Category: Design

Experimenting and trying new things

Ever since I started learning calligraphy by myself I never really thought of it in such a large way. Because when you start teaching yourself something you begin to do it out of love. Then further down the road you start to realize what it can become. I have built a good following on instagram and made some good friends as well there.

One person recently told me to make a quote I did recently into a shirt. I was thinking “Josten why did you not already do this!”. My thoughts are I’m doing something for free to help inspire others as well as showing my commitment.

Here is how one of the shirts is going to be printed

 

There is a lot of hand lettering online and everywhere you can imagine. There is also some that is pristine and almost does not look hand done and I tend to always want to keep that aspect of my calligraphy work. Therefore showing the little imperfection brings out the human aspect of it and a more organic feel.

Some other things I have been trying to do a bit more was to test out incorporating a hand lettered aspect of a logo. Since I’ve been doing calligraphy for over a year everyday why the hell not?

Here is one recent project that I started

 

The project is going to be based off of people who Ride the Rails. If you are not familiar with the term its people who ride freight trains. I’m debating whether or not to base it off of a beer company or clothing. But more or less its a fun project. Still have to clean things up a bit with it.

Printed calligraphy posters

I over the past week decided to print a couple versions of my calligraphy work that I done with a brush pen. The chase the vision I did that with Tombow brush pens and the wolf poster I used a pentel brush pen.  These are vectored versions of the original work.

The reason I decided to vector my calligraphy work is mainly because I just felt it was starting to go to waste and I needed to get it out there and share it. Also I will improve my photoshop/illustrator skills in the meantime.

These posters are hanging in my bedroom office to inspire and remind me to focus. Believe it or not there is a great feeling when you have your own work hanging in your office.

Continued movement and still going strong

 

One thing that I am so proud of is that I am still going strong throughout all of the trials and tribulations I’ve endured. I’m pretty sure that you’ve been through some and you may be going through them right now. Well you have to keep at it and make it through them.

Because on the other side of the situation is what we all want to have. You have to continue moving forward meaning do not give up. I’ve experienced people who were so ignorant and no supportive of my goals. Well I know that I should not expect anyone to be supportive of my goals because they are my goals.

So therefore I should not expect them to be supportive. When this is a present situation that you can see right in front of yourself do not get out of character. Just keep your head down and focus on what you set to accomplish from the beginning. You may have experienced when you are out for a jog and your body just turns on a switch where your legs are just moving with ease.

This is the same way your mind can work. Because at first when you are just starting out running it will be hard and you’ll want to quit right away. Having the Mental capacity to be able to defeat the voice in your head that tells you stop wasting energy and just sit and wish for things to get better.

Continue moving and Keep going strong.

Jacobs Garage

This was a self initiated project of a re-branding of a family own mechanic shop. I thought to myself what are some ways that I could keep the family aspect of the branding and modernize the branding a bit. The things I took into consideration were from the research I did how the logos for auto mechanics are very easy and straight to the point.

I chose to go for an oil drop since oil is one of the major things a car needs to be able to run. Therefore its the lifeblood of the car.

 

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The main logo for Jacobs Garage 

 

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I chose to show the logo in two variations to show the depth of how the oil drop is able to work being positioned in either location.

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For the uniform shirts I decided to go with the color grey because using a lighter color seemed to be a more comfortable fit. Also it would be a shirt for more than just the mechanics to wear.

 

Avoiding being scammed as a designer

So not long ago I was contacted for a project. The person whom pretended to be a serious client was indeed not. So after conversing with the person I was convinced.  Then I worked up a quote for them. After they told me the brief about the work they needed. Well I’m sure about needing more so pretending.

So I for one going by the rule of %50 payment up front. The person did not use paypal they strictly wanted to only do check. Then the person sent more than what I quoted. Another thing was after they told me to deposit the remaining half into some account.

Which I told them I am not going to do that. Before you think so you did work for free. No I did not do anything and the client did not sign the contract. If you ever have a client and they are hesitant to sign a contract then you may want to be a little suspicious.

A contract is a way to weed out those whom are serious and or not. Now let’s get back to the check. So to sum it up the person wanted to know when I was going to deposit the check. If I deposited the check and took out the money I would’ve gotten charged for it. Therefore they are getting money for free and work.

From now on I’m only accepting paypal and no checks ever. Well checks only in person. Just remember to be careful and to never ever do any work without getting paid at least %50 upfront.

 

Pixel Albums from Chris J Davies

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Recently I was contacted about some very interesting work from Chris J Davis. The style and approach to taking away as much as possible from an album cover but keeping it legible. The other thing that I enjoyed about this was learning that Chris used a certain type of code to achieve these effects.

I for one had no idea such a thing even existed to achieve such an effect. The only other place I thought you could do this was in photoshop or illustrator. Below here is another album cover from Chris. Also there is many many possibilities I could see this working as. Even for a poster design and having a certain effect when you pass by and even pasted on the street for the concert. It would be nice to see how this would turn out when they get printed.

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Check out the rest of the collection here

 

 

Jobs don’t have futures people do

We get so caught up in our job and then we tend to believe that it will lead us to our future. When actuality that is the not the truth. We think time and time again our job is our future. Well more or less that used to be the case with a lot of people.

But now times are different we as a world are smarter and have more access to each other than before. You create your future whether you believe it or not. Of course society tends to put upon us to do the norm which is go to school and then college, get into debt with student loans find a job and pay them back (hopefully) and well you know the rest.

Do your best to follow your heart and not let others silence you and crush your dreams. Whether you believe it or not you are capable as much as you believe you are. When you feel like giving up keep your believe in yourself to do whatever it takes to get to where you can see yourself.

Remember you get what you expect out of your life and what you deserve