Rohdesign Weblog

March 12, 2008

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Welcome BoingBoing readers! Be sure to check out my follow-up post called Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes too!

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up!
I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.

I think the sketchnotes turned out well, and it was no problem for me to continuously create them for nearly every session I attended. I certainly went through ink in my G2 mini pens — I'm glad I brought several along.

With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees.

Speakers Featured
Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.

Finally, here's the FlickrSlidr Slideshow set:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did creating them! :-)

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

Check out Shaun Swick's very cool SXSW Sketchnotes 08 Flickr Set for another perspective.

Dave Gray does his style of sketchnotes on 3x5 notecards, check out his set from VizThink08.

Permalink | | Sketchnotes | add to del.icio.us

November 17, 2007

2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar Preview

This week I've completed the final eight sketchtoon illustrations for my 2008 Sketchtoon Calendar, which will be going on sale soon:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I've had lots of interest in my sketchtoons, so I've decided to post samples of each calendar page on Flickr and share the previews here. I'm planning to have the calendar ready for sale by next week Saturday, just in time for Christmas.

Once I complete the cover illustration, I'll be creating the calendar with an on-demand printing service. I've used use Cafe Press for calendar printing in the past, however, I plan to check out other on-demand printing services. If you have a service to recommend, let me know with a comment below.

Be the First to Know!
If you're interested in the 2008 Sketchtoon Calendar, and want to be the first to know when goes on sale, email me.

Permalink | | Sketchtoons | add to del.icio.us

November 15, 2007

Great Miquelrius Resource: ShopMiquelrius.com

A few weeks back I received an email from Todd Berryman, a radio host at 92.3 WTTS FM in Bloomington, Indiana.

Todd found me because I use Miquelrius notebooks daily for logo, icon and web design work. He wanted to know where I buy mine, as he was having trouble finding them at his local Barnes & Noble.

Since I'm on my last Miquelrius sketchbook, this issue hit close to home.

I haven't found them at my local B&N either. I figured they were simply out of stock. This email got me thinking — I should really locate a good online source for Miquelrius notebooks. Just in case.

Todd mentioned ShopMiquelrius.com, the online store for Miquelrius USA. Sure enough, they have a good selection of the soft-cover books I love so much, and several other options as well.

From Oops to Oh Yeah!
I ordered 3 green notebooks, but accidentally chose lined books instead of gridded. I immediately emailed the ShopMiquelrius help desk and within hours, I had personal emails back from Jennifer and her staff, letting me know they would take care of the error. Wow, that's what I call service!

I'm ordering all of my Miquelrius notebooks from ShopMiquelrius.com from now on. Yeah, they sell the notebooks I need at a decent price, but what sold me was how well they treated me, and how quickly they solved my problem.

An Affiliate Idea
Because of my personal contact with Jennifer, I asked if they happened to have an affiliate program for their products. Since I use the products and love ShopMiquelrius's service, why not share the resource with others and earn a few dollars leading buyers to them?

Jennifer said they didn't have an affiliate program in place, but she was very intrigued by the idea. After a little research and requests of the director, she got the green light to launch a trial affiliate program for 3 months. Very cool!

Today their new trial affiliate program is live on the site.

Support a Great Source
Seeking a good source for Miquelrius notebooks? I invite you to try ShopMiquelrius by using my affiliate link.

If you like their service, sign up for the affiliate program yourself, so your friends can use this resource, ShopMiquelrius can sell more books, and you can earn a little something to buy more Miquelrius notebooks with! :-)

P.S. I wasn't paid to write this post, didn't receive any free notebooks, and have only signed up for the affiliate link a few moments ago. I'm just a very happy customer who wants to share this great resource with other Miquelrius buyers, and to help ShopMiquelrius.com grow and thrive. It's the least I can do.

P.P.S. Just got word from Jennifer that ShopMiquelrius is having a Thanksgiving sale: 10% off all purchases for registered, logged-in users, from Noon EST November 15th through 11:59 PM on November 18th. To get the discount, use the code THANKS07.

September 26, 2007

John Coltrane: Impressions Music Sketch

Last week, I had to get my mind in a logo sketch groove after working on the computer most of the day.

To do this, I sometimes choose a music-driven exercise to get into the rhythm of sketching.

Music Sketching
Pick a fresh page in your sketchbook, then queue up and listen to a piece of music, while expressing what you're hearing and feeling on the page.

Don't worry about making it "right" because it's based on how you feel at the moment. Because it's open and free, this can relax you to enjoy the feel of pen or pencil on paper.

This process really helps me focus in on the music, loosens my hand up and gets me in the right frame of mind for sketching.

Above is the sketch created while listening to Impressions by John Coltrane, a wonderful piece which itself helps me loosen up for sketching.

Give it a try sometime!

Related Links
Music-driven Moleskine Sketches

September 8, 2007

Springy Motorcycle Sketchtoon

Last weekend we had a nice visit to see family in Baraboo, Wisconsin. While there, we visited Oschner Park, right across the street from where my dad grew up. We saw the small zoo, and wound up at the play area of the park.

I'd packed my Moleskine sketchbook, and saw this funny little spring-loaded motorcycle ride. My son and several of the other kids were jumping on and riding this thing, bouncing around in random patterns.

I liked the mix of tan and red paint on the cycle, so I captured this young girl riding it in maybe 3 minutes. I really like how the drawing has structure but remains loose and chaotic.

This sketch has been added to the Illustration Friday topic: momentum.

Permalink | | Sketchtoons | add to del.icio.us

July 16, 2007

Back from Belize with Sketchtoons

Whew! I'm back from my service trip to Belize — I had an AMAZING time!

The country was wild and beautiful, the people of Belize friendly and hospitable and the food was so very delicious. We all had a wonderful week.

Our Meadowbrook team was just incredible. Every student and leader stepped up when it counted and gave of themselves every single day. It was exciting sharing Jesus' love with the people of St. Margaret's Village.

The staff of Praying Pelican Missions, who managed our trip, did a superb job providing for our team. I have to send special thanks to Matt, Tatiana, Laura, Bree and John for a great week in Belize!

I have many stories to share: wild bus rides on the Hummingbird Highway, tons of village kids waiting for our bus to arrive every day, a visit with a Mennonite family, sharing their home-made pineapple juice, and discovering that the Internet reaches to remote Belizean villages. Those stories will come as I catch up at home and work.

Meanwhile, I'd like to share a set of Belize Sketchtoons. I'd hoped to do more sketching in Belize, but there just wasn't time in such a compressed week.

Thanks to all who prayed for us — we felt your prayers in Belize.

Permalink | | Travel | add to del.icio.us

June 21, 2007

Sketchtoon: Two Bald Guys at Chipotle

I received a free burrito coupon from Chipotle in my neighborhood and today, decided to redeem that sucker and enjoy a lunch away from the office, and the first day of summer.

While enjoying my steak burrito, guacamole and chips, I pulled out my Moleskine planner and made this quick doodle of two bald guys eating lunch on the patio across from me.

I thought it was interesting that they were both bald, apprently by choice. Been seeing more of the "bald by choice" lately, either to hide a receeding hairline or just for the look of it.

The sketch was done with a Niji Stylist felt tip pen and colored moments ago with Prismacolor pencils, before I scanned and posted the image on Flickr.

Got the date wrong. It should be 6/21, and it's Chipotle not Chipolte, whoops! :-)

May 4, 2007

What Would My Great Grandfather Think of Me?

Have you ever wondered what your ancestors would think of you, your life and the time you live in?

About a month ago, I received a book of family history, which traces our family history from Bobitz, Germany in the Mecklenburg region (near the Baltic Sea).

My great grandfather, John Martin, came to the US in 1873, and settled near Juneau, WI where he lived, established a farm, and had children, one of which was my grandfather Edwin.

What Would He Think?
Reading through our family's story, I've begun to ask: what would John Martin think of me, my life and the time, place and culture I live in?

I ask this probably for validation, but I think more for curiosity sake. I'd be very interested in his reactions, and to hear his wisdom, learned from years of hard experience as an immigrant, husband and father.

I wonder if he would he be amazed at the Internet, which allows me to work from Milwaukee with colleagues, clients and friends around the world? Being a farmer, what would he think of the virtual world I live in?

Would the "magic" of computers and tiny gadgets surprise him or would they seem like cheap flashing toys to him?

I wonder what he would have been like, quiet or talkative? A reader? An artist?

Obviously, I may never know, but it's interesting to ponder.

If I Were to Guess...
I think he would be proud to see the family continuing on, adapting to the world in which it found itself. John Martin lived through some amazing shifts in culture: the German Revolution, the turn of the century and the rise of industrialism, World War I, the Great Depression and more. How cool it would be to hear his stories now.

The sketch above was done early this morning, as these questions bounced around in my head. I wanted to capture an image of John Martin as a way of personalizing and honoring him as my great grandfather.

John Martin, I hope I'm making you proud.

Permalink | | Family | add to del.icio.us

April 30, 2007

Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar Preview

While riding the train to Chicago with my friend Sean last week, he reminded me of a sketchtoon calendar project that's been on the backburner due to my very busy schedule.

Sean saw the black and white sketches in my Moleskine sketchbook, and heard my idea of selling the calendar online, to people and small coffee houses. He seemed very excited about the coffee calendar idea.

Now I'm reinvigorated to finish the project! :-)

While I'm wrapping up the final art, I've decided to share previews of 4 calendar pages, to gauge interest in a Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar for 2008.

Would a calendar like this interest you? Feel free to leave comments here or on Flickr. I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts.

Permalink | | Sketchtoons | add to del.icio.us

April 27, 2007

UX Intensive Chicago 2007: Thoughts & Sketchnotes

This week I attended Adaptive Path's UX Intensive: Interaction Design Workshop in Chicago. I've decided to share my thoughts on the event and my set of sketchnotes on the blog.

UX Intensive event was a 4-day series of workshops and lectures, and of those 4 days, I attended 1: Interaction Design. Here are my thoughts about that particular event:

The Speakers & Venue
Overall it was a good experience. Dan Saffer and Kim Lenox are both very smart, talented designers who know their stuff. I gleaned good ideas for tweaking my own design process, and was affirmed in the approach and process I already follow.

The Black Orchid was an OK venue. The room was relatively spacious, and the food was quite good. The tables, however, were designed for drinks while listening to jazz — not ideal for taking notes or working, and not positioned ideally for a conference. I got a bit of a cramp from sitting at an angle at my table, trying watch the speaker and take notes.

Workshop or Lecture?
UX Intensive was billed as a "workshop" even though Wednesday's Interactive Design session was actually a day-long series of lectures. Even though the topic very much interested me, by about 2pm I was having a hard time focusing, even after a second Starbucks cappuccino.

I heard from Matt and Que, 2 guys I met at my table, that Monday's Design Strategy and Tuesday's Design Research sessions were true workshops, with activities and interaction between the attendees — much different than Wednesday's lectures.

Concepts I Liked
There were many good ideas shared by Dan and Kim, some of which I'll note below:

• Research is useless in a raw, unstructured form. It's critical to filter the information and draw insights and conclusions from your research that can be applied to the project. I liked Dan's suggestion to use physical and visual representations of research, using post-it walls and drawings on various surfaces.

• Brainstorming for quantity and brainstorming in categories. Dan suggested brainstorming sprints with limited times and an emphasis on many ideas in that time. I also liked his idea of brainstorming within narrower categories, then displaying findings in a matrix or a grid.

• Failure is OK. A 50% failure rate was suggested as a good thing. I've noticed that in my sketches, the more ideas I can get through the sooner I usually find a solution. Trying out ideas that may fail, lead to a good ideas, so I find this to be very true.

• Good designers make better guesses. Intuition is important in design, and it's based on making good guesses. Dan shared principles and techniques for making better guesses and decisions.

• Living Documents. Kim Lenox talked about designing for suites and platforms, suggesting the use of living documents, sharing information and innovations, consistency and that interaction designers need to think about the integration of 3 key areas: the PC, the Internet and mobile devices.

• All products are broken. By starting with this premise, we're free to try and improve products rather than making them perfect and completely free of brokeness. Dan talked about good areas to focus on for fixes, breaking fixes down into smaller chunks, and the use of quick n' dirty wireframes with screenshots (I use this approach, and it works great!)

• Constant Communication. Use various tools such as blogs and wikis within your team, to keep communication lines open with each other, and to capture information as living documents.

View my detailed notes in my UX Intensive sketchnotes on Flickr.

Suggestions
I'll end this post with my thoughts on how the Design Interaction portion of the UX Intensive event could be improved:

• Call it a workshop only if it has workshop activities. I came expecting interaction and activities with my design colleagues and instead got a day of lectures. Workshop activities would have broken up the time, made it easier for me to focus on the ideas and apply them practically.

• Add more breaks. We had breaks for lunch and for the morning and afternoon sessions, which were great. However, because of the day-long lecture format, by the afternoon I needed mini breaks in-between the individual sessions. By about 2pm I was losing focus on the topics that a few mini-breaks may have helped with.

• Show more real-world examples. We had some nice examples in the lectures by Dan and Kim, but I wanted to see more of them to illustrate the concepts presented. Having more examples might also have helped my focus in the afternoon.

• Go narrower and deeper. I think reducing quantity of material covered and focusing on deeper real-world examples, discussions on those ideas and workshop activities might improve the relevance of the information to attendees. So much info was presented, that I couldn't adequately digest, discuss or apply with those ideas to my own design practices.

I hope these thoughts are helpful to fellow designers, and might be useful to Adaptive Path in tuning and perfecting their UX Intensive series in Amsterdam in June.

Many thanks to MakaluMedia (my employer), for sending me to the event.

Technorati Tags: uxichi07, chicago, design, rohdesign

Permalink | | Web Design | add to del.icio.us

April 26, 2007

Korean Soup Sketchtoon

On Wednesday I had a great visit to Chicago, for Adaptive Path's UX Intensive Interactive Design Workshop in Chicago's Old Town. I'm currently scanning in my sketch-notes from the event (which I will post tomorrow), but in the meantime I wanted to post a sketchtoon from my dinner in the evening.

I had the pleasure of traveling to Chicago with my friend Hyeon "Sean" Kim on the Amtrak Hiawatha to UX Intensive. After the event, I met Sean on the Brown line EL train at Sedgwick to Rockwell station to visit a Korean restaurant on the North side of town.

Sean had a Korean restaurant in mind, but after walking to Lawrence Avenue and searching, we realized it had closed or moved, because a new condo was sitting right at the corner where it should have been. It was actually good fortune for us to walk the neighborhood, since we came across Han Bat, a small, family-run Korean Soup restaurant, right on Lawrence Avenue.

Our Korean dinner was delicious. Sean was worried that old-school, hard-core Korean Seolleongtang soup might be too unusual for me. Now he knows I love unusual new things, including Korean soup, kim chee, pickled radishes and corn tea! :-)

The sketchtoon was created in my Moleskine sketchbook, while riding home on the EL. Sean and I contentedly recalled the details of our delicious Korean dinner. I colored this piece later on, to add just a little more detail.

Now I can't wait to try more Korean foods!

Technorati Tags: chicago, korean, uxichi07, rohdesign

Permalink | | Food & Drink | add to del.icio.us

April 24, 2007

Doubt Sketchtoon Notes

A few weeks ago, Tom Slye, the youth director at my church gave an excellent message on doubt. He talked about what doubt is, and offered ways to think about and deal with doubt in a realistic ways.

I often take notes during messages, as it helps my mind process the words. Lately I've been toying with the idea of capturing notes in a graphical way — using typography for emphasis — to force myself to focus on the core of the talk within a limited space.

On the right is my one-page sketchtoon from Tom's talk on doubt, which I think turned out pretty well.

There are a few things I want to try on future talks, like mental imagery and drawings embedded in the text, even color if I can pick up a small set of markers or pencils that are easy to carry along with my Moleskine sketchbook.

In general, I find sketching out notes offers a different, more focused way of engaging of my whole brain, rather than just left brain.

Just yesterday I was inspired to explore this idea of sketching notes, when I came across Dave Gray's wonderful LIFT Conference sketches. His stylized sketch notes are another cool way to capture notes from a talk in a more visual way.

Here's a great talk by Dave Gray and Dana smith on Visual Thinking, with some exercises you can follow along with. Be sure to check out Dave's Visual Thinking School on Squidoo. All good stuff, check it out!

I'll post more sketch notes here as I do them, now that I'm inspired to explore this area a bit more. If you have ideas for me, leave them in the comments! :-)

Permalink | | Moleskine | add to del.icio.us

April 2, 2007

Weekend Sketches

This weekend I made a conscious effort to bring my Moleskine sketchbook with me everywhere, having been challenged by Tommy Kane's Push Yourself post last week.

Below are two pieces I sketched this weekend:

Sketch 1: My son Nathan and I went to his preschool on Saturday for an Easter egg hunt. Part of the afternoon included giving the kids helium-filled balloons to bounce and chase around the church fellowship hall. The kids had such a blast — I had to try and capture Nathan's joy at play. This one was pretty quick and loose, with my focus on capturing the feeling I had, rather than being perfectly proportional.

Sketch 2: The right page was done Saturday night, after seeing the the film Peaceful Warrior. The film was a little cheesy and full of platitudes for dialogue. Still, the phrase "There are no ordinary moments" seemed to bubble up in my mind just before bed. I grabbed my sketchbook and let the idea direct my sketch, trying not to think too much about the technical details. My approach was to look at this phrase as a challenge to sketch those "un-ordinary moments" rather than lose them.

As I prepared the scan today, I realized Nathan's balloon-jumping sketch was one of those "un-ordinary moments" I'd captured Saturday morning, before the words themselves were spoken in the film, later the same evening.

Thanks Tommy for the challenge to sketch, especially when it's hard. If you're reading this post and are thinking about sketching again, or for the first time — do it! :-)

March 26, 2007

Leihu Sketch Challenge: Hot Tea Feet

Just at the end of my lunch break today, James Mathias, a fellow 9rules member designer and blogger, IM'ed a request: “What should I draw today?”

After a few moments pondering James' request, here's what suddenly popped out of my head:

"Hmmm... someone drinking a blazing hot cup of tea with their feet."

I have no idea where this came from — the tea part relates to having tea at my desk — but the part about someone in the sketch, drinking it with their feet (and their inevitably uncomfortable position for tea-drinking) came from who-knows-where.

I was inspired by my own weird thought, so I asked James if I could sketch the same concept and see how similar or different mine would be from his. James thought this was a good idea, so off we went. My sketch is shown here.

I decided to fully embrace the complete discomfort of someone balancing a cup, saucer and teapot of blazing hot tea on their bare feet. Why not imagine a poor guy with legs aloft, scalding tea spilling everywhere as he attempts to drink it? :-)

The drawing was done in about 5 minutes using a Faber-Castell thick-leaded pencil in a Moleskine sketchbook. I enjoyed the sense of serendipity and my self-imposed 5 minute limit, to help keep it loose.

Check out James' sketch, "The Great Tea Fiasco" on his Leihu blog, to see how very differently we interpreted the same concept.

March 14, 2007

HoudahGeo Icon Design

Just this week I've completed the application icon for one of my MakaluMedia clients, Pierre Bernard of Houdah Software, on his latest beta application HoudahGeo. In June 2006, I designed the icon for Pierre's first OS X application, HoudahSpot.

HoudahGeo allows you to geocode photos with latitude, longitude and altitude information. Take your photos, "pin" their locations on the earth, then export information to EXIF tags or Google Earth KML files, letting you can see the images in Google Earth.

Sketches
Pierre and I started working with pencil sketches, using a globe with photos stuck to the surface, and a satellite in orbit around it, as you can see below:

1. In my first sketches, I focused on a single satellite, beaming information to/from photos on the surface of the globe. At this stage I hadn't worked out continents or exact placement of the photos, but knew I liked this general idea.

2. Here I played around with the idea of both a satellite and a camera orbiting the earth, and had by this round, started exploring continents and image locations a bit more. In the end, we discussed the camera+satellite option and felt the camera was redundant and not necessary to get the message across.

Production Icons
Next I went to production, using Fireworks to create the vector-based artwork. After a rough first draft, Pierre had an idea to try a pushpin in place of a satellite, though in the end, we felt the satellite just worked better.

With each successive revision, the earth was refined, satellite tweaked, highlights, glows and adjustments made. Here I've placed the first 4 revisions together to give you an idea how the process generally works:

The final adjustments and tweaks happened on icon v5, including a size up of the earth about 5-6%, lightening of the satellite's pulse glow and a few adjustments to photo locations on the earth itself.

Fireworks as Tool of Choice
The construction if icons using vectors in Fireworks, greatly assists in these kind of subtle tweaks. Because all of the elements are created as vector items, they can be easily sized up and down with no degradation of image quality, or moved around without worrying about re-applying masks or filters.

For comparison purposes, here is the final, winning HoudahGeo icon v5:

Thanks Pierre for choosing to work with me and MakaluMedia on your latest Mac application! I had a great time working with you on another fun icon project. :-)

February 7, 2007

Red 66 Logo Design

In mid-2006, Carlos Granier-Phelps contacted me at MakaluMedia, about designing a new logo for Red 66, his consulting business focusing on Web 2.0, usability, Internet video technologies, digital security, ratings analysis software for TV stations, and web/tech consulting for movies & TV.

I worked with Carlos to gather my standard information package his company structure and outward image goals, his likes, dislikes in color and design and other tidbits that would give me insight in the sketch stage of the project.

Carlos wanted the logo to embody many different aspects of his personality and his business, including: hip, clean, dynamic, safe, fun, global, innovative, and high-tech. Quite a challenge, but I felt confident that by working with Carlos through the normal sketch to final process, we would find the right solution.

Sketches
First, I brought out the trusty Miquelrius sketchbook and pencil, and began capturing ideas as they came to mind, after reading Carlos' notes. Below I've posted thumbnails of complete sketches and artwork: click each image to see a full version:

Here you can see I explored a wide variety of ideas, playing with the interesting shapes created by dual 6s. I felt drawn to circular shapes enclosing or working with "66", as 6s are organic and round.

Carlos quite liked idea 27, since it seemed to capture Route 66, which was a positive thing in his mind, yet had a clean, simple look he was aiming for. He also liked 16 and 18, and oddly enough, liked the 2 Route 66-style ideas below 5 and 6, which I hadn't even highlighted on the page!

So, after some discussion, I prepared a second set of sketches, focusing on the narrowed field of ideas.

Here you can see the Route 66 approach expanded greatly, along with square idea 18 and the circular idea 27 from the first round of sketches.

After review of the second set, and my suggestions to lean toward 9, 10 and 7, Carlos settled on these ideas to prepare black and white concepts to narrow to a finalized design.

Black & White Concepts
This is a very critical phase, where my rough concept sketches are turned into production quality art. It is here, where a mark is proven to work, or not work in the simplest form possible — black and white. Often, this is the moment where an idea tends to shine and separate itself as the right solution, or fade as an also-ran. The Red 66 logo project was no exception, as the circular concept 9a immediately and clearly step out front as the winning black and white mark.

Color: Round 1
Outside of coming up with ideas, color can often be a tough stage. Colors are often emotional, which is why I like to have a solid black and white logo selected before moving to the color application phase. On set 1, I explored a variety of color combinations, taking into account Carlos' location in Miami as one aspect of color influence.

Color: Round 2
Based on this round we wanted to refine the color selections a bit more, to include brighter colors and explore reds and burgundy colors with similar tones and contrasting choices, like blue-green, orange and teal.

At this point, both Carlos and I honed in on idea 8.3 as our color winner. It had the nice light/dark red tones to reinforce the "red" theme, with a secondary Miami-influenced, cool retro blue-green outer ring for contrast. It had a muted, yet strong overall feel that we both liked.

Conclusion
Since creating the new mark, Carlos has applied it to his blog, and other materials. I'm very pleased with the simplicity and cleanliness of the Red 66 logo — it's organic and smooth, yet has a hint of hip retro Miami.

Thanks Carlos for working with MakaluMedia and I on your new Red 66 logo!

January 17, 2007

Business Opportunities Weblog Network Logo Design

In late 2006, Dane Carlson of the Business Opportunities Weblog Network contracted me BOWN Final Logo at MakaluMedia, to design an identity for his weblog network.

The Business Opportunities Weblog Network (BOWN) is described as a "moderated list of legitimate business opportunities for entrepreneurs", which features lists of business ideas, and tips.

Dane has been blogging since 2001, and wanted a new corporate identity that was fresh and clean, to help realign his blog.

So, Dane and I started through our normal process of getting information from goals, the business, his color and style likes and dislikes, and other useful information to help me develop good design ideas.

Dane liked the general idea of a lightbulb, so I included this idea, along with several other ideas, to make sure we explored all options.

Challenges
While "Business Opportunities Weblog Network" was descriptive, it's a really long name to deal with when creating a logo design. It would be challenging to be find a way to list the full name and not let the words dominate the identity.

Another challenge, related to the long name, was keeping the identity simple and easily recognizable. How do you show a business network in a single symbol?

Sketches
Once Dane's information was read and digested, I brought out the sketchbook and pencil to get ideas on paper. In 2 rounds of sketches I produced several interesting ideas, incorporating the lightbulb and other ideas for representations of a network. Here are a few selected sketches:

1. This idea featured "Business Opportunities" larger, and a briefcase fashioned from triangular shapes, woth "Weblog Network" tucked under the larger type.

2. On this concept, I've replaced the briefcase symbol with an interconnected triangular grid symbol, to emphasize the network nature of the name.

3. Here I'm indicating a stylized lightbulb to the left, Business with most emphasis and "Opportunities" and "Weblog Network" descending in size and importance.

4. The winning idea shows a lightbulb within a circular symbol on the left, and an alternate dark version on the right. The idea was to show the lightbulb as a node on a network, incorporating both a bulb and network in the logo.

Black & White Art
Once the winning concept of a lightbulb on a network, inside of a circle containing the type was selected, I moved to produce the black and white version of the logo for Dane. The black and white phase went pretty quickly, and we both liked how the concept translated from sketch into black and white art. The next challenge was color.

Color Art
In the color phase, I wanted to show Dane some color varieties, but didn't want to do too many at one time, so I selected 3 color themes with both flat and gradated options, and presented them:

Our eyes were pretty immediately drawn to blue, orange and green. I also liked the blue/green option, though the orange center circle of the first idea (B&C) really seemed to convey a warmth to balance the cool crispness of the green and blue.

After a little deliberation, Dane chose the blue/orange/green option as the winner.

Conclusion
Just last week, Dane completed his redesign of the Business Opportunities Weblog Network weblog, and used the new logo design to shape his redesign. I really like how the colors feel warm, yet crisp and clean, and after not seeing the logo between delivery and appearance, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

My thanks go to Dane Carlson for choosing to work with me and MakaluMedia on his new identity. We both had a great time collaborating and I think we came up with a fun, attractive logo design.

October 26, 2006

CGI Interactive Logo Design

Last year, after Paul Bradley came across Ian Landsman's Creating a Business Logo article, he asked if we could design a new logo for his company, cgi Interactive. One of my passions as design director at MakaluMedia is logo design and corporate identity, so I was excited to take on the project.

Paul's firm. cgi Interactive, is a software development company based in the North West of England, who develop custom web based applications for businesses. The CGI moniker had its touch-point in the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programming done for clients in the early days of the Internet.

Paul wanted to maintain a connection to the past by keeping the CGI name, while coming up with a strong, clean logo to represent his company, on both the web and with other print materials (letterhead, envelopes and business cards).

Questions & Research
I started as I always do: asking questions of Paul about his company, goals, taste and thinking and doing my own gathering of information about the company. While it might seem trivial, the information gathering phase is critical — these are the words I ponder, as I prepare to sketch logo concepts that capture the company in a simple, iconic form.

From my initial research, it seemed the logomark should be simple and clean, yet still have a bit of a human touch, as Paul mentioned a history of "bespoke" or custom software development.

Sketching Ideas
As I sketched ideas out, I began focusing on a mark made of the letters C, G and I — using them to form a compact object.

Rounded letter-forms turned into squared letter-forms. I liked the idea of the C wrapping itself around the I to form a "G" at the intersection. To reinforce the "I" character, I used a lower cased variation to take advantage of the dot.

Black & White Explorations
We both liked this direction, so my next step was to jump into Adobe Illustrator and create the letters in black and white vector form, where I could explore the relationships of the C, G and i elements:

Notice how the horizontal stroke of the "i" character extends into the counter of the capital C character, to form a G. Then, the dot of the i character fills out the upper right corner of the mark. I like creating logos in black and white first — to assure they work well in their simplest form.

The mark also created an unintentional, yet nice side effect — notice the appearance of of a person on the right, extending an arm into the C, with the dot of the "i" acting as the head? What a nice coincidence!

Color Explorations
Next up was the color phase, which was quite straightforward, as Paul knew he wanted cool blues and greens used. I explored some complimentary warm colors with the mark, but we kept coming back to a combination of dark sea green and a sky blue to capture a solid, professional feel:

Notice also the font used is a Myriad/Gill Sans blend with a little custom tweaking done on the letters. The "cgi" text was kept in the sky blue, and "Interactive" stayed in the dark sea green, corresponding to the colors chosen for the mark.

Paul was very pleased with the final logo design. He felt it captured the professional look he wanted to portray, yet still maintained a human touch, to represent the custom, collaborative projects cgi Interactive does. I had fun working on the logo design, facing the challenge and seeing a unique mark emerge from the letters themselves.

Since designing Paul's logo in 2005, we've had many interesting and challenging logo projects come from new and existing clients, keeping me happily busy doing what I love — logo design.

If you like this approach to logo design, and need logo or corporate identity design work, just drop me a line and let's talk! :-)

September 18, 2006

Mike Rohde's Design Sketch Kit

Last week I was talking with Makalu design colleague Alex Bendiken about tools I use for my logo, icon, web and print design sketch work. Lately he's been using sketches to quickly put multiple design ideas on paper — before moving to the computer.

As I described my sketch kit to Alex, I thought it'd be great to share a photo and the details on Flickr and in a post on my weblog. Turns out that my Custom Moleskine Planner photo with added notes has been very popular, so I took several shots of my sketch kit and placed them on Flickr, and in this very post:

The tools include:

1. Miquelrius A5 squared notebook (300 pages)
2. HiG A4 squared notebook (96 pages)
3. Faber-Castell E-Motion 1.4mm mechanical pencil (a gift from Fazal Majid)
4. Y&C Grip 350 0.7mm mechanical pencil
5. Gray kneadable eraser
6. Artec 6" acrylic triangle
7. Pickett Inking circle template

Notebooks
The larger HiG A4 notebook is better for web and print design where the sketches may need more space, the Miquelrius A5 is smaller and more portable, and my preferred choice for logo and icon design. I especially love how flexible the Miquelrius is, allowing me to fold the covers over for sketching or scanning.

Pencils
I mainly use the Faber-Castell E-Motion for most sketches because the thick lead lays down a nice, smooth line, can put rich grays down quickly and resists breaking even when I press quite hard. The Y&C 0.7mm pencil works well for finer lines and details (more often used on web and print design comps that require fine details or handwritten descriptions.)

Support Tools
The Artec 6" acrylic triangle works well for putting down a crisp edge, and lets me see through it to the sketch underneath — handy for laying in text. My kneadable eraser is indispensable for cleaning up loose edges and stray marks (and works well for stress relief when needed). The Pickett circle guide comes in handy for quick, perfect circles, most often used on web and print design projects.

It's a simple toolkit, which works quite well... and it never needs batteries! :-)

Permalink | | Design | add to del.icio.us

August 8, 2006

Illustration Friday: Capture

Happened to swing by the Illustration Friday site today, and was inspired to get out the pen and Moleskine sketchbook to participate.

Because of the busy spring and summer I've had, It's been a while since I've posted an Illustration Friday sketch. In fact, it's been much too long since sketching in my Moleskine sketchbook.

The sketch for "Capture" on the right was not planned, but it evolved as my pen started touching the paper. I had the vague idea of drawing a ball being captured by some kind of crescent/claw shape, but beyond that, had no idea where I might go with this illustration.

As I looked at the claw and ball, I saw a scorpion/lobster/crab taking shape in the remaining blank part of the page, so I sketched out a body and curling tail.

Next came the feet, complete with Converse Hi-Tops, the lobster-like eyes popping out of the little guy's head and finally, the smile. The "Capture" text and outer shapes were added and filled in.

I've even chose a name for the little guy: Seymour The Space Scorpion

When I reviewed the drawing, I realized the outer shapes were "capturing" Seymour — a completely random, yet fun detail which completed the sketch. :-)

May 26, 2006

Sketching = Getting Real

This week I came across Getting Real: An interview with Jason Fried, an intriguing article and interview by Khoi Vinh, NYTimes.com Design Director, blogger at Subtraction.com and founder of the design studio, Behavior.

In the interview, Khoi asks Jason Fried of 37signals questions about Getting Real, a process which involves small teams, agile development, and lots of iterations.

Mid-way through the interview I found this wonderful quote from Jason:

We also sketch on paper a lot — much more than we go into a program like Photoshop. Paper is fast, cheap, and low resolution enough to get ideas out without having to worry about the details too early on. Worrying about details too early can kill you, and paper helps you skip the details.
In Photoshop you worry too much about pixels and alignment and colors. On paper you can get rough ideas out quickly without worrying about all the stuff that just doesn't matter yet.

Like Jason, I'm a strong an advocate of using pen or pencil and paper sketches to think visually. I find sketching encourages me to explore more ideas more quickly and helps me resist the rigidity and limitations of the computer and software.

Putting pencil or pen to paper separates me from the distractions and ruts I sometimes get into on the Mac. Because it's physical, I find it relaxing, which I believe results in better design solutions.

Give it a try! Go forth, sketch and get real!

Permalink | | Design | add to del.icio.us

April 27, 2006

The Sketch Kit Sketchtoon

Almost exactly month ago, I lost the first Moleskine I ever bought at the local shopping mall. I was hoping beyond hope that my little sketchbook might somehow turn up under the seat of my car, or be returned by a mall-walker. I've now had to face the facts: my little sketchbook is long gone.

Not coincidentally, my ink sketching has dropped off considerably ever since. I've found I like ink sketching because it's much riskier than pencil sketching. Once your pen hits the surface, you're committed to a sketch, baby.

Having accepted my Moleskine as lost, I bought a new Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook last week and have been sketching in it ever since. This morning, I decided to create a new sketchtoon featuring my normal Sketch Kit, shown below:

Bag: my kit is housed in my canvas Cafe Bag, which is a US Army surplus map case. It's small size and canvas construction make it light but tough. The Cafe Bag expands nicely to accommodate files, papers, books or other large items.

Books: a 6x8 Miquelrius squared sketchbook, where I do my pencil-based logo and web sketch work. I love the flexible cover and larger size. For ink sketches and sketchtoons like the one above, I carry a Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook, with thick, smooth paper stock.

Writing Instruments: I carry a Silver Pilot Dr. Grip Gel pen with 0.5 or in this case, 0.7 mm G2 Gel cartridge, or G2 plastic pen, and a FaberCastell E-Motion Pearwood mechanical pencil with 1.4 mm lead (thanks Fazal!). I especially like the thicker, softer HB lead for exploring shapes for logo design work I'm doing quite a bit of lately.

Misc: I'll often carry a small clear triangle for straight lines and a set of oval and circle drawing templates for perfect circles/ovals. Sometimes I'll bring a dedicated eraser if I'm planning a long pencil sketching session.

I like this Sketch Kit because it covers my needs, yet is small and light enough to take anywhere. I hope my sketch and description will inspire you to create a sketch kit of your own and go sketching! :-)

Technorati Tags: moleskine, sketches, visual+thinking, sketchtoons, drawings, mike+rohde

March 11, 2006

Designing the endo icon

I'm very excited reveal my latest new icon design for endo, a syndicated feed reader developed by Adriaan Tijsseling. This new app approaches syndicated feeds as "streams" rather than the common "email app" approach most aggregators use.

The icon was developed in collaboration with Adriaan, the developer of blogging tool ecto and Flickr stream manager 1001, which I'd designed the icon for last year. While we worked out the new icon, I'd been under an NDA with Adriaan (as design director at MakaluMedia) but since endo has been released, I'm free to share. :-)

(Click on graphics below to see full sketches)

Initial Concepts v1
I began the project by writing out thoughts and sketching some initial ideas, and having designed the 1001 icon, felt that the icons might benefit from having a "family" feeling between them. So, when you look at the initial v1 sketches I did, you can see this quite clearly.

While the final icon veered quite a bit from the initial sketches, I like to point out that very often a designer must work through what is in their heads in order to progress to the next step — a bit like flushing out the immediate ideas to get at the deeper ideas.

Sketches v2
In the second round of sketches, I began exploring the idea of different shapes, shapes breaking planes and swirls of data surrounding shapes. As endo was to be different than other aggregator/readers because it treats feeds as "streams" I wanted to convey the idea of a stream of data — as chaotic swirl or plane.

While breaking a plane was an interesting concept, the more chaotic swirl appealed to both Adriaan and me, because it felt much more like the real net, with wild streams of feeds spinning out of control. Endo was to be the calm in the midst of this storm of data; helping its users wade through this swirling cloud.

Sketches v3
In my 3rd revision of sketches, I focused entirely on the idea of a swirling cloud of data, surrounding various shapes. You can see in the larger sketch that circular swirl with a central "hub" containing a magnifying glass at the center of the swirl. This represented the application at the center, filtering good signal from the noise. These concepts were attractive to both Adriaan and I, though we both wanted to see one more round to finalize the concept before I went to Fireworks and Photoshop on the Mac.

Sketches v4
In this round, Adriaan had the idea to include the newly standardized Feed Icon, which is already used in Firefox (and will also be used in IE7), so I tried several icons with the Feed icon integrated. I tried a variety of angles, until in sketch E you can see the idea of having the feed icon appear in the central hub and also appear in the shadow below, since the central hub would be transparent (like a marble).

Once Adriaan and I saw sketch E, we were both in love. Adriaan gave the Ok to move to the Mac, and there, the new endo icon was born, using Fireworks to build the icon (with vectors and layers) and then exported in Photoshop, using the excellent IconBuilder 8 from IconFactory.

Only minor tweaks were needed to finalize the icon on the Mac and deliver the needed icon, and source files Adriaan needed to spruce up his endo application and the new Kula website.

Conclusion
I'm very pleased with the new endo icon; it's simple, different and I think conveys the concept of a feed aggregator sifting signal out of the syndication noise — just the idea Adriaan was trying to convey with his very different application. One commenter on the BWANA Weblog suggested the endo icon "has the best application icon since Shiira." which was flattering indeed. :-)

Thanks Adriaan for trusting in me to help on this project and all of his excellent collaboration. Working on this project was truly a pleasure!

If you're on Mac OS X and want a alternate way of deal with feeds, try out endo. It offers a very different approach, which may just suit your needs.

Technorati Tags:
mikerohde, rohdesign, sketches, visual+thinking, design, makalumedia, drawings, icon

February 2, 2006

Music-Driven Moleskine Sketches

Ok, for whatever reason, I'm on some sort of sketching roll this week. Rather than hold today's sketches back, I'd like to share them right away:

(click the image above to see an enlarged version)

Left page: A sketch generated while listening to the song Cups from an electronica band Underworld's live from the Fuji Music Festival in Japan. I learned about Underworld from a post on Dan Stout's Manufactured Environments weblog in 2004 and have been enjoying these driving beats ever since (thanks Dan!). As you can see the textures of the song were rich and layered. I tried to continuously draw and capture how the music made me feel: complex, moody, deep but fast paced with a little feeling of echo.

Right page: This was another music-inspired sketch, based on very different music style than Underworld. Inspiration here was provided by the tune Consolacao, from the Brazilian Groove compilation, by Bossacucanova (as suggested to me by Michael Ashby). You can see a dominant bass line, represented as ripples in water or sound waves. Around that are impressionistic sketches of other instruments: guitar, piano, and vocals drawn continuously. This song was warm and bright, with rich bass line and of course fascinating Portuguese vocals.

This is a fun exercise allows your mind to interpret your impressions of favorite music in a visual way. I highly recommend this technique, especially if you want to sketch but have no idea what to sketch. All you need is music, paper, pen or pencil and a few minutes to sketch.

Technorati Tags: creativity, mikerohde, moleskine, music, sketches

February 1, 2006

Never Eat Alone & Jury Duty Moleskine Sketches

Not much time or energy to write a long thoughtful post today, so instead I'm including a scan of two sketches I've recently created in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook:

(click the image above to see an enlarged version)

Left page: This is realization of an idea I had for encapsulating ideas from books as free form type-treatment sketches. In this case, I'd been reading Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, and had been inspired by many of the ideas Keith presents. So, I set out to capture the ideas floating to the surface of my mind on a page in my Moleskine. I had so much fun doing this I may do it again for other books I'm reading.

Right page: The sketches on this page are much less logical and ordered. I spent a day in the Milwaukee County Jury pool last week with some time on my hands, so I began sketching things that caught my eye in the cafeteria and assembly room. Actually, the bottom half of this page sat blank for nearly a week, until last night, when I completed it with a sketch of a character from the TV series Monk, and commentary on my short stint in jury service.

I hope you enjoy this funky blend of sketches. :-)

Technorati Tags: mikerohde, moleskine,sketches, sketchtoon, keith+ferrazzi

January 21, 2006

Hey Beer Man Sketch

On Thursday I created a little sketch of a guy who briefly walked through the Caribou Coffee shop I was sitting in. For some odd reason I had the desire to recall and sketch his image from memory to my Moleskine pocket sketchbook, a mere 30 seconds after he'd vacated the premises. I wanted to see how well I could capture his essence from memory alone. The result is the funky sketch you see here, entitled "Hey Beer Man."

Now I am actually unsure if said guy was a Beer man, however he did have a blue uniform on, complete with oval name tag (though I admit using the name Fred because I couldn't recall the real name) and matching blue baseball cap. In the moment as he passed, I got the idea he was a beer truck driver... don't ask me why. He's probably a washing machine repairman for all I know.

The point to all of the back-story for this silly little sketch is this: try sketching someone or something you've just seen without the reference of that object in front of you. It's challenging eh? But what's cool is, it requires you to reach back into your memory and recall your impression. It's a good exercise for improving your visual memory.

Why not give it a try?

Technorati Tags: mikerohde, moleskine,sketches, sketchtoon

January 17, 2006

Outer Level Logo Design

I thoroughly enjoy logo design work, so when MakaluMedia clients talk about their experience in the logo design process I'm always interested. Just yesterday, Jon Trainer of Outer Level, posted a detailed article describing his experiences of collaborating on a logo design with me. Jon develops applications, including the game Bullfrog and the utility License Keeper for Mac OS as well as software development consulting.

I thought it would be interesting to quote some of Jon's post here and provide my own thoughts.

Keywords and Goals:

Thankfully, this is where Mike comes in. Something I didn’t think about prior to hiring Mike, but would recommend to anyone looking for a graphic designer, is that you look for someone who can “consult” with you on your image. Instead of just asking what I wanted my logo to look like, Mike sent a short list of questions to solidify his feel for my tastes, personality, and desired company image.

One thing I've found helpful is to describe goals you're shooting for when designing a logo. What kinds of feelings should it evoke in a viewer? Should it convey strength, warmth, honesty? While these might seem to be nebulous words, I think setting goals in words helps clients and myself get focus before the sketch process even begins.

Dead End Ideas:

A little over a week later, Mike sent me two full pages of pencil sketches incorporating my descriptors and his own feelings from the Outer Level name. Some of his ideas reflected ones I have had in mind for years — probably the more obvious and common images that Outer Level brings to mind. These are precisely the ones I didn’t want. I was looking to avoid the common and the obvious. Also in the sketches were some ideas that immediately captured my imagination.

Lately I've found it good to go down the 'obvious' paths to prove that the idea either has some potential — or that it's a complete dead end.

Leaving 'dead end' ideas right in my sketches, while clearly explaining why they are dead ends to my clients helps cleanse the dead end idea out of the system, allowing me to try other areas of exploration and 'let go" of the dead end idea.

There is of course, a risk a client will like a dead end idea. However, because I always provide comprehensive explanations with my sketches, I've found clients trust my judgement when I call out a dead end.

Client Collaboration

There were many bits in these sketches that I really liked. So I sent back my comments along with my own sketches because I tend to think better in pictures than in words.

When Jon sent me his sketches I was very excited to see him getting into the process so deeply! I'm a proponent of visual thinking, so seeing my sketches encourage a client to sketch was wonderful to see.

Color

To this point, the process had been quite fun, though challenging. I had no idea what was in store now that it was time for color. I envisioned blue, red, and even green as potential main colors and wasn’t surprised that I wasn’t alone in this train of thought.

Color is maybe the toughest part of the logo process in my opinion. Colors carry have emotional impact, which is why I like to leave color to the end of the process — this helps void choosing a logo based on the color rather than a great concept.

Unfortunately, once I saw these colors applied to the logo design they didn’t project the feel I was looking for. But, I really liked the warm red-orange sunrise-like background Mike had incorporated. So I searched out some photos of planets, nebulas, etc. and sent them to Mike as a sample of colors that appeared in space. Maybe, these would help change the feel of the logo.
As it turns out, these “space colors” lead us in the right direction.

It's rare to nail down final color selections on the first round because color is so complex. This is why it's so important to collaborate with clients. In this case, Jon sent some reference to give me an idea of his tastes, from which I was able to draw out some new options.

The entire process really is a back and forth; client feedback and my expertise, combined to arrive at a final logomark that's attractive, practical and pleases both the client and designer.

What intrigues me is how fun this process can be, particularly for clients. All of the clients who have collaborated in their own logo process have commented on how much they enjoyed it. Knowing clients get a logo they love and a process that's fun makes for a very satisfying experience for everyone.

If you need of a logo and are intrigued by this design process, drop me a line.

Technorati Tags: mikerohde, rohdesign, logo, design, makalumedia

January 11, 2006

Visual Thinking School and the Visual Voice

A few weeks ago, I was inspired by Visual thinking practice: Heads and hands on Dave Gray's weblog Communication Nation — an exercise in observation, where you try to capture heads and hands in a sketchbook.

While at a local Caribou, I pulled out my Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook, and began observing folks coming into the shop, trying to capture their faces as cartoons. The result is the sketch to you see to the right. Of course you'll notice that I stopped at the faces and heads — I ran out of time to work on hands!

However, I found the exercise very relaxing and quite challenging. For instance, how do you capture someone's face accurately without staring at them? I realized that it forced me to capture more information with each glance, and rely on my memory to put own the shapes I was observing.

Visual Voice and Comparison
The exercise Visual thinking practice: Finding your visual voice reminded me of a recent acceptance of the "visual voice" I see in my sketches. While I don't consider myself a great artist (like Russell Stutler is) I've come to accept my own voice as unique and different — my own.

On the one hand I enjoy solving problems visually, which is the basis for the logo, icon and even web work I do for clients. On the other, I sometimes feel my sketches are not as "good" as someone else's work.

While technically that may be true — I've realized it's more about my unique visual voice. My sketches, sketchtoons and doodles are a part of me, completely unique. Like my voice or writing style, they define and represent my personality.

If you want to try sketching but feel you are a terrible artist, let go of that idea. If you feel your stuff isn't up to some other artist's level — let go of that comparison as a reason to avoid sketching! Admiration of great sketching is good, if it is truly that — don't allow sketch paralysis because you can never be as good, because this steals away the joy of sketching.

Once I let go of worrying about how good others were in comparison to me, I was free to enjoy sketching: successes and mistakes together. The whole point of sketching is to express yourself visually and have fun in the process. Don't let sketching be about quality or comparison, let it be about expression, joy and experience.

Check out Dave's Visual Thinking School form suggestions to get inspired in 2006 to sketch and explore your own visual thinking.

Update: Awesome! My blogpal Daniel has taken up sketching this year and is already excited about his progress! Check out Creative journey here I come and be inspired everyone!

Technorati Tags: mikerohde, rohdesign, moleskine, sketches, sketchtoon, visual+thinking

December 22, 2005

Digital Moleskine Concept

Lately, I've been spending more time carrying around and capturing ideas in my pocket Moleskine gridded idea book.

One idea captured in the idea book in February 2004 was that of a digital Moleskine-like pocket notebook, inspired by an email exchange with artist Witold Riedel. You can see the sketch below (click for the larger version):

The idea was to have a high resolution display and input area, combined with wireless (WiFi and Bluetooth) and wired high speed access. Witold's idea was to have the digital Moleskine generate an RSS feed of sketches, to be shared with other device owners and folks on the net. This way you could check for new sketches and then click to view them on your digital Moleskine.

Not only would it operate as a digital sketchbook, with overlays to simulate paper textures, gridlines and rules and so forth, but it would also be a viewer, showing your RSS subscriptions to other digital Moleskine devices out on the net.

It would also have USB and Firewire ports for input and output, a VGA out port for display of sketches on screens and overhead projectors, and an SD slot (or two) for storage of sketches. I imagine flash memory would be most sensible for a device like this, for both size and durability.

After sketching the idea, I thought it might be nice to make the input/view screen a two-page spread rather than a single page. Hey, I'm dreaming here, why not? :-)

It would need to be sturdy, so I imagine high resolution "digital paper" would be best for the screen/writing surface.

Anyway, it's a wild idea which will likely be realized when my son is my age, but you never know. I figure by putting the idea out there now, it might happen and maybe I'll get some royalties to put my him through college. :-)

Technorati Tags: mikerohde, moleskine, technology, pda, sketches

December 21, 2005

Blues Guitarist Scratchboard Illustration

Well Mr. Porkpop has done it again — by mentioning that my Station Inn sketch looked a bit like scratchboard art to him, he got me thinking about some actual scratchboard work I'd done in college. Checked around the old files today and I found a piece to share here on the blog:

I can't quite recall if this art was done to explore the technique alone, or if it appeared in a publication. I was working for the college's internal art department at the time and for the MATC Times newspaper, so it very well may have been published somewhere. Whatever the case, it brings back very fond memories of that time in my life and the fun I had doing scratchboard artwork.

FYI: scratchboard art is literal scratching of black emulsion that's been sprayed onto thick, smooth board to reveal a white image, rather than laying down black ink in a normal sketch.

If you're interested in trying the technique, you can find scratchboard at a local art supply store, along with scratching tools, though I was pretty good at using a standard exacto blade for my work — so be creative if you give it a shot.

Technorati Tags: blues, mikerohde, scratchboard, illustration, music, sketches

December 20, 2005

Bluegrass Sketch at the Station Inn

After some kindly goading by Mr. Porkpop, I've taken a few minutes to scan in a sketch from a few months back, taken while visiting my pal and fellow blogger Michael Ashby who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

The drawing below was done in the dim light of the Station Inn, a famous place for Bluegrass artists, something like The Grand Ole Opry for Country music:

(click to see a larger image)

Because the sketch done in low light conditions, it seemed a good time to use a speed sketch technique to capture the mood, rather than the visual appearance. The line quality is not exact, rather I let my hand loose to only follow my ears, eyes and heart to try and capture the moment.

It was a fun exercise, and I think the results turned out pretty well. And yes, it was excellent Bluegrass music, played by a band called The String Dusters. Check out the 3 free MP3s on their site. Yeee-Haw! :-)

Technorati Tags: bluegrass, mikerohde, moleskine, nashville, music, sketches

September 22, 2005

Liquid Fitness Logo Design

It's been a while since I've talked about logo design on the blog, so having just completed a very fun and satisfying logo design for Liquid Fitness, I thought I'd share the process.

Liquid Fitness LLC, is the personal swim training consultancy of Roberta Challener who has spent years coaching in swimming — from children and adults to members of the USA Swim Team. Roberta had read Ian Landsman's blog post on Creating a Business Logo, and inquired about logo design services at MakaluMedia. After a proposal and some email discussion, Roberta hired us for the project.

As with all logo projects, I began by sketching pen and pencil concepts in my trusty Miquelrius sketchbook. I ended up with two pages full of ideas, numbered them and forwarded the sketches to Roberta for her comments. Of the various sketches, one concept in particular stood out on both pages — that of a stylized swimmer:

Sketches-1

I liked the feeling of these sketches, though there was something bothersome about the single arm. stylistically, it works, but I felt I ought to try a version with an entire swimmer as well. So, I tried a few more ideas (this time in pencil) exploring the full upper bodied swimmer:

Sketch-2

Sketch-3

These seemed just right — and Roberta agreed with my thoughts in her comments. From these sketches I began drawing in Illustrator, turning the pencil concept into a stylized, black and white logomark:

In the end I opted for a flat look rather than the “liquid” look for the mark, as it would be clean and sleek, as well as not trying too hard to convey the liquid theme with 3D styling.

Next was the challenge of finding a typeface and type treatment to compliment the logo mark. I wanted to show emphasis with bold and regular fonts, so explored several font variations with Roberta. She especially liked the modern-looking font, Futura, so we had our font:

Bw-Logomark

Not how nicely the mark blends into the open spaces on top of the letter forms. I am always challenged with LLCs as they feel like add-ons to logos, so in this case I tucked the LLC in below the type, equally deep as the descender on the “q” of Liquid.

With the logo form settled on, we moved to color. I wanted to use cool blue and green colors for the mark, to help forward the idea of water, liquid and swimming. I created a set of color variations for Roberta, and she chose a two-toned blue as her favorite:

2C-Logomark

I liked this color version as well, as the dual blue tones seemed to add a bit of depth. The lighter blue helps equalize the bolder 'Liquid' part of the logotype and downplays the LLC as well, without letting it get lost in the shuffle.

Overall I was very pleased with the process and how well the logo turned out. Working with Roberta was great fun — she always knew what she wanted, which helped in decision making especially. I think Roberta was equally pleased with the logo, which always makes me feel great about a project.

I'll try to be a bit more regular about showcasing logo work from MakaluMedia here, along with descriptions of the process — apparently these are popular with readers and those exploring logo work. And of course, should you need corporate identity services, drop me a line!

Technorati Tags: design, graphics, logos, sketches, swimming

August 30, 2005

Sailing Sketch

We have some good friends who happen to own a cabin in central Wisconsin an d a 27 foot sailboat — fortunately for us, they love having us up for weekends to sailing on the lake near their cabin.

I was a good sketch-boy this weekend, having brought along my pocket Moleskine sketchbook. I'd hoped for a chance to do a little sketching on the sailboat. On Saturday I was rewarded with a perfect opportunity, so I hauled out the little M, a gel pen and scribbled out the sketch you see above.

It's actually somewhat confusing not in context, however, if you notice the beam running vertically, that's the mainsail and the portion extending to the right off the page is the boom. In front of the mainsail is the genoa. That's about the extent of my sailing knowledge: I just got used to calling the lines “lines” rather than ropes, so I'm a bit of a sailing newbie — but it's still very fun.

It's been far too long since my last sketch in Little M — the last one was done in Madison, June 13th — far too long ago. I have to get back into the rhythm of sketching again (seems always a challenge to make time for sketching, but so well worth it.

Technorati Tags: moleskine, sailing, sketches, sketchtoons

June 13, 2005

Cafés and Sketching in Madison

This past weekend my wife Gail and I had a very enjoyable Friday night and Saturday visiting Madison, Wisconsin, home to the University of Wisconsin. Gail had meetings to attend for work on Saturday, (nice of her to bring me along eh?) which meant I was free that morning to find some interesting Madison cafés.

I walked several blocks form the Hotel, on the directions of the concierge, to Dunn Bros Coffee, and was pleased to see they had free WiFi and fair trade coffee. However, the shop didn't open until 10am! What kind of coffee shop opens that late?

Fortunately, I had noted several cafe locations on my Madison map just in case. I turned up Lake street and headed to State, where I immediately saw a Starbucks. I really wanted to experience a local cafe though, So I walked up State and found a Steep and Brew, which is (I think) a local chain.

But I kept going as I knew of one more place on State that seemed like a local place, called Espresso something or another. Well, I found it, but it too was closed, even though the sign said it should have been open.

I made the decision to head back to Starbucks, where I knew could get net access and reasonably decent coffee. Before firing up the laptop, I pulled out my trusty Moleskine Sketchbook for a relaxing sketch, which you see above (click for a larger view):

The sketch started as a pencil scribble and then expanded as I moved to the Uniball Signo 207 gel pen. I intentionally keep my strokes loose at first, to try and capture the mood of the view I had from my Starbucks table.

Since the sketch might be a little unclear due to looseness, here's a brief description of the scene: I was seated at a table facing the window onto State Street, across from a Walgreens and other shops. The dark figure on the lower right is an older gent enjoying a coffee, and just outside of the window are bicycles on bike racks. You may also notice trees outside, and a woman walking down the opposite side of the street.

I was unsure how things would go when I began, but am now quite pleased with this sketch. It's a little unusual for my Moleksine style, in that it began so loosely. Generally my Moleskine pen sketches are quite tight and measured — with this sketch I tried to remain loose.

I hope you enjoy viewing the sketch as much as I did making it!

June 6, 2005

Sketching as Therapy

It's been a while since I've posted sketches here, so I felt it was about time to remedy the situation. The sketches you see here were created at different times, but follow similar approaches — they are intended to be very dense and have no specific theme other than whatever captured my attention while sketching. Sketch Therapy.

Page 1
The left-hand sketch was done while watching TV one evening. I quite liked the density I'd achieved with my Jazz sketches and wanted to play a bit with that dense crosshatching line quality. I'd see something on TV or in the living room, or even some idea which popped into my head and would sketch it quickly. So, you see some old metal type, a clock, a strange made up word "Uibioz" and a funky asian looking letter-form. I also explored shading a little bit, trying to achieve some different levels of shade by use of crosshatching.

Page 2
This sketch was created on my plane ride home from PalmSource DevCon, May 27th. I had a little time to kill between takeoff and reaching cruising altitude, so I pulled out my pen and scribbled whatever I saw or came into my head. You'll notice the abstract circle on the left representing a radar sweep, a tea cup recalled from Sushi restaurant I visited the night before, the Holy Grail (no idea why that popped into my head), a man seated a few rows ahead, the seat back lock, text and arrows from signage, and my pen cap. I also explored line hatching on this one, though I intentionally worked in a little bit looser way.

I like this loose exploration now and then, as I'm not so forced into any theme or subject. It's a very relaxing exercise, because I'm free to scribble anything I see or think of — something like working in a zen rock garden. If you want to sketch but have no subject or even feel your artistic skills are not the best, try using sketching as a therapeutic exercise. It works!

April 30, 2005

PocketGoddess Reborn

On Friday, my friend and fellow Palm OS User Council member Jen Edwards had a small wish come true — she saw her PocketGoddess website reborn! It was revamped with a new look and a new Movable Type system to make her writing and publishing much easier. I'm most pleased because this refresh will allow Jen to enjoy writing, instead of fighting with a manual, cobbled together system.

I was fortunate to help her out with this transformation, thanks to my good buddy Michael Ashby. He asked me to be involved in developing a logo for Jen and setting direction on the design, so he could focus on the technical stuff of Movable Type and building HTML and CSS templates.

The logo started as all of my logo work does, in my Miquelrius sketchbook. I had a chat with Jen about her wants and needs, then began drawing ideas out of her comments and my ideas for her identity. I wanted mainly to provide a more refined look for Pocket Goddess, something that would represent Jen's personality but also have a classic, professional feel.

Through the sketching process, we both centered on a simple goddess icon, and I explored type and sharpening up the icon itself. From this process I chose two fonts (Gill Sans & Spring Script). For the final stage, Jen and I discussed color, and I learned she dearly loved blues and greens. So, finding the right blues and greens became the task. I preferred a “leafy” green color, though I did explore a blue green option. In the end, the leafier green won out.

Once the logo was determined, I spoke to Michael Ashby about his structural plans for the site. He was setting up multiple Movable Type weblogs for Jen to use, so she could manage all of the news, reviews and other content of her site in a more effective way than her current mostly-manual system.

Michael simply wanted a main page design comp from which he could spin the rest of the site. So, I provided Mike with a quick layout and some graphics, which he turned into templates and eventually, the entire site. Michael put a much more significant amount of effort into his end of the project, making sure every detail was handled, right down to the sub-categories, font formatting and browser testing. Michael spent many hours getting this site up to his high specifications.

I'm very proud of the look and feel and the teamwork we enjoyed during the project. Jen might say it took too long (she was excited the whole way through and both Michael and I worked on the project on our evening and weekends) but I would bet she'd now say that it was well worth the wait. :-)

My thanks to Jen for the opportunity and for Michael's hard work bringing the PocketGoddess site to life for Jen. You guys rock!

April 14, 2005

Mike's Moleskine Update

And now, a few Moleskine-related tidbits:

Proj; Exhibition Update
Today I was reminded of my involvement in Patrick Ng's proj: exhibition show in Hong Kong because of Jeremy Wagstaff's post about his visit to see it:

"Just had a chance to visit the Moleskine Art exhibition in Hong Kong’s Times Square (a rather impoverished version of the original, the huge outdoor screen blaring trash across the concourse being the focal point).
Anyway, a modest exhibition in the basement, in one glass case in the shop. But nicely done by enthusiast Patrick Ng, and a true window on what people can do with their Moleskine notebooks. Here are some terrible photos I took with my cellphone of some of the exhibits...

Anyway, I’m probably biased because I interviewed him, but my money is on Mike Rohde, who does some lovely sketches in his:"

Thanks for the mention Jeremy! :-)

I'd almost forgotten that my little sketchbook was sent to Patrick way back in January. Well apparently the show is popular, as I'm reading that the sign-in book (a large Moleskine journal) was filled up and Patrick had to start a second one:

"We didn't expect such a great respond from customers, but the result is fascinating. In a week's time the comment book (large size blank Moleskine) was filled up entirely, so I have put a Comment Book 2 in Times Square last night, hoping to capture more comments. I found that there are a lot of people leaving messages to their loved ones, friends and schoolmates also."

This is great news! I'm happy that all of Patrick's hard work to get this event going has paid off for him in nice ways, and I'm honored to have been invited to participate. This was one of those rare win-win projects, so Jeremy and Patrick's reports make me very happy. Great job Patrick!!

Armand does NAMTA with Kikkerland
Meanwhile, Armand Frasco is living it up at NAMTA (National Art Materials Trade Association) with the Kikkerland folks (distributors of Moleskine in the USA), sharing stories of Moleskinerie and Journalisimo. I'm very proud of Armand commanding the attention of Kikkerland and hope that this recognition will bring him even more fame, fortune and Moleskine books! just be sure to send me some samples Armand! :-)

Baptized Moleskines
I've had positive and unfortunate experiences with my own Moleskine collection. Two of my pocket Moleskines have been water damaged in a freak accident involving my Café Bag and my Naglene-esque water bottle that wasn't fully sealed. The carpet in our car got wet, and then soaked through the canvas of my Café bag and into the bottoms of my Pocket Moleskine sketchbook and gridded idea book inside.

I've learned that while Pilot G2 ink is nice and dark, it isn't totally waterproof. Unfortunately parts of some sketches and writings were smeared, and that's too bad. However, on the other hand it almost feels like my Moleskines have been "baptized" as it were and are now truly broken in. I'm glad that I've been using waterproof Uniball gel ink in the Signo 207, so that I'm ready for the next baptism.

Keeping a Moleskine Daily Diary
Now the good: I've been thoroughly enjoying keeping a daily journal in a Moleskine Pocket sized daily journal sent by Patrick Ng. For a few weeks, I'd explored the idea of replacing my Palm handheld with the Moleskine, but came to realize that it was too vulnerable for my tastes (lose the book, there goes my personal life, no backup).

However, because I veered away from using the Pocket Daily Diary as a "daily driver' I instead began using it to record thoughts from each day, before going to sleep. I've found this very therapeutic and enjoyable. If I have a very busy week and don't record thoughts for a few days, I've been back-filling those days when I do journal. The net effect is that I've been keeping a daily diary since the end of February, a first for me.

I really like the Moleskine Pocket Daily Diary because the pages are just right — enough to allow some deeper comments and thoughts yet small enough that I don't feel overwhelmed by a blank page awaiting my thoughts.

Having a record of every day is also quite interesting for reading back in time. It allows me to see progression of thought and to pinpoint when shifts may have occurred in my thinking or environment. This blog has already worked in this regard, but the daily record goes even a step further.

I plan to continue with my daily entries. It will be interesting to look back one year from now to see the full impact of daily writing in this little book. I have a feeling I'll be ordering another Moleskine Daily Pocket Diary from Patrick for 2006. :-)

March 24, 2005

Pen Freak

Yes, I'm a pen freak. I'm that guy at the pen section, mumbling about pen tip sizes, gel inks and barrel design. It's been an addiction of mine since grade school days, when Parker Jotter retractable ball pens were all the rage.

In high school, I became a fan of Flair pens for drawing and writing. I used to eat through those pens, drawing, writing reports and for everyday use. I read somewhere that Quentin Tarantino uses Flairs to write his scripts.

In my college days, when I was introduced to fountain pens. My design and drawing instructor, Mr. Bonifay, was a total sketch freak, toting his huge 12 x 14 bound black sketchbook with hundreds of drawings in it. Odd thing was, he religiously used a simple, black Sheaffer fountain pen (something like this one, but black plastic) for sketching, which further blew me away.

I bought one of those fountain pens myself and sketched with it, and you know what? It wasn't bad at all. I adapted to the quirks of a fountain pen for sketching. The old pen is now broken (pocket clip broke) and is in need of a trip back to the factory in Iowa for lifetime warranty repairs. (Note to self: send that Sheaffer pen in!)

When I began getting back into sketching and journaling with Moleskines a few years ago, I found my interest in pens reviving. I tried the ol' Sheaffer, but the Moleskine's paper couldn't handle the scratching of a fountain pen tip, nor the ink liquidity.

Next I bought some Pilot G2s on 0.5 and 0.7 widths, as these were so often mentioned by Moleskine users. I loved the gel ink — its density and the pen shape. However, after several months of use, I began to experience some issues with the G2. I disliked that the flow was not totally smooth on my Moleskine pages. The ink would flow nicely and then abruptly, thin out on me.

I put up with this for a while, until my most recent trip to Office Max, where I bought several pens for home and work use (I do a quite bit of sketching at work). One of the pens I took a liking to was the Sanford Uniball Signo 207 gel pen. It looked and felt very much like the Pilot G2, but the ink flow was much better. I bought one and have now switched over to the Uniball.

But the story goes on — my pen freak revival brought to mind yet another über-favorite pen: the Niji Stylist 100. This unassuming black plastic pen had a smoothest tip for sketching, never skipping on me. Apparently it has a unique plastic tip construction which makes it durable. All I know is, these things rock.

This weekend I hit the local art store and found the Niji Stylist 100, and immediately appreciated the smooth flow of ink it provided. I've been enjoying it so much, I've started carrying the Stylist around everywhere, using it for work and personal sketching, notes, my diaries and more.

So what are your favorite pens? Any suggestions for this pen freak? Please feel free to leave a comment — I'm always on the lookout for great new pens to feel my addiction. :-)

Permalink | | Pens | add to del.icio.us

March 3, 2005

Illustration Friday: Jazz

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across an interesting site called Illustration Friday, being run by illustrator Penelope Dullaghan. The idea behind her site is to announce a topic for illustrations each week. Artists subscribed to the mailing list interpret, illustrate and post up artwork on their sites. Once up, artists can submit their creations to the Illustration Friday site for all to enjoy. Pretty slick!

I immediately loved the idea, but when I encountered the site, was too busy to participate, and my ideas for the suggested topics just didn't click. So I waited.

This Monday, the new topic came in — Jazz. Now there's a topic I can feel good about, as I'm a fan of jazz. This morning at the cafe, I pulled out my Moleskine sketchbook, fired up Miles Davis' Kind of Blue on my Tungsten E and let the ink flow!

Here's the final result (click the sketch for a larger version):

My focus on this spread was to let go and let the music guide my sketch. You'll see a bass guitar at the center of the image, because the bass line was so dominant in 'So What', the track playing when I began drawing.

I wanted to try and express the feelings I had just then, hearing Miles and the crew jamming out. It felt dark and dense, hence the heavy use of black and shading. I didn't want any part of the sketch to have a clear white spot, to convey this feeling of density.

I nearly stopped on the left page, but by then 'All Blues' came on and I felt compelled to keep rolling. The right-hand page of the spread is my interpretation of the tune, if it were being captured by an oscilloscope. Top line is Miles on trumpet, middle line for the sax, bottom line for the bass. I only indicated these 3 as they felt most apparent (my apologies to the drummer).

So, there it is, my first Illustration Friday submission. I hope you all enjoy it and my description. Maybe it'll even cut the mustard on the site listing. :-)

March 1, 2005

ComputerRepair.com Logo Contest Winner

On Monday evening, was was informed by ComputerRepair.com that I'd been chosen as the winner of their logo design contest. First off, thanks go to Erik J. Barzeski, who told me of the contest.

This is the very same contest I spoke of last week, in my Just Good Business post. In the end, good was served, when the logo entry which used a pre-made logo was disqualified. I'm not sure how this impacted the voting, since I didn't have access to internal voting forums, but I suspect it didn't hurt my chances.

Whatever the case, I felt it would be interesting to show my sketches and final submissions to the contest here, to document my process of logo design for those curious about it. I hope to do more of this documentation of work, because it provides insight into a designer's thought processes to the curious.

Sketches
First, I went to a Miquelrius sketchbook, my normal starting point for capturing ideas. I knew the logo ComputerRepair.com wanted should convey the idea of a network, service providers and clients, so I began playing with various ways of conceptualizing a network.

Here's a scan of the concepts page:

Final Art
I wanted to keep effort minimal (not knowing if I'd win or not), so I went right from the best concept, to final art. Normally this would be a longer process, involving the client's input on what they liked, and my explanations of why I drew what I did.

The two best concepts are circled on the sketches page, though in the end I preferred the more 'galactic' looking concept for its simplicity and feeling of movement.

At the center of this logo is the client, around which everything revolves. Circling the client dot is the ComputerRepair.com network, which provides clients with service providers to solve their IT needs. The 4 outer dots are the service providers, connected to clients through the ComputerRepair.com network.

Here are the 4 color entries I submitted to the contest:

I wanted something bright (per the contest directions) yet business-like. I began with a blue/green palette (1), a variation with black logotype (2), then adding in warmer colors (3 & 4) to round out my submissions.

Number 4 was my favorite, because the orange 'client' ball at the center felt like a sun, the blue spiral arms of the galaxy representing the network, and green dots for the service providers. I also preferred the weight of black text on the ComputerRepair.com logotype.

I also took a chance by writing a new, simple tagline for the service: 'IT Services Network' which tied in with the galaxy concept. It also simplified and clarified the tagline being used with their current logo: "Manage the Process."

ComputerRepair chose number 4 for entry into the contest:

I'm very pleased to have won, though there is a chance my logo won't be used by ComputerRepair.com (declared in the rules). It depends on the company, and there may even be some competing work from other designers — I don't know. If things go well, the logo will be used, if not, I have the satisfaction of winning and $750. :-)

More Logo Design Experiences
If this short post on my processes has interested you, I'd suggest reading Creating a Business Logo, a blog article written by Ian Landsman, founder of UserScape software.

Ian and I worked together on his company and product logos. When we finished, he used samples of my work and wrote out his thoughts on the process from a client's point of view. His post was very enlightening, because I learned about his decisions and thoughts thoughts through the entire logo design journey.

Ian's post was informational, but even better, his article has been directly responsible for bringing two new clients to the firm I work for, both in need of logo designs. So, not only did I enjoy the process with Ian, now I'm able to recreate the experiences for two other firms excited about new corporate identities. Blogging does pay off!

I hope this article was informative and interesting. If you have comments or thoughts, feel free to leave them here. If you're in need of a logo for your business, I'd love to speak with you about it — just send me an email.

February 17, 2005

Tuesday @ The Office Sketchtoon

It's been a very busy stretch here in rohdesign-land, which has meant much less focus on the blog than I'd have liked. But hey, such is life. I still love my blog and think of ideas for posts all the time — finding the time to write out posts is much more of a challenge. :-)

This week I came across a sketchtoon I'd forgotten in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook. It was scribbled over a month ago (prior to the proj: exhibition project), when I'd first started formalizing sketchtoon formatting. Early one morning, I had a blank Moleskine page in front of me while running the Mac OS X 10.3.6 updater. I grabbed my G2 pen and began to scribble. Whatever caught my eye on the desk found a space on the page, including some old grade school scissors I keep in my pen holder.

This sketch was actually quite loose compared to most of the proj: exhibition sketches, which I like quite a bit. The looseness adds a little something. It also reminds me of the loose sketching exercises in drawing class we used to do as a design students.

We were given an object to draw, then a timer was set (with an alarm) to limit our drawing. Gradually, the time was reduced — 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, 15, 5 and finally 1 second. This exercise always amazed me because not only did it loosen my mind and hand, but it helped me produce wonderful sketches.

Maybe I ought to try those speed-sketch exercises again? Hmmm....

January 27, 2005

Cafe Bag Sketchtoon

As you may know, my proj: exhibition Moleskine sketchbook is presently on its way to Hong Kong via airmail — so that series of sketchtoons are currently on hold until the book gets back from the whirlwind tour.

I had so much fun sketching those 28 pages in the sketchtoon style, I've decided to continue in my personal Moleskine sketchbook. This morning at the cafe, I hauled out my Moleskine and sketched my Cafe Bag as it sat on the table next to me.

By the way — I fall more in love with my Cafe Bag each time I use it. It's proven to be a perfect library bag, as I can pack in many more books and CDs than I ever thought possible. As a man-purse, it works well for hauling my Dana Wireless, Miquelrius sketchbook, personal journal, 2 pocket Moleskines, Kyocera Rave phone and Tungsten E. The more I use my bag, the more useful it becomes. Not bad for 12 bucks!

As for sketching this morning — It felt good getting back into the flow again. I see these drawings are coming more and more naturally, each time I sketch one out. I feel the control of my G2 pen improving each time I use it.

While familiarity with the G2 pen and Moleskine size and paper surface are part of this, I think the more significant impact on quality is due to the mindset I've had to adapt to. Because there are no pencil guides, drawing a sketchtoon feels somewhat risky. Once my pen hits the paper, there is no undo, no erasing, no retreat. It is what it is — if I screw up, there's not much I can do about it — unless I find a creative way to use an error.

Funny thing is, I haven't made many errors since adapting to this style. My mind must draw the image in my mental RAM cache, before letting my hand lay the image down on the paper surface. It is truly fascinating to see and feel this happening while I'm drawing.

Mike Shea's recent article on writers using pens, paper and longhand to write novels seems related to this phenomenon. Stephen King describes the 'caching mode' in this way:

"It slows you down. It makes you think about each word as you write it, and it also gives you more of a chance so that you're able — the sentences compose themselves in your head. It's like hearing music, only it's words. But you see more ahead because you can't go as fast."

I agree! There is something almost enjoyable watching a sketchtoon form on paper. I sense myself planning out where text might go and even the words I'll write before they go down on the page. It seems almost like exercise — for my entire self: mind and body.

I strongly recommend adapting some analog way to express yourself, especially if you rely on digital tools. Not to replace digital tools or methods, but to improve your thinking and coordination. Even if you can't draw, just doodle, or write. Something.

Besides, it's fun. :-)

January 24, 2005

Kula 1001 Icon

Received good news on Sunday night! Adriaan Tijsseling, the author of blogging tool ecto, dropped a line to tell me my new icon for 1001 (a Flickr photo stream management tool) was used on his latest beta. Alright!

I've been a user and fan of ecto since June, so when I learned via Michael Ashby that Adriaan was looking for some icon and design help with ecto, I dropped him a line. As it turns out, Adriaan found help with the ecto project with designer Neil Dixon. However, he was also in need of a new icon for his 1001 app, a tool for viewing and managing your own and others' Flickr streams. I felt honored to be offered the opportunity, so I immediately agreed to take on the project through the company I work for, MakaluMedia.

So, I began as I usually do, with sketches in my Miquelrius sketchbook. The concepts were scanned and emailed to Adriaan for review. The process went quickly, as one of the concepts in my sketches — an earth with photo streams wrapped round, being viewed by a loupe — resonated with both of us.

From there, I began the icon construction process. At first I tried to sketch the sphere with streams wrapping around it, but soon realized it would be difficult to get right without good reference. The next day I had an idea in the shower — why not wrap strips of paper with black photo blocks printed on them around one of Nathan's kickballs?

So that's exactly what I did — and it worked perfectly! The strips provided a perfect template for re-drawing in Adobe Illustrator. I then copied the vector art from Illustrator into Fireworks, to add color and paste photos into the stream blocks on the globe.

In fact, if you look very closely at the pics on the streams of the final icon, you can make out shots of Adriaan, his friends and several of my own family. It's always fun to see the icon, because even though the little pixelized photos are obscured, I can still remember the moment when each family photo was taken.

I had a blast working on this icon. It always feels great to see a project like this come together, especially when the process leading up to the final art was so much fun! :-)

Thanks Adriaan!

January 20, 2005

Journalisimo

Yesterday my good friend Armand from Moleskinerie and I launched a new weblog for lovers of analog pens, fine papers, journals and sketchbooks. It's called Journalisimo.

Our manifesto is short and sweet:

This weblog is an attempt to invite a return to analog. Many of us live very digital lives. We push pixels around screens. Our lives are stored as bits on shiny hard drives. Our words and images can be published online, available moments later, all around the world. But this digital life can often seem very shallow.
While we recognize the power of our digital existence, we long for the tactile feel of ink on paper. We celebrate the freedom from power supplies, batteries, wireless networks and fragile electronics. We seek to elevate the written word and the freehand sketch on fine paper. We celebrate the journal as the optimal analog device for expression and enjoyment.

Journalisimo.

The Journalisimo blog idea has brewing for many months, prior to our launch this week. It was the combination of my WSJ appearance, along with Marc Orchant and Merlin Mann, which set us both off, though we could both sense a trend toward Moleskines and other paper journals being adopted by bloggers and the digerati. It made sense to provide a resource for those people and focus it on journals generically, rather than one specific brand.

We've been in on the analog journaling and sketching trend in the tech/blog community for a bit over a year now and we only see it increasing. We both see digitally oriented folks getting frustrated with their computer tools, or just seeking a respite from their immersive digital lives. Analog journals and pens seem to fit the bill.

So, it only made sense to begin Journalisimo as our way to connect people searching for analog solutions to people generating analog solutions. Armand and I like to think of Journalisimo as the analog doppelganger to Engadget. :-)

I'm the design and creative director for the new blog, while Armand is the one posting the bulk of the daily posts. I intend to write up longer articles and reviews to post from time to time, while Armand hunts down daily doses of unique, unusual and interesting tidbits on the analog lifestyle.

We welcome your suggestions and notifications on analog blog posts and articles. if you have suggestions or links to share, please visit our little Blog, drop a line or leave a comment. :-)

Permalink | | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

January 16, 2005

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches (Pages 25-28)

It's hard to believe — my proj: exhibition self-imposed deadline of January 15th has arrived and passed. I have the final 4 pages of sketches to reveal, as this project draws to a close. I'd hoped to complete 30 pages in total, but fell just two pages short.

I'm still quite pleased with the completion of 28 pages! 30 pages of sketches was just an arbitrary number after all. In perspective, completion of 28 pages in under 2 months isn't bad, considering my busy schedule. Besides, it got me into the groove of sketching regularly, which I intend to continue.

If you weren't reading when I started this art project at the end of November, I was invited to submit a Moleskine pocket sketchbook to Patrick Ng's proj: exhibition art show, taking place this February in Hong Kong. I picked up a new sketchbook and set a goal of completing 30 pages before I had to mail it off. The book is due to Patrick by January 30th, so it goes into the mail tomorrow at lunchtime. :-)

So, here are the final 4 pages of the sketchbook (click to see larger versions):

Page 25: Okay, okay, I drew another coffee-oriented spread! It was just so perfect that I couldn't pass up this sketching opportunity. Page 25 features a funkly Italian moka pot I've found at a local coffee house (Stone Creek). It's quite tiny in fact, just large enough to create a single shot of stovetop espresso. Being intrigued by moka pot operation, I added a small operational diagram to the sketch.

Page 26: This final coffee sketch was made on Saturday at Cranky Al's bakery. I've always admired the hand-made opn/closed sign in the window, so I made it the focal point of the sketch. To round out the drawing, I added a hand-made soy candle and Fair Exchange logo as they caught my eye.

Page 27 & 28: The final spread in the book features my analog and digital tools. I was inspired to draw this because of Jeremy Wagstaff's WSJ.com article from Friday, covering paper journals and digital lives. I thought it'd be fun to catalog the tools used to create my drawings and blogging, especially in light of their connectedness.

And so ends this phase of the proj: exhibition sketchbook. Once Patrick has shown the book at his store and eventually ships it back, I will continue my sketches and complete it, posting the results here on the weblog.

Meantime, I've dusted off my original Moleskine pocket sketchbook and will post the drawings I make there on the weblog from time to time, since I'm now hooked on these sketchtoons. Thank you Patrick for inspiring me to make this project happen — it's been a blast!

I hope you've enjoyed all of the sketches. To my readers, thanks for comments and suggestions during the process. You guys made this a much fuller experience.

Boing Boing: WSJ on the joy of moleskines

January 15, 2005

WSJ Moleskine Article: More Linkage

It seems Jeremy Wagstaff's WSJ.com article on the Moleskine has some legs, having been picked up and mentioned in various places on the web. For those interested and my own records, I've decided to record the links I've found related to this column.

Moleskinerie: Jeremy Wagstaff on Moleskine

Loose Wire: Part I (Marc Orchant's remaindered text)

Loose Wire: Part III (Other Moleskine links)

Loose Wire: Part IV (Merlin Mann's remaindered text)

43 Folders: Merlin Mann's Comments

The Office Weblog: Moleskine review in WSJ and Loose Wire

jkOnTheRun: Loose Wire interviews Marc Orchant

I'll add more here as I find them.

Have a great weekend everyone!

January 13, 2005

Wall Street Journal Mention in Jeremy Wagstaff's Loose Wire

On Wednesday morning January 5th, I received an email from Dow Jones columnist Jeremy Wagstaff. Jeremy writes the Loose Wire column for The Wall Street Journal Online (wsj.com) and The Asian Wall Street Journal.

In his web searches for Moleskine references, Jeremy came across my weblog and wrote to ask for an email interview for an upcoming article. The article was to be on paper vs digital notebooks — more precisely how different people fit paper notebooks into their digital lives.

As a Moleskine and Miquelrius fan, I was intrigued. I spent some time replying to Jeremy's questions over my lunch break and sent them off, wondering if I might be fortunate enough to appear in the Wall Street Journal.

A week passed. This evening, Jeremy sent an IM to me, to confirm that a portion of my interview would be appearing in his Loose Wire column in the January 14th edition of both The Wall Street Journal Online (wsj.com) and The Asian Wall Street Journal.

High fives! Happy dance! Woooooohoo! :-)

The only downside: Jeremy wasn't able to make use of my entire interview (which I admit was quite long and detailed). However, Jeremy is also a blogger, and has posted the entire interview on his site.

As a service to my readers, I've decided to post the entire interview here as well. Please feel free to add your comments.

The Moleskine Report, Part II
Continuing to add material that I could not include, or could not include much of, in my WSJ.com, piece (which comes out today), here's the second emailed reply that I thought might interest readers. It's from Mike Rohde, a graphic and web designer, working for the international engineering and web services firm MakaluMedia, and I include his reply in its entirety because it's very interesting:
I work remotely from home with colleagues in Germany, Spain, France and Ireland, helping design and building web applications, web sites for small & medium-sized firms and corporate identity work.

I manage projects with my colleagues and clients via email, IM chat, voice over IP, phone and web, from my home office. So as you can see I work pretty digitally during the day.

Personally I am quite digitally oriented as well, writing a weblog, reading many weblogs, using email, chat and VOIP with international friends. Specifically, I have text and VOIP chats with one friend living in the UK on a weekly basis via Apple iChat.

I was introduced to PCs and technology as a teen, when my dad explored his interest in computers. I now see this was critical to the way I work now, as my experimentation and use of computers then, reduced the fear of technology very early, and gave me the sense that I could bend technology to my needs.

My higher education was focused on graphic design. Following graduation, I spent 9 years as a print designer and system manager for a design studio, moving into web design in the late 90s. In 1998 I began working with MakaluMedia, remotely from my home office.

As you know I have an interest in sketching with Moleskines; I also use a Miquelrius sketchbook for generating ideas and layouts for my business activities, like design ideas, logo concepts and so on.

However, after some thought, I chose to use a digital approach for recording my business diary, which I have found works quite well. Further, I enjoy using paper diaries to record personal thoughts and observations, mainly because I enjoy the tactile feel of paper and pen.

So, I enjoy both digital and analog means of recording thoughts, depending upon the use and context. Hopefully that provides you with a good starting point about me and my approach. :-)

Here are my answers to the questions you have posed:

What do you use, exactly, in digital and paper terms?
How do you use them?

Digital:
-----------
1. Business Diary: I keep a business journal as a plain text document on my Mac Powerbook. There I record MakaluMedia related thoughts, web links and comments of clients and colleagues. I separate entries by date and archive each month's diary to dated plain text files (Makalu-Diary-2004-12.txt). The current month's diary is synchronized to my palmOne Tungsten E PDA via DataViz DocumentsToGo.

2. Project Specific Notes: These kept in DayLite, a networked Mac OS X business application very much like ACT! for PC. Notes relative to projects recorded in my business diary and emails are copied into DayLite as notes for access by myself and my MakaluMedia colleagues.

3. Business & Personal Links: I store interesting business and personal web bookmarks at my del.icio.us account and also in the Safari browser on my Mac.

4. Personal Blog: This is my public forum for thoughts, ideas, reflections, designs, sketches and whatever else seems pertinent to my personal and business life. I try to be encouraging, inspiring, humorous, serious here, but the entries are definitely for public consumption. I do share personal details but have an internal gut feel for where the line ought to be.

Because I built a reputation writing the Palm Tipsheet for many years (it was sold in '03), many of my longstanding blog readers are Palm users who came from that newsletter. I do like to discuss mobile tech, but intentionally explore other topics, because I think life is broader than technology.

5. Personal Notes & Sketches: I also occasionally write notes (Memo Pad) or make digital sketches (Note Pad) with my palmOne Tungsten E, which are then synchronized to my Mac Powerbook.

Paper (Analog):
--------------------
1. Business Concepts & Sketches: Stored in my Miquelrius gridded notebook. This is the place were I start ideas going, work out concepts (visual or textual) and sketch layouts for websites or logos. Often my sketches will be scanned and presented to clients and colleagues to show concepts or direction before I flesh out ideas on the computer.

2. Personal Sketches: Small Moleskine sketchbook for sketching (e.g. proj: exhibition sketchtoons), and a small Moleskine gridded notebook for ideas and concepts I come up with (e.g. ideas for home or personal projects, dream tech concepts, etc.).

3. Personal Diary: Small Italian-made notebook for recording thoughts of the day, reflections and goals. Usually I enter thoughts at night in bed, or at the café over coffee in this diary. Entries are not regular (daily) but rather entered when I have the need or urge to get something down.

(Note: I can provide scans from my paper sources if they are helpful)

Why still use paper?
Refuge & Escape from the Digital World. Paper is a refuge from my very digital lifestyle. I spend quite a bit of time on my Mac (at work and personally), so time with a nice pen, rich black ink or smooth pencil lead on crisp paper, are very much an escape from bits and pixels.

Immediacy. The immediacy of paper is very gratifying. I can knock out several concept sketches in the time it might take to fiddle around with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop on just one tight drawing. Further, immediacy and looseness of ink or pencil on paper lets me explore with more latitude. I find that once I move to the computer, my ideas naturally tighten up and loose their loose qualities.

No batteries required. I love that my sketchbooks require no battery or wall connection. If the power goes dead, I can still work with my sketchbook and pen. The simplicity of a book and pen keeps me from getting hung up on technical issues as often pop up carrying a laptop and peripherals to support it, or choosing which café has WiFi so I can remain connected.

Portability. When I need to be creative, I just grab my sketchbook and head for a local café or library -- the ideas just seem to flow. I also like that a sketchbook can be kept in a pocket at all times, without regard to cold or heat, or location. Sketchbooks can also take a beating better than techy gadgets. :-)

Any particular Eureka moment on using paper?
Probably about a year ago I started realizing that I was using sketches less that I had in the past for my business design work at MakaluMedia. I decided to focus on making sketching an integrated part of my work. Since integrating sketching I've noticed my creativity has improved greatly.

Are you alone, or does everyone you know follow the same practice?
As I work alone from my home office, I can only comment on my own methods directly, though the posts I have made related to use of paper sketchbooks and diaries have brought interesting comments from other digital folks who also integrate paper into their lives. Many are Moleskine fans like me, others feel that paper offers them options not easily available digitally.

Do you get odd looks for using paper?
Quite to the contrary — people who see my business or personal sketchbooks are always interested in having a look at them, and comment how they wish they could draw. I encourage them to give it a try, because a paper sketchbook or journal are just tools to get your mind working creatively.

Do you think paper and digital might merge, a la Logitech's io Pen, or is that the wrong way of looking at things?
I think there is an overlap. I have not used a Wacom tablet for some time, but am actually considering one now, to see what options it might offer me on the digital side of things. I do think there is a wide open market for digital tools which work in conjunction with analog sketching and notes, such as the IO pen. I would love to try the IO pen as well.

Thanks, Mike, for such a long and interesting answer.

Thank you Jeremy for the opportunity! :-)

So, if you happen to subscribe to WSJ.com or are have access to the Asian Wall Street Journal, have a look for Loose Wire by Jeremy Wagstaff. I'd love to hear about sightings and maybe see about having a copy of the paper shipped here.

January 6, 2005

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches (Pages 21-24)

The snow came last night, carpeting everything in sight with a thick blanket of white fluff. When I left for my weekly walk to the cafe, I'd have never guessed snow would move me to complete 4 more pages in the proj: exhibition sketchbook. What a nice surprise.

Here are 2 more snow-induced spreads (click to see larger versions):

Page 21 & 22: This spread was inspired by two things: the mini snowplow machine clearing the cafe parking lot, and Snow Patrol's Final Straw playing on my Tungsten E. As I watched the little tractor plowing happily, I had the urge to capture the moment. Fortunately my proj: exhibition Moleskine sketchbook was packed in my Cafe bag. Once I had the tractor on the page, the title came to me, along with my notes. (Time: about 20 min)

This sketch was made with my new Pilot Dr. Grip Gel pen (G2 0.7 cartridge), which I like very much. I've become accustomed to the feel of 0.5 tips, so the 0.7 seems a little clunky. Who would have thought 0.2mm would make much difference? Doggone picky artists! :-)

Page 23 & 24: On the next spread, I turned inward for subject matter. The first item down on the page were the Burr Grinder Robots, as they caught my eye as unusual shapes. This first item was followed buy Serious Hardware, That's It?! (Gulp), May I help Caffeinate You, Please?, Creamer Droids and Nutmeg Shaker.

It's quite odd for me to begin the page in the upper right corner, and I have no good reason for working right to left. All I can say is, when sketches start flowing, I try to roll wherever they take me. (Time: about 20 min)

24 Pages Done, 6 to Go!
I'm feeling very good about completing 30 pages by January 15th. One or two more good sessions, and I'll be good to go by the weekend.

I hope you've enjoyed the sketches. Please feel free to leave comments. :-)

December 31, 2004

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches (Pages 19-20)

Whoopie! This morning at Cranky Al's Donut Shop, I was fortunate to squeeze in two more pages in the proj: exhibition sketchbook before the clock strikes midnight. Here are the 2 new pages (click images to see larger versions):

Page 19: This is a sketch of my son Nathan, as he enjoys a double-chocolate donut with red, white and green sprinkles. He's at a colorfully painted small kid-sized table (very popular with the kids at cranky Al's). Surprisingly, Nathan sat still long enough for me to sketch his face and body before bouncing around the place on a sprinkle-induced sugar high.

Page 20: I always get a good laugh from this sign at Cranky Al's. It sits quietly on top of the donut counter, providing newcomers with a small dose of Cranky Al's brand of humor. This is the kind of sign you'd never, ever see at a Starbucks!

Sketchtoon Status: 2004
Having achieved 20 pages of sketchtoons already, I'm feeling very good about reaching my goal of 30 by January 15th. I'm finding that it's more a matter of sketching something interesting the moment the idea enters my mind. I must never let a great opportunity pass. Once ink is on a blank page, I'm committed to finishing, which happens pretty quickly.

Today, this idea reminded me of "The Decisive Moment", Henri Cartier Bresson's attitude toward photography. Cartier-Bresson always felt there were moments which appear and disappear in seconds, which a photographer (or artist) must be ready to capture.

Here is a quote from the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation website, explaining his approach to photography and the Decisive Moment:

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.
To take a photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in a face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.
To take a photograph means to recognize – simultaneously and within a fraction of a second– both the fact itself and the rigorous organisation of visually perceived forms that give it meaning.
It is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis.

As a fan of Cartier-Bresson's wonderful photography and now feeling the rush of capturing moments in sketches, I can more fully appreciate his point. To see Cartier-Bresson's work, visit Photology's Cartier-Bresson Gallery, The Washington Post Portrait Gallery Exhibit or The Peter Fetterman Gallery.

Until 2005...

December 30, 2004

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches (Pages 15-18)

Well, I've managed to get a few more spreads completed in my proj: exhibition sketchbook before the end of the year. It's a good feeling to keep the pages coming, now up to 18. I have only 12 more pages (6 spreads) to complete to reach my goal of 30 pages by January 15th. Maybe I can pull this off after all.

Following the format established with the previous scans, here are the 4 new pages for your review (click on an image to see a larger version):

Page 15 : This page is somewhat unusual for the sketchbook, as this imaginary lanscape came from my mind and not from an actual object. I'm not entirely sure where the idea came from, but I'm happy with the results. It's certainly not a realistic landscape — more of a dream landscape from a distant, ancient land (with no trees).

Page 16 : Here is a much more concrete drawing of my new square-toed dress shoes. I won't spoil the comments on the page itself in the notes, other than to say my wife Gail has a good eye for shoes. :-)

Page 17: Coffee seems to be a theme throughout the sketchbook, and page 17 is no exception. This sketch was made while sitting at a local cafe with my brother Steve on Christmas Eve day. Fort some reason the moka pot on pedestals caught my eye. Fortunately, I had my pen and Moleskine along.

Page 18: My Signs sketch was completed this morning while at the cafe. These highway signs which I see each Thursday morning caught my eye, making me aware of the visual noise I deal with each day.

An that's all for sketchtoons in 2004. I've been quite happy about comments from readers who are enjoying my 'toons as much as I enjoying creating them. Thanks for your encouraging words.

I wish you blessings, peace and prosperity for the year 2005. My heart goes out to the thousands effected by the asian tsunami. More than we fortunate ones, these people deserve God's extra portion of blessing, encouragement, hope and care in this difficult time.

December 16, 2004

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches (Pages 11-14)

Tonight I've completed another spread in my proj: exhibition sketchbook. Combined with a spread done a few days ago, I'm now on page 14 of the book. You may also view Pages 1 - 6 and Pages 7-10.

Below I've posted four more pages and related notes (click on an image to see a larger version):

Page 11 : Here I've created a set of individual pages: the first drawn on Saturday, while visiting Mayfair mall with my family. I sketched several unrelated items just for fun. I made the gentleman writer accidentally look like a midget... proportional error strikes again! ;-)

Page 12 : This is a sketch of my son's stuffed Roger Ribbett, built at the Build-A-Bear Workshop on his birthday. Roger was a gift from Nathan's aunt Darlene.

Page 13: I wanted to experiment a bit more on this spread, with minimalist sketches. Page 13 is a sketch of my blank Moleskine and G2 pen with comments about the blank page. Sometimes I fear the blank page, so the only cure is to shut the book or dive right in and draw or write. Lately I've chosen to dive in.

Page 14: This page started with a Lao-Tsu quote I love. I let the quote sit on the page a while, then added a bit of personal commentary on the lower right part of the page. I love this quote because it reminds me to remember the small things and take care of them now, rather than paying larger consequences later on. It's not always easy to do this, so the quote serves as a good challenge to my attitude.

Sketch Notes
Reader Rolf Gloor offered some excellent constructive criticism of my work so far, suggesting that I balance words and images and remember to leave some breathing space. It was excellent advice, which I'm gladly taking to heart.

I do hope you're enjoying the sketches. I'm hoping to get 30 pages completed by January 15th, so I have to keep moving here. Wish me luck! :-)

December 9, 2004

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches (Pages 7-10)

Wow, I'm really rolling on my proj: exhibition sketchbook! Last night and this morning I completed four more pages, and enjoyed every moment of it. If you haven't had a chance to see my first 6 pages, feel free to check them out. Four new pages and related notes are included below for your viewing pleasure (click on an image to see a larger version):

Pages 7 & 8: Decided to try a full spread, discussing my old reliable PowerBook Duo 230, which sits on the right side of my office desk. This wonderful little laptop is a pivotal piece of technology in my life, as it helped me meet many good friends online and to land my position at MakaluMedia. It traveled to Germany and Sweden with me. Beyond sentimental value, my love of using a modular computing devices came from experiences with the Duo system.

Pages 9 & 10: This was a new approach for a sketchtoon in this book — moving away from inanimate objects to people. This morning at my local café I sat and sketched the most interesting people I saw, making up commentary about each one. My biggest fear was being approached by one of the subjects to see my “scribbling” — fortunately none did.

Notes on Sketchtooning
Interestingly enough, I'm finding the act of diving in on a blank page of this notebook with a black gel pen a great challenge, because once I start sketching, I can't erase. This action requires a bit of confidence, and the ability to go with the flow of the drawing.

In fact, I'm intentionally avoiding planning out the page, letting it draw itself instead. Why? Because as a web and graphic designer I've been trained to organize and plan out my layouts. While this is fine for professional projects, I wanted to capture a more spontaneous look with these sketches — like a child draws as they feel — rather than following a well-organized plan. I've found the use of ink and non-planning of sketches very refreshing. :-)

Thanks to everyone who commented on the first 6 pages from the sketchbook, posted on Monday night! As with those sketches, I'd love to hear your comments.

December 6, 2004

Proj: Exhibition Moleskine Sketches

About a month ago, I participated in the Wandering Moleskine Project, adding one of my drawings to book number 3. Through that drawing, I was contacted by Patrick Ng, who runs the Moleskine Art website.

Patrick is hosting proj: exhibition, in his citysuper Hong Kong store (Times Square) in February and was looking for physical and digital pieces to show. He asked if I'd be willing to send a sketchbook with my sketchtoons to Hong Kong. Wow! I was flattered by the offer. After all, how often will I get the chance to display work in Hong Kong? :-)

Of course said yes to Patrick's kind proposal, then I bought a small Moleskine sketchbook. I've been sketching toward my mid-January deadline ever since. I have to tell you, I've found it a real blast doing this project! Patrick, thanks for the offer!!

As of today, I have 6 pages to share with you, my loyal weblog readers. I plan to have many more pages completed before the 15th of January (the day I must ship the book to Patrick). Still, this should give you an idea where I'm going.

Below are the 3 completed spreads, with some notes below each scan for some background on why I decided to draw and write about each subject (click the scan to see a larger version).

Page 1: This was the introductory page, something to introduce the viewer to Milwaukee, where I live. I sketched part of this page at the Milwaukee Christmas Parade, hence the light post and bandleader near the base of the page. I had a bit of fun pointing out some of the more unique bits of Milwaukee.

Page 2: Gail had the idea for “Milwaukee to Hong Kong”, which I completed on the right page. I found the two large Chinese characters on a poster, at a Linens and Things store. The small Chinese greeting was written by a friend of my friend Randy, who teaches at a local university. I thought it would be very cool to have a bit of Chinese in the book, since it will appear in Hong Kong. Funny thing is, I don't exactly know what the Chinese reads. :-)

Page 3: An introduction to my proj: exhibition sketchbook.

Page 4: My first page covers the popular and classic American baseball cap. The inspiration came from the beat up green cap which sits on my bedroom dresser.

Page 5: My ultra-large Starbucks mug, given to me by Andy Bauer was the subject on this page. I'd just finished a tasty home-made, sugar-free hot chocolate, when the idea hit me to sketch the cup and tell its story. Now I'm hankerin' for some hot chocolate — go figure! ;-)

Page 6: I didn't want my Ultra Mug story sit alone on the spread, so I finished with a sketch of my beat up but trustworthy MiGo stainless steel coffee mug. I drink my hot coffee from it every day, so it seemed natural to memorialize it in the sketchbook next to my Mega Mug.

That's all for now, but more will come. I may not post scans until after the book has been shipped, because there's only a month left and many pages to go. We'll see.

I'd love to hear your comments, so feel free to leave yours here.

December 3, 2004

MailDrop 2.0 Icon Story

MailDrop 2.0 Icon Okay everyone, time for a little horn-tooting PR for a “design the icon” contest I won on November 18th. I think the busyness of the season and Thanksgiving holiday threw me off, because I'd intended to mention this sooner. :-)

Anyway, Matt Henderson, the owner of MakaluMedia (the company I'm design director for), alerted me of an icon contest being offered at Erik Barzeski's NSLog weblog. Erik runs Freshly Squeezed Software, makers of various Mac OS X applications, including a Mail Merge app called MailDrop. It turns out that MailDrop is being updated to 2.0 and was in need of a new icon.

Well, I figured what the heck. While I have 15-some years of graphic design experience, I've never done a Mac OS X icon before. I thought this project could be fun, challenging and educational. Better yet, the icon concept they were looking for was somewhat cartoony, and hey, I love cartooning. So I took on the project.

Erik liked the direction in my sketches and rough icon ideas, so I proceeded with the icon project and ended up winning the contest. The final set of application icons are posted with this article. We're still in the process of finalizing the app's document icon.

My icon building process took a little time to sort out at first. I ended up working in Macromedia Fireworks, because I could use vector art, yet see immediately how my changes would appear in pixels. I also experimented with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but because of my daily use of Fireworks and its vector/pixel feature, it just suited me best.

Once I had a final icon, I exported a master PNG file with transparency. Then I opened the file with Photoshop 7 for conversion into icons using a handy Photoshop plugin from IconFactory, called IconBuilder. At $69 It's not cheap, however, for the time it saves doing icons, I can see its value. I love that IconBuilder has no use restrictions (other than a nag screen which appears after multiple uses), because this allowed me to fully test it out before we decide to purchase it.

If IconBuilder is a little too high for your budget, there are other free and shareware tools out there, like Icon Composer (included with the Xcode Tools on the OS X developer CD) or the $15 shareware tool, Iconographer.

Should an icon for OS X be in your future, check out these helpful Apple documents: Icon Genres and Families, Suggested Process for Creating Aqua Icons, and Tips for Designing Aqua Icons. Here's another useful reference: OS X Icon Tutorial from O'Reilly's MacDevCenter.

Overall, it was a great challenge, and indeed, very educational. In fact, it felt very good to dive into something I'd never done before!

Ok, here's my final PR spiel for this Friday: If you happen to need a little icon work or any other type of design work (web or print), please feel free to drop me a line. :-)

Have a great weekend!

November 13, 2004

Nathan's 2nd Birthday, Yay!

Today, our son Nathan turned 2 years old. Amazing. My wife and I just can't believe how quickly 2 years has flown past. I suppose parents with older kids will tell me it will only speed up, right? :-)

Anyway, we're about to start Nathan's big party, but before I do, I'd like to share a sketchtoon created in my small Moleskine sketchbook this morning, while we all enjoyed a birthday donut session at Cranky Al's Donut shop:

Breakfast Birthday @ Cranky Al's

Have a great weekend everyone — I know we will. :-)

Permalink | | Family | add to del.icio.us

November 11, 2004

Wandering Moleskine Sketchtoon

Click the image above to see a higher-resolution version

About a month ago, I was notified by Armand Frasco at Moleskinerie that he was kicking off something called the Wandering Moleskine Project. I was intrigued by the idea, so I immediately signed up to participate.

The idea behind this project is simple: send several large Moleskine sketchbooks around the world to participating Moleskinerie fans, allowing each to create something on a single page of the book. Upon completion, the work is scanned and submitted to the Moleskinerie staff, then the Moleskine is packed up and shipped to the next person.

WMP Book 3 A week and a half ago, I received Wandering Moleskine sketchbook number 3. The pages were completely unmarked and ready for my inaugural entry. Well, as it happens, my son Nathan managed to acquire the Moleskine and scribble on the title page! After my initial shock, I was actually pleased to see Nathan leaving his mark on the book for posterity sake. This morning I signed his work "Nathan Rohde, Age 2yrs" so it wouldn't go unnoticed. :-)

Since Nathan's entry, I struggled over what to do with my own entry. I briefly considered sketching a Milwaukee landmark, but due to limited time, this seemed impractical. So, the book remained un-marked until this morning.

While at the cafe this morning, I finally settled on an approach for my piece. Several friends have commented on the WorkPod Modular Computing Concept sketch I'd done this past January. It's somewhere between a concept sketch, a cartoon and a drawing, with notes integrated into the drawing itself. I love these types of sketches, and apparently others enjoy them as well. Maybe "sketchtoon" is an appropriate name?

So, I had the direction down, but wasn't sure what the subject ought to be. I realized a sketch of my surroundings at the cafe this morning might be fun to include, along with some little comments in the margins of the sketch.

Away I sketched — what a blast! I truly enjoyed feeling loose and relaxed as I scribbled and noted comments about each object and my surroundings. I think I need to do more environmental "sketchtoons" like this. :-)

Now it's time to submit my sketch to Moleskinerie and send away the WMP book 3 to the next person in line. I can't wait to see what others do as the project progresses across the globe!

Many thanks to Armand Frasco, Joy Rothke and all those involved with the Wandering Moleskine Project. Special thanks to Veerle Pieters, who's music selection of Zero 7 - Ben Watt Remix helped power my sketchtoon session this morning.

September 3, 2004

Moleskinerie featured on BrandChannel.com

This evening, my friend Armand Frasco, IM'ed me to mention that his Moleskine weblog, Moleskinerie, was just featured in the branding website, BrandChannel.com!

A nice snippet from the article:

One measure of the strength of a brand is by the amount of fervor that it inspires among its devotees. “I love my Moleskines, and you can have them when you pry them from my cold dead hands,” says one anonymous contributor to the blog, moleskinerie.com, which is “dedicated to the proposition that not all notebooks are created equal.”
Armando B. Frasco, a “photo/documentarist” and graphic designer in Chicago, Illinois, started moleskinerie.com on a whim in January 2004, after doing a Google search to see whether there were any other people as “crazy” about the “little black book” as he was (today, searching on “Moleskine” nets 54,900 results, and Frasco’s results were probably no less astounding).

Asked why he thinks people are so fond of Moleskine notebooks, Frasco says, “I believe it has something to do with the provenance of Moleskine. Using the same notebook that Chatwin, Matisse, Hemingway, et al., supposedly used somehow lends cachet to one's notebook.”

What a great thing, seeing the effort Armand has poured into his weblog, starting to pay off. I know how hard he's worked on the site, starting it out and maintaining it on his own dime, working hard to find interesting stories to post, and searching out famous and non-famous Moleskine users from all walks of life.

Congratulations are in order to Armand and all of the volunteers over at Moleskinerie who are now enjoying the fruits of their efforts.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

April 14, 2004

More Iggy

I've now located samples of the MATC Times with a bunch of WIld Man Iggy cartoons in them. I've had a few requests to post more of Iggy, so I'll try and scan these in here and there to break up the text posts. :-)

Wild Man Iggy - Lawn Signs

April 12, 2004

Wild Man Iggy

This weekend Gail and I were doing spring cleaning in the basement, which turned up all sorts of interesting tidbits. The process (which is hard to start, but infectious once you get going) included cleaning up, looking through old boxes of stuff then and sorting what to keep, throw, donate or sell off.

One of the things I turned up in my processing was Wild Man Iggy, a comic strip I used to draw for the college newspaper, The MATC Times, where I served as the graphic editor for 2 years. Generally Iggy strips were observations or funny occurrences to cheer up the students of Milwaukee Area Technical College.

Below you can see one of the strips I found a box yesterday:

Wild Man Iggy: 6 Dumbest Ideas

(BTW, that slogan on Iggy's t-shirt, "Fight Back with David Horowitz" refers to an 80's consumer advocacy TV show)

Wow! I'd forgotten all about Wild Man Iggy strips, so this unearthing of the wild man was a very nice surprise. In the strip above, I had Iggy talk about some of the dumbest things in the world, like Burger King Bagels with only pork choices for meat, fashionable but useless shirt-back loops and Old Spice marketing slogans of the late 80s.

My days on the MATC Times were great fun. I recall running to the typesetting department to get our text for layouts, many late nights helping lay out the paper, and drawing cartoons and developing graphics for each issue. It was an all student volunteer staff (except for our adviser) which offered students a chance to see what it was like to publish a bi-weekly paper and experience the newsroom atmosphere between classes.

Anyway, now that I've found this old Iggy strip, I'll be keeping an eye out for others, and will scan and post them here on the blog, just for the fun of it. :-)

January 22, 2004

A Little Cafe Sketch

This morning I took my little sketchbook along to the local Caribou Coffee and did a little sketch to try out the Pilot G2 Gel pen I'd bought this week. Thought y'all might enjoy a peek.

I'm still getting used to this new G2 gel ink pen (recommended by Mike Shea). Because it's a rollerball pen, it takes a moment for the ink to draw out on the paper. I'm much more accustomed to a felt tip or fountain pen, which both get ink on paper immediately. Still, I like that the G2's gel ink is permanent and very dense. I think it will just take a week or so to adapt to the way this pen's nib flows.

This sketch was fun to do, because it was a challenge to try and capture the morning sun falling on the fireplace in the center of the cafe. I'm still feeling that my hand is somewhat stiff when doing pen drawing, something else that will just take time to work through. Sketching is the answer for that, I think.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the sketch. More will appear here as I choose sketches that are worth posting in public. ;-)