Different Fur

Had a gig recently, designing a new logo/brand identity for Different Fur, a recording studio that has been tucked away in a nondescript residential-looking space along 19th Street for something like 40 years.  Patrick, the owner (who worked his way up from assistant studio hand), showed me a bunch of examples of styles he liked, some of which he'd pulled out of the New Bohemia Signs Flickr set.  He pointed out an old logo of theirs they liked (which you can see atop their website/blog, at least for the time being), but wanted to update, while still keeping something of its deco style.  He wanted it to communicate "establishment", the fact that they've been there a long time, and aren't going away.  Maybe a little monumental.  "Not a hobby", at any rate. I wrote "nondescript" above, but I remember, some years ago, and for I dunno how many years prior, the front door of their white building was emblazoned with a giant stylized barking dog's head.  They preferred not to directly reference fur and/or animals anymore.

I did some sketches:

I played around a bit with their old logo, and digitizing some of the sketch ideas:

Meh.

I came up with a letter style I liked, and tried a few permutations of that:

We met again, for dinner, and talked a bit more in depth, Patrick flipping through my sketch book.  We talked about how he'd also like to have a monogram version of the logo, and how he was envisioning some kind of geometric shape involved, maybe a diamond.  I played around with that a bit, and sent him these:

But he'd also seen this sketch I'd done for St. Cyprian's church, a few months back, and was curious to see something in a script style:

So, I drew these, after flipping through that Steven Heller book I'd recently bought, on mid-century modern storefront design:

And that last one was a hit! Which, frankly, I found exciting, 'cause I based it 'round this design I did, almost a decade ago, and loved, for a storefront that's unfortunately no longer around:

The other day, I was flipping through a stack of old Kodak prints, looking for a picture of another old sign we'd done, for reference on a different job, and came across this tattered old shot of me painting that sign:

I remember carving a linoleum block from that image, thinking I might block print advertising postcards, but carving the block was about as far as my advertising head of steam got me:

Print your own!

Anyway, back to the matter at hand:  I refined my sketch of that last design, scanned it in, and started letter building:

And, bingo, bang-o, long story short, I slapped together some variations, they picked some, and we're done!

I used an existing font for "studios", Union Thug, from Letterhead.

Next, we'll be working on a sign based on this, with some gilding involved.  They're having a kind of "coming out" party, next month, once they're (mostly) done remodeling the place, so we needed to have this bit ready for printing invitations and press materials.  Voila!

Journey to the End of the South Bay

The following pictures are taken from a day trip that I made two weeks ago to Santa Cruz. Though it was a weekday, and there wasn't a soul out nor a ride operating at the boardwalk I was able to have a great time soaking in some of the sign work that this beach community has to offer.  Below are a few examples.

"This way to the beach" ...and the rest of the blog post...

The window facing the sun has seen a few too many winters.  However this gem is still holding strong.

The Sky Glider!

Neptune's Kingdom: A favorite of mine for as long as I can remember.

Grandma had nothing but nice things to say that day.

This ghostie was a silk screened sign.

Speaking of ghosts... We all concluded our day trip with a self-guided tour around the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.  Here's the painted sign to prove it. If you haven't gone, I highly suggest it.  Just doing the FREE self-guided garden tour is incredible.

Which way to the loo?

I guess it's been a couple months ago now, since we gilded and painted these signs for the restrooms in the entry hallway to Foreign Cinema.  One of the head honchos there, Gayle (who also runs Showdogs, for whom we did some signs at about the same time), invited me over to check out the space.  We flipped through some reference books, and she plied me with... oh, I think it may have been scallops and squid, I dunno--and some cocktails from their skilled mixologists (which, no doubt, have impaired my memory of the appetizer).

While she and the staff pondered exactly what terminology they wanted to use on the signs (like, obviously they should just change over to all seafood, and go with "buoys" and "gulls"), I came up with a few design sketches:

As you can see up top, they chose something akin to the first sketch, and opted to go with neither women, men, buoys or gulls.  Had I known about it then, I might have referred Gayle to this online exploration of the semiotics of toilet signs (or this collection of "coolest" toilet signs), although those may have served no more use than my buoys and gulls suggestion.  Nonetheless, I hope, for all our sake, they have one of these alongside the urinals.

So you need a typeface?

Scott's putting together a FAQ page for our website, to help folks organize their thoughts and questions when shopping for a sign from us.  We don't generally deal much with letter styles at the earliest stages of bidding.  Used to be, not so long ago, I made most of the design decisions, after maybe a few simple questions: Serifs or no?  Gothic or Roman (that is, single stroke or thick 'n' thin)?  Casual?  Script? That sort of thing still happens, when customers want a sign that looks hand painted by dint of having been designed with the brush in mind (as opposed to "looks hand painted when you stand really close, and maybe run your fingers over the letters' edges").  However, as we settle ever deeper into our digital age, folk are tending to get much more choosy with the plethora of letter styles available to them.

Be that as it may, I don't think this chart will be very useful for our FAQ page, but it's funny (and maybe we'll buy a poster, just to have on hand):

It has a good bit of fun with Comic Sans, which, really, you should be careful with, because you wouldn't like Comic Sans when it's mad.  Or maybe you would.

(via BoingBoing)

And yet MORE Levi's

I didn't realize, when we were lettering windows at Levi's last month, that we were gonna be replacing those letters with new ones this month. I hope they keep going forth with the current ad campaign, if it means a regular gig. Regular gigs are nice.

Yesterday, besides Ken doing these letters, we sent Aaron out to the Levi's print shop, to help remove the big Levi's sign can we painted in July. Apparently, it's moving to another location, in another city.

Recent visitors

Yesterday, Pete Kimack dropped by, as he does occasionally.

There he is, on an earlier visit, meeting Steve Karbo (New Bohemia's founder) and showing the inspiration for a painting he was working on at the time.  Yesterday, he was on his way to ePress Books, across the street, to check on a re-print of his 2nd volume of Lines Unlimited: A Coloring Book for All Ages.  He brought along Roger, owner of Universal Signs, for whom (and for whose father) he used to work, on occasion.

I tried to get some handle on the layout of the billboard biz, from Roger, but didn't get the chance to conduct any sort of lengthy interview.  He says he occasionally gets to paint a billboard, but that only comes up rarely anymore.  They don't even print the billboards at Universal: they just hang 'em.  The client (say, Nike), might contact the billboard owner (say, CBS Outdoor Media), who might hook them up with a printer, and then Universal would be subcontracted to hang the art the printer produces.  Roger says that even when they were doing a lot of billboard painting, in the past, it was never the case that billboard painters were ever tasked with designing the things.

I guess that's kinda the same way it's working out in NYC with Colossal Media.  I mean, I dunno, except for in that Dewar's campaign, wherein, I guess, the designs came from Shepard Fairey.

*********

Anyhoo, we also had a visit, last Friday afternoon, from Annica Lyndenburg, the skills behind Dirty Bandits, a NY-based design and illustration biz.  We immediately hit her up for a set of her pick-up line business cards:

She was also kind enough to leave us a few ex-boyfriend postcards, which we are encouraged to re-gift to some less-agreeable ex-clients... (resisting urge to embed hyperlink here).  She says she might like to get away from New York on occasion, and take a holiday huffing 1Shot fumes.  I think we can accommodate.