Fond: Foundations for Creative Cooking

I’ve published a book! My last project that has devoured my time and energy was a collection of recipes presented in a book that I designed and shot all the photography for. I published it through the print-on-demand self-publishing company, Lulu.

A fond (pronounced “fawn”) in French cuisine refers to the little browned bits left in the pan after meat is cooked. These brown bits are deglazed from the pan (usually with wine) to create the base of many different sauces. I felt this to be an appropriate title for the project as I hoped to create a solid foundation for many different styles of cooking.

I set out to create a comprehensive introductory guide to the world of cooking for young adults who have no idea where to start in the kitchen. However, as I began working and time became a factor, I realized that this idea, while solid, was simply over-ambitious for the amount of time I had to complete the project. Therefore, I decided to do the recipe section only, while still sticking within my established design motif so that I might be able to revisit the project at a later date when time is more leisurely.

I filled it with all original photography of featured ingredients for each dish. This was also a decision affected by time as well as money. It would have simply been too expensive and too time-consuming to cook and photograph each of the recipes featured. It was far cheaper and more efficient to photograph one or two ingredients at a time. I also feel that this is more interesting as most recipe books feature photographs of the full dish. Cooking is a personal experience, and while it is true that we indeed eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths, the look of these dishes is dependent on many unseen factors (i.e. the kind of ingredients, the quality of the cookware, or the cook herself).

While I was not able to complete the exact project I set out to do, I am still very happy with the way the final product turned out. If you want to see the whole book, you’ll just have to buy it. But here’s my cover (front, back and spine) and a few spreads to whet your appetite (pun absolutely intended):

Web in the Wild logo

Logo design was a totally new venture for me. This was the first logo I’ve ever designed, and it was frustrating to flounder through a new process. To be fair, the process was familiar (in terms of thumbnails, sketches, rough drafts, etc) but it was a whole new way of thinking for me. I am used to having a whole canvas through which to convey information; having to think about how to pack information into a single logo (and whether that was even the best idea) was totally new for me.

Web in the Wild is a fictional conference for both professionals and students in the field of web design, and offers three different tracks: design, development and education. My initial thought was to give a pictorial representation of the three tracks, but it was difficult to pull off without looking either too girly or too “green.” I finally came up with an image that I felt was strong. I developed the image out of the typeface that I used, but it was so strong that it clashed with my type. I had two strong elements fighting to coexist.

After a long and frustrating process, I finally ended up with a type-based logo, much like the logos of existing conferences. I am happy with my final result, and plan to use the image I created elsewhere in the brand as sort of a secondary logo (or at least a very prominent design element).

Psychogeographic Map Inspiration

In this new typography experiment, we’re making psychogeographic maps. We’ll drift away from our comfortable routine and map our experience in a typographically-focused way. I struggled for a while with the idea, not sure what I would do. Then, with the help of some great suggestions from classmates, I figured it out.

I get really uncomfortable really quickly when it’s quiet. Actually, it’s quite stronger than that. I’m downright terrified of silence. It forces me into my own head, which scares me. I daydream all the time, and I am already very much absorbed in my own imagination all the time. But I always have something else going on; there’s music playing, the TV’s on, I’m with other people or in a public space, etc. The sheer idea of robbing myself of outside stimulation for a period of time and being left with my own imagination is really terrifying. So I’m doing it.

I’m still not sure exactly what format the final output will be in, but I think I’ll let that come of the experience. I really don’t know what it’s going to be like, so I don’t yet know what it should look like.

Here’s a little bit of my inspiration. These are both physical as well as emotional and neurological maps. I’m playing with the idea of finding a way to melt an emotional map of my experience into a physical map of a space. Not sure yet.

Coding and Printing: Medium, Tubatomic and Williams

Yesterday was a whirlwind of information and I loved every second of it. We started our morning learning a handful of CSS and html from Noah Burney and Stephen Bush from Medium and Jason Fritz from Tubatomic. They gave us some basic code and walked us through it in Text Wrangler. We then played with writing some code and experimenting with CSS. It was a really fantastic exercise and I learned some great new things, but also found that I already knew a lot more code than I realized. Coding was a lot more fun than I expected it to be; it’s like learning a foreign language and I really enjoyed being able to see my output immediately. I’m all about the immediate gratification. Here’s a look at a little bit of what we did:

If you can read that, you can see that our output was hilariously cheesy.

We then headed off to Williams Visual Solutions where, after missing a couple of turns, were welcomed by an incredibly friendly staff who were more than happy to show us around. We were led through the maze of printing awesomeness by Bubba Williams(the company’s namesake) and David Smith, the director of business development. There was so much to see, we ended up having to cut the tour a little short. I’ll admit, it may have been our fault for asking so many questions about the super-impressive HP Indigo Press 5000.

We may or may not have spent a lot of our time in there being crazy impressed and interested. At 70 sheets a minute, the Indigo is considerably slower than their offset printer (which prints a few thousand per minute), but allows a lot more control as it takes variable data, allowing minor changes to be made without having to send the whole file back to the design department. Really cool.
Also really cool, the awesome people at Williams had a sneaky group shot of us gawking at the Indigo printed and ready for us as a parting gift by the time we left.
All photos courtesy of TJ Bowman.

Times Free Press Tour

Thursday we got to tour the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which was amazing. Frank Anthony, the VP of operations, gave us our tour. The building was built with beautiful, blue collar architecture with exposed supports and double-layered maple hardwood flooring to handle the weight of machines. We went by the museum (or “newseum” as they called it) first, and saw some amazing old printing presses and a linotype machine. We toured the offices and then came to the big momma…the printing room. The presses weren’t running, so we were able to hear everything our gracious host was telling us, which was nice. This also afforded us the opportunity to walk around and underneath the machines, seeing up close exactly how they work. The giant vats of ink were fantastic, and I firmly believe we should invest in the same for the Epson printer at school. I don’t know where we’d store them, and I don’t care. Let’s just make that happen. The tour was fantastic and I really appreciated how lively and welcoming Frank and the rest of the staff were. Austin and TJ took quite a bunch of pictures, and here are some of my favorites:

Medium and Allegra (Class two without Leslie)

Tuesday we got to hear from Josiah Roe and Becca Reese from Medium. Josiah gave a presentation on web design process and had some really insightful advice for functional and effective web design. It was fantastic to hear from them both, and I really appreciate them coming out. Thanks, Josiah and Becca!

We then used our break to go, as a class, to Wally’s to rock some serious breakfast action before heading over to Allegra Print and Imaging. It was a really great experience; Todd Oates was fantastic and showed us how they do everything in the shop from design work to printing, die cutting, binding and laminating. I had no idea that my friend Andy worked there, and it was a pleasant surprise to see him. They gave us a lot of amazing schwag, including a water bottle, personalized stickers and personalized pads of stationary. By far my favorite part of the whole trip was the press room, though. The process was fascinating and actually watching the machines work was enchanting. I want to go back so badly just to spend more time in that room. Thanks so much, Allegra, I really appreciated how welcoming, gracious and engaging you guys were!

Update: Layers Magazine contest

I got the following email from Layers Magazine earlier this evening:

I won! Goldbrick will be featured on the back cover of the Nov/Dec issue of Layers Magazine!! Here’s one more look at the (now) award-winning poster:

Check out my process here.

Thanks to everyone who gave me great feedback and helped me get this poster polished. I love you, graphic design crew! I couldn’t have done this without you.

Tubatomic and Medium (day 1)

While our benevolent captain Leslie is off in the land of kangaroos making web design awesomeness, she has left us in the very capable hands of some industry professionals from Medium and Tubatomic. Today, we got the opportunity to learn from George Bairaktaris and Alex Ogle from Tubatomic and Mat Turner from Medium. They talked a lot about why they do what they do and what drew them to their respective fields. We spoke about the basic principles of web design and how to talk to clients.

My favorite things that were said:

“Be motivated to keep learning; the field is constantly changing. Not only that, but be motivated to be flexible, because clients are always changing their minds” – George

“Don’t get discouraged when you don’t know a lot, because that little bit of knowledge you have might be something that someone with ten years of experience may not know.” – Alex

“When you’ve looked at something for two weeks straight, of course you’re going to hate it. But don’t throw it out. The client hasn’t seen it yet, and what you hate, someone else will love. Trust yourself, and trust your talent.” – Mat

We were talking about how great it is that the internet affords us this medium through which we can instantly get stuff out to the rest of the world. We could go home tonight, shoot a cool video, upload it to YouTube and by tomorrow half the world’s seen it. Or, we could develop the newest social media craze, which we started working on here:

It’s called Gadzoooo-k’z. Go ahead and get your profile together. Next big thing.

Also, George and Mat drew this cat:


He’ll likely be our mascot. Amazing.

Submission to Layers Magazine

Layers Magazine held a contest a couple of weeks ago for the back page of their next issue. We were to create a movie poster, the main image of which was to be composed of type. They referenced a tutorial that is no longer publicly available to inspire us. We were also offered the ever-popular Helbotica as an alternative method. I chose to keep my main image photographic in nature, and used some of my own photography in the process.

It’s so incredibly rare for an initial idea to be a strong one that I literally never expect it. 99.99% of the time, you will have to work through the crap ideas to finally land on something solid. However, upon first reading the brief, I immediately pictured a young man composed (perhaps unfairly) of the word “slacker.” I remembered my friend Ashley from Nashville who used to always say that language constructs reality. This is an idea from Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and I really believe that it’s true. I felt like this concept was really strong right off the bat, which really surprised me. I didn’t stop to question it, though, and just ran with it.

I even knew immediately what photo I wanted to use. I did some press photo work for my friendWalter Trammell over the summer, and one of the photos from his shoot was perfect for what I wanted to accomplish.

Through the process of applying text to the image, I decided to have the figure degenerate into the label, instead of being composed entirely of it. I even applied a gradient overlay (stop moaning, it worked) to his body for an added sense of depth.

I landed on the title, Goldbrick, by using one of my favorite tools: a thesaurus. By definition, a goldbrick is a term used to describe anything that has supposed value but turns out to actually be worthless; much like a plain red brick painted gold to look like the real article. Using this term as the title afforded me some intellectual depth; this seemed to be a plausible story with a potential irony. I wanted to create a poster for a movie that could actually be written.

I also wanted the poster to feel as though it belonged hanging in a movie theater lobby, which led me to search for a “movie poster credits” font. I got incredibly lucky and found this great, free font that was exactly what I was looking for. It’s called SteelTongs and it served it’s purpose beautifully. I made sure to immediately share it on Basecamp with my fellow students, as it was a great resource.

Here’s the final product. I’m really happy with it. I spent about the last two hours of time just trying to resolve the tagline. Drew told me I was fussing too much and needed to just let it go, so that’s exactly what I did. Like I said, I’m really happy with the final outcome.

DIY Summit!

Last Thursday my classmates and I were lucky enough to have been granted access to a room for the DIY Summit, an awesome virtual conference with some really great masters of DIY.

We kicked things off with Matt Harris, who explained how and why to use WordPress for content management. I remember meeting him when Cindy Li came last April to talk about social networking at Create Here. Matt had some great things to say about WordPress and it’s capabilities not only as a blog-hosting service, but a web-content management system. Matt does fantastic work and has an extensive knowledge of web development. He also has a nifty Southern English accent and brands himself as “the matt harris” (sounds familiar!).

Next up on the docket was the brilliant, (once) blue-haired programming guru, Kevin Lawver. I’ll admit, I was just as lost as I thought I would be listening to him speak. But in a way, that was a good thing; it only lead me to respect his knowledge so much more. He did have some great suggestions for beginners wanting to get started in the world of programming, and reccomended The Pragmatic Programmer as a great book to start the geeky fire burning.
I often get stuck in my creative process. Sometimes it’s in the concept, sometimes in the execution, and sometimes it’s even in the mere completion of a project. Kelly Goto had some really inspiring things to share about workflow and how to get “unstuck.” She laid out a few fundamentals of overcoming that stuck feeling:
• Vision and purpose
• Support and buy-in
• Knowledge and ability
• Collaboration and synergy
• Tools and framework
• Attitude and fearlessness
• Progress and results
She also discussed the theory of yoyu, which is the time between things. She offered it as a time to think, and be in a productive flow.

Mark Trammell & Juliette Melton gave a joint presentation on effective design research, which proved to be really useful. They focused on gaining perspective on the user experience to create a more efficient and effective product; namely, through user surveys. The best advice I’ve ever received on the topic came from Mark: “If I can’t read a user survey in one breath, it’s too long.”

Carla and I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Rubin at the August WERock Summit, and I was so excited to hear him speak about interface design. He had some really fantastically illustrated points in consistency, and compared the websites CNN and Fox News as examples. Everything in a design needs to be relative and consistent. Grids are your best friend, but you don’t always have to obey them. Set them up as a guide, but don’t be afraid to break a box every now and then in a resolved way to create some visual texture. Speaking of texture, being mindful of details in web design to make a page look more tactile will subconsciously give the viewer a sense of personality. Dan also handled his time crunch gracefully, choosing to not skip any content while making his points in record time. Kudos.

Lea Alcantara gave a fantastic presentation on the Art of Self-Branding, which is a specialty of hers. She had some unconventional but totally wise advice on getting yourself out there as a designer. She told us that we are not unique and should not wait to be discovered. It is our job to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the pack and appeal to a niche instead of trying to cast the widest net. She offered us the 5 aspects of a successful brand:
• Relevance
• Creative design brand identity
• Message communication
• Understanding of consumer target
• Consistency
Consistency is key, and your brand should be a representation of you; your entire personality, unapologetically, for that is what allows you to appeal to a niche that will be a great fit for you, instead of being stuck with clients you don’t want or like.

I got a lot of really valuable information and advice from the DIY Summit, and I would just like to take a minute to thank everyone who spoke, Leslie Jensen-Inman for giving us this opportunity and especially Environments for Humans for putting the whole thing on. Thanks so much everyone! It was truly a worthwhile and valuable experience!