faded into the background and skewed the Wulai parking structure to match the step van's perspective. I also trimmed out the roof.
Erased, desaturated the colors because they're too dominating. The background shouldn't be our focus.
Brought back the van and added reflections on the window, moon/sun light leakage coming from the left:
Lastly the logo and we're done.
So I've been working with Portland based rapper Tre Redeau commonly known as Blazé for sometime now. Tre wanted an intro for his music videos but also a clean easy to read logo. I finally finished the animation last night and am excited to show it to him. Check out the short 12 second clip.
As I was catching up on some shared links between the team, my brother Anh shared this guys blog to me. I fully agree with what Daniel is saying here and I personally practice these tactics daily in my work. Daniel couldn't have written it more better. This is great for all you newly grads and designers looking to enter the industry: Taken from Daniel Edgen's blog:
Let me begin by telling you the single most important thing you can do for yourself — recognise your fucking self worth. If you can’t value your own work, then who the hell will? Tell me you’d hire the “talented but modest” guy over the “talented and knows he’ll do a damn good job” guy....... (read more on his blog)
From the Album XXYYXX by XXYYXX
On our usual early morning walk this AM Bentley totally went off on a tangent. My bad for checking my email while Bentley veered left to sniff a bush, I thought the usual, he's probably sniff out odd scents. Next thing you know he's walking down the road with a tortilla in his mouth. Adorable but it amazes me how amazing dogs sense of smell can be, I took a photo of the bush on our way back home since Bentley was fighting hard to come back to the same bush. haha
Bondax is a music group made up of two guys from Lancaster Britain name Adam and George. check em out. This is the original off of Bondax SoundCloud
and if youre looking to party check out the snakehips version:
Surprisingly enough for as long as we've been living in the bay, we have not made our way out to Dave & Busters in Milpitas Ca. yest. Until this past weekend, Oh what loads of fun we had with good company, neon lights, music and of course drinks. Be careful though the games are MAD addictive, with a few drinks under your belt you could easily blow through some CASH MONEY trying to win a 2 dollar teddy bear. LOL Will have to pay this place a visit again.
Process shots of a woven pattern I'm knocking out on Adobe Illustrator! Stay tuned to see what I'll be applying this to! :D
Congratulations to Anh Nguyen on being quoted in Fast Companies write up about NIKE being the number one most innovative company of 2013.
UPDATE:
We're working on filming a short video of the process of making this lighter koozie. Instead of writing an excerpt on this I think you will enjoy the video. Enjoy the photos for now.
ATTENTION: All my Industrial Designers and Graphic heads. One of our followers, Melissa Little is an independent recruiter working with several design and branding agencies in San Francisco. She is looking for Industrial Designers at all levels as well as Graphic Designers and Digital Creatives. One very hot, dream-type role for a 7-10+ years Director level who can both design high profile products and manage people is looking right away and will relocate. Please contact her directly at
melissa@littlemoreconsulting.c
All you designers know the feeling when you wrap up a project and ready for the next one, well we just wrapped up a branding project with TwelveFlavors. Just a few more tweaks and the final packet goes out today. Here are a few icons that got us excited through the design process.
THNX DIANA! ;)
Inspired by the Red Bull Music academy talk, these guys started this chapter of a sit down chatting session with creatives. Dubbed "The Confessional"
This book is dedicated to our mama and papa mostly. Also all of the wonderful people whom have inspired me along the way. My design career has transcended from lessons learned thus far. I'm excited for the years to come. - Hoang
While shooting for Jasper and Peg this weekend. I thought how fun would it be to try "Levetation Photography" My photo isn't quite succesful but check out these awesome ones. These shots are so elegant, these subjects look so feather weight.
Its only been a month into the New Year and I swear our schedule for 2013 is quite full already. All of which is good news, and that creative organ of ours really is paying our bills.
Most of you whom follow Creative Session's work know, We dabble a bit into videography. We try to incorporate video work into as much of our work as possible. We've built quite a solid team within the last 6 months, Chris Rivera from New York is the latest addition to the crew.
As of late we've been working with owner of "Jasper & Peg" Breanne Bumanlag on brand identity and filming Jasper & Peg's bio video. Here are some screen captures and a quick description of the video concept...
When we were first approached by Jasper and Peg, the first thing we noticed about the clothing line was this duality of white and black pieces, and after spit balling a few Yin/Yang concepts around, we settled on this idea that centered around the possibility of two alternate versions of oneself, and what it might be like if somehow these two versions interacted with each other in two separate but identical universes.
Anyway, we're still pretty early on in the editing stages, but the video is coming along nicely so far, as promised here's a few screen caps to hold you over until the video is released sometime over the next few weeks.
Keith of Creative Session has been working quite hard on his own brand "Bread" collection. Here a little something from the things he's got made for his big launch. Doing work my man Keith.
