karenkavett.com / blog

Nerdfighter Buttons

2010-08-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

Back in June, Alan asked a bunch of artists to design some buttons for the new DFTBA button pack, which is still yet to released. I figured I would post mine here before I completely forget I had designed them, which tends to happen with projects that aren't released to the public right away. Let me know which ones you might want as actual buttons in the comments and maybe someday they'll be made!

Steampunk Bubble Gun

2010-08-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

I always mean to make blog posts about the videos I post, and then just kind of forget. But this one is happening, even if it's a week late. First, check out the video of me painting a steampunk bubble gun, and then read on for a bit more behind-the-scenes info.

I got the bubble gun from my friend Robyn after the Times Square bubble battle, since she didn't want it anymore. While it was cute as is, I thought it would be even more awesome if it was painted to be steampunk. As you can see from the video, I first sanded the plastic a bit so the paint would stick better and then put on a white base coat. It would probably have looked neater if I had used spray paint instead of acrylic, but I didn't have spray paint and acrylic is a lot easier to do quickly. Then I just kind of went crazy on it with the brown and blue paint, which I then went over with gold to look a bit more aged. I thought the whole thing was looking a bit grimy overall, so then I decided to make the little doodads that I glued on bright white to add a bit of contrast. It was tough getting the cartoon head to not look so cutesy, and I probably should have done what one commenter suggested and used modeling clay to alter the shape of the head to begin with. But I did the best I could for my first time trying this style, especially in the only about five hours it took.

When it came to making the video, I knew even before I started that I wanted it to be set to Joseph Birdsong's song Hologram, mostly because I've been obsessed with it since I first heard it a few weeks ago. The outfit I wore at the end of the video is one I just kind of put together in about fifteen minutes before I left to film it. The shirt I got from a vintage clothing store in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, and the skirt is actually a dress that I picked up from a free stuff pile at the end of my sophomore year of college. I got the bow headband at Forever 21 and the tights for $2 from Urban Outfitters. I had brought black heels with me to put on, but I thought the grass was long enough that you couldn't tell I was still wearing my Converses, but I was wrong and that ended up being the main thing I wish I could have changed about the video. But I think it came out really nicely overall, and let me know if you agree!

MoMA Photography

2010-07-27T18:45:00.000-07:00

On Sunday the 25th, my friend Bin and I decided to get our art on and visit the Museum of Modern Art. It was fun, and I took a ton of photos, which you no doubt can see below.

There was an amazing typography exhibit which is going to be taken down this week (which is why we went on the day we did). So many of those posters I've cited as inspiration throughout my time at RISD, so it was amazing to see them in real life. I didn't want to leave, but there was more art to see.

I love the room showcasing useful objects as art. So many of them are incredibly beautiful.

You could just see some of the typography posters through a window. And it's the MoMA, so of course the architecture is amazing.

This artist named George Maciunas kept the boxes of all his household objects for an entire year. The display was beautiful and a bit disturbing at the same time as we see just how much stuff each of us consumes.

I didn't really understand the video piece happening here, but the camera was absolutely beautiful.

You guys know me - I can never resist huge typography.

The bale of hay in the middle of this room smelled so good. I loved watching all these different types of people walk by it, then do a double take and lean in closer to smell it.

I didn't get the artist's name, but the way these ads were manipulated is hilarious and beautiful.

Portrait by Picasso. I'm not always the biggest fan of his work, but I thought this was gorgeous.

I have no idea what this thing is, but it's boat-shaped and purple and squishy and I want one.

Cloth book by Louise Bourgeois. I would love to try to make one something like this one day.

In the sculpture garden, they had a wish tree, in which you would write down a wish and tie it on. My wish proves that I am a nerdfighter through and through, and Bin's wish proves that I am not the only person in the world obsessed with typography.

Sorry this post was so long! Leave a comment below if you wish to.

FakeJohnGreen REVEALED

2010-07-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

...the title sort of killed any suspense I had going there, didn't it? Well, to make it perfectly clear,

I am Dailybooth's FakeJohnGreen.

So, now that that's taken care of, I guess I can end the blog here. Thanks for reading! Oh wait, you probably have some questions. Or, I have some questions you may be asking. If you care at all.

How did you come up with the idea?
I was talking to Paul (songsfrompaul) on Skype one day, and he mentioned that someone had made a fake Miley Cyrus Dailybooth account. I commented, wouldn't it be funny if someone made a fakejohngreen Dailybooth, since the FakeJohnGreen Twitter had been around for a little while at that point. I decided it was a good idea, made the first photo, and posted it later that day. After I made the second one the next day, I realized that I couldn't promote it myself or I would be found out immediately so I sent the link to Alan Lastufka and he tweeted about it. And it just snowballed from there. Paul and Alan knew right from the start and Alan told John and Hank, but I tried to keep it as much of a secret as I could, at least at the beginning.

Why did you stop daily photos after two months?
Quite honestly, I ran out of ideas. It came to the point where I would spend an hour trying to come up with an idea and then about 40 minutes making it, and I didn't have the time to do it every day.

Did you have any help?
Paul came up with some of the ideas along the way, though at this point I don't even remember which ones were his. Alan gave me a few suggestions too, and posted one or two of them on nights when I was out late. All of the Photoshopping was done by me though.

How long do they take you to make?
I don't think I spent more than two hours on any of them, but some of the simpler ones could take as little as ten minutes. It's really just a matter of coming up with a good idea.

It really wasn't Hank/Alan/Monica/anyone else?
Nope, I promise you. When Hank posted that one in his video before it was on the feed, it's just because I sent all the ones I had made, and I guess he didn't realize that one wasn't posted yet.

Are you also FakeJohnGreen on Twitter?
No. And I'm not going to tell you who is.

Which ones are your favorites?

Of course I have to include the one that started it all. I love how the shading I added makes it look like the graphics are actually on the shirt. Skills, right there. #modestkaren

I don't even know what I was thinking with this one.

I really, really want to make this a reality.

This idea took me about an hour and a half to come up with, but the cropping is just so, so good. #evenmoremodestkaren

This literally took me three minutes to make. But apparently everyone thought it was hilarious.

I had to photograph my BobbleJohn from about ten different angles to get this to look real, but I love how it came out.

Mostly I just love the description I wrote for this one. Let's get John to write this, mmkay?

After Hank tweeted about his Halloween costume, I only had about two hours to put this together. But I think it turned out really well, apart from using the wrong font for the V.

You have no idea how happy I was when I discovered I had the Sweet Valley High font on my computer (it's ITC Souvenir).

So why are you outing yourself now?
Well I haven't been making them nearly as frequently, and I want you guys to get some answers before you forget all about it. I will probably keep making them every so often, but in order to do that I need some ideas. So feel free to suggest stuff, and if I come across any I like, I just may make it.

Wait, I follow fakejohngreen but I have no idea who you are.
That's not a question, but alright. I'm Karen Kavett and I'm on YouTube, Twitter, DailyBooth, and I have a website. Let me know if you like them.

Well I hope that answered all your (my?) questions. If you want to know anything about a specific photo, feel free to ask and I may do a follow-up blog with more details. And really, thank you so much to everyone who has followed the account and commented and tweeted about the photos. I still get the notification emails, so I've read every comment you guys have left. Let me know in the comments here or on Twitter which your favorite photo was and who you thought was running the account!

FakeJohnGreen, out.

7.13.10 Life in NYC

2010-07-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my YouTube flowchart! A post about VidCon and then a very special post I've been waiting to post for a long time will be coming soon, but for now I'm putting up one I wrote about a week ago but never actually put up. Let me know if you guys like these kind of photo posts or if you find them boring. Ok, enjoy!

:: LEGO Store ::

On Friday my friends and I trekked up to Rockefeller Center to see the new LEGO store that had just opened a few days beforehand. It was pretty awesome - the selection of merchandise wasn't great and everything was exectedly overpriced, but they had displays set up of scenes of the city and various giant LEGO sculptures and it was just a really great atmosphere.

:: Awesome Hotel ::

After the LEGO store, we didn't really have anything to do so we walked about 40 blocks back to our apartment. On the way, we passed this beautiful hotel. I don't remember the name of it, so if any of you guys know, tell me in the comments.

:: Central Park ::

On the 4th of July, we had a picnic in Central Park, which consisted a lot of us lying on the ground looking up at the trees and just being generally silly. I didn't get any photos of the actual picnic, but it was delicious.

:: Fireworks ::

Then we walked down to 12th Avenue for the New York City fireworks. They were absolutely beautiful, and not nearly as loud as I was expecting. It was the first time I had seen fireworks in about 15 years but that's probably enough for me. Honestly, it's just kind of the same thing over and over. But I did get some good photos, so yay.

So You Want to Watch YouTube Flowchart

2010-07-06T05:51:00.001-07:00

I was really inspired by the So You Need a Typeface poster and figured, why not make one for which YouTube channel to watch? It was a bit of a bigger undertaking than I originally anticipated, taking about 3 days from start to finish. I began by making a list of everyone I'm subscribed to and other popular YouTubers I thought should be on it. Then I divided them into Vloggers, Musicians, and Everyone Else, and just went at making a really ugly graph showing all the different routes. I had to cut some people out since their channels were just too similar to others I had already used, so if you're not on here please don't feel offended. If I included everyone I wanted to it would probably be about twice as big! Finally, I designed this final piece, which luckily, everything fit perfectly into.

Enjoy and let me know what you think either in the comments or on Twitter.

In terms of technical details, I designed it in Adobe Illustrator CS3 (using only a touchpad - my hands were really sore afterwards). The typeface used is Univers Bold Condensed. Since it's vector it could be printed as a poster, but for now I'm only distributing it as a computer wallpaper. If you really want it larger, get in touch with why and maybe we can work something out.

By the way, if you want to watch my videos, I post under the username xperpetualmotion. You may enjoy this recent vlog in which I complain about typography. And if you want to see more of my design work, click through the rest of this blog or check out my website. I will be attending VidCon next week, so if you see me there, come say hi!

If you want to share this, here is a short link:
http://bit.ly/youtubechart

A Couple Things

2010-07-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

Today's blog post is just a mash-up of a few random things I've made lately that I don't have any idea what to do with. They are ideas Hank Green emailed to me asking me to make, which he never did anything with afterwards. So here they are in all their glory.

First, a Photoshop of the Twilight cover, except with a Pokeball instead. I was going to write out a whole explanation, but that's about all there is to it.

Next, a mashup of the Pizza Hut and Taco Bell logos, as per the infamous song. Done in the color schemes of both companies, since it looked gross when I tried to mesh the color schemes as well.

If you have any ideas of things to do with these now, let me know.

Collaging

2010-07-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

Lately, probably because I've been spending so much time on the computer at work, I've really felt the urge to work with my hands and make something non-digital. So, I decided to cut up and collage two New York Times Style magazines. I have all the Style magazines going back years, but I never really look at them anymore. So my thinking is, if I collage the images I like, I can get rid of the clutter of magazines I never read while getting way more out of them than just paper sitting on a shelf. I haven't collaged in ages, which kind of shows in these compositions I put together, but I think they came out alright. It's nice that it's really easy to do - all you need is a big sketchbook, scissors, glue, and a brush to put the glue down in a more controlled way. Hopefully I'll have time to do more of these soon, and I'll be posting them here when I do.

(click the images to see them larger)

Sand Villages

2010-06-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, my friends I went to Coney Island to hang out at the beach for a day. Of course we had to build a sand castle, especially since one of my friends is majoring in sculpture. We didn't have any tools, so we had to just use our hands, and it turned into more of a sand village than a castle. Then we decided it was a utopian society, with a school and a university, but it also had a laboratory where dinosaurs were created, and a colosseum where they would fight to the death, and a racetrack where the winners would race. See also if you can spot the luge track, the pit the criminals and dinosaurs are kept in, the volcano, and the giant piece of pie. My god, we're such art students.

6.28.10 Life in NYC

2010-06-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

It's time again for another round-up of the photos I've taken over the last week or two. I've been up to a lot of exciting things, so let's get to it.

:: Library ::

Yes, I consider the library exciting, especially when it looks like this in the stairwell.

:: Washington Square Park ::

I love sitting in Washington Square Park, because you never know if you're going to see a man fold himself into a tiny box or do crazy handstand tricks, like we did Thursday night.

:: New York Pier ::

On Friday night, my friends and I walked down to the pier overlooking Hoboken. I didn't bring a tripod so I could only get blurry, light stock-ish photos. But trust me that it was really beautiful in real life.

A really cool infographic showing the location of historic bells throughout the city.

:: Bubble Battle ::

On Saturday, Robyn, Erica, and I went to Times Square for the BUBBLE BATTLE, which consisted of several hundred people blowing bubbles at each other. You can see video from the ordeal here but I didn't take many photos since my hands were covered in sticky bubble solution.

:: Coney Island ::

On Sunday my two friends and I went to Coney Island for the day. I haven't been to a beach in about two or three years so it was so nice to just relax and play around in the ocean, even though I did end up with a very annoying sunburn in random places where I didn't manage to get sunscreen. I also ate my very first corn dog in honor of Hank Green. It was delicious but not something I'd want to eat more than maybe once a month, since I could just taste the fat and grease and general unhealthiness.

:: Random New York ::

I'm not really an architecture enthusiast, but some of the buildings in New York are really beautiful.

Multitasking.

Nighttime in the city.

It's a little baby street. So cute.

And finally, I love little picturesque houses like this, where everything is beautifully color coordinated. May I please live there?

Weekly Inspiration #1

2010-06-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everybody who left a comment on my last blog post. The things you guys said really meant a lot and I might be doing a follow-up post soon.

For today though, I want to introduce a new weekly-ish segment (yes, another one), in which I share some people or websites that inspire me, either directly related to graphic design or not.

The first person I am going to feature today is Nubby Twiglet. I have been reading her blog for several months now, but since I first came across it, I haven't missed a single post. She is basically everything I want to be in a couple years: a professional graphic designer with incredible fashion sense who seems to have some sort of adventure every week. Her graphic design work is beautiful, and her style, both in her art and in her fashion sense, have noticeably influenced mine. If you are a graphic designer, I highly recommend checking out her advice blog posts, as she gives lots of good insight into putting together a portfolio, working freelance, and other helpful subjects we all face. And if you're not a designer, she doesn't only post about graphic design! She has series of posts called What I Wore, The Week in Pictures, and Link Love, and everything she posts is incredibly beautiful.

I'm sure most people reading this blog already know who Alan Lastufka is, but if case you are new here, he is the co-founder of DFTBA Records, a musician who has released two albums, Erase This and Taking Leave, and a YouTuber under the name fallofautumndistro. Alan is one of the most hardworking people I know. He has so many great ideas, but then also has the skills to get those ideas put into action. He has turned DFTBA from a small start-up with a couple artists to a label signing some of the biggest names on YouTube, that sells thousands upon thousands of CDs. And he's done all that from a little town outside of Chicago that's basically in the middle of nowhere. Alan is a master at using social media to build a community that stays true to the values it was founded on. He has skills in many, many different fields, from graphic design to music to business management and a natural instinct about who would be good collaborators to make his projects the best that they can be. Since Alan and I became friends a little over a year ago, I've learned so much while working with him, and I can never wait to see what else he manages to come up with.

I have been reading the Unclutterer blog for more than a year now, and it is always one of the first websites I check every morning. Erin Doland, the main writer, manages to write in a way that is accessible to people at all levels of organizing, and is helpful and encouraging without being pushy in the slightest. As it says right on the homepage, "Unclutterer is the blog about getting and staying organized. A place for everything, and everything in its place is our gospel." I recognize in myself that I am quite the pack rat (seriously, I have way, way too much stuff), but reading this blog has helped me begin to realize why I am that way so that when I eventually move away from home I hopefully won't take all that clutter with me! Along with the daily posts about things like managing your to-do list or how to tackle and organize paper clutter, Erin also has weekly posts called Unitasker Wednesday, which is absolutely hilarious, and Ask Unclutterer, which can be very useful if you have a similar problem. There are a good number of people who post in the comments every day, and they often offer suggestions or ideas that are just as useful as the original post. If you are looking to declutter your life on a large scale or just need a daily kick in the pants to stay organized, this blog is a fantastic resource.

Thoughts on GD as a career

2010-06-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I'm still surprised when the skills I learn in school turn out to be skills I can actually use in the real world. I've been at my summer internship for a few days, and while I'm not going to tell you exactly where it is, I can tell you that it is a small design studio that does a lot of work on magazines and websites. Anyway, for the past 2 days, I was working on a logo design, and it was still so odd that I'm being paid (not much, but still) to do the things that I've been practicing and doing for fun for the last six years. However, no matter how big or small the client is, I always find myself doubting my own skill and being convinced my work is a complete mess until I hear that they are happy with it, or at least happy with the direction it is going.

Anyway, back to the logo I was working on - after I had a fair amount of concepts, I met with my boss and another designer in the studio to go over it. It felt just like I was back at a RISD critique, with the things we talked about and the suggestions they gave. I guess that could also be partially because the other designer I was talking to graduated from RISD just a few years ago and in fact did many of the same projects I just finished last semester (though his work was much better than mine is), but it was still surreal to be having a crit in the middle of New York City with "real" designers for a fairly large client.

When I'm working for a client as big as this one, it comes with a lot of pressure to do a good job. One of my weaknesses as a designer, which I know I need to work on, is to not be happy with the first decent design I come up with, and instead to push myself to make it great. It can be frustrating when you think you've come up with a successful solution, but a couple more painful hours tweaking it and pushing it into a new direction can be the difference between competent and brilliant.

I try not to show it too much, but a lot of the time I just completely lose faith in myself as a designer. There is so much good design out there that it just becomes overwhelming. I know that I can never be the best, but why can't I make my work look as good as all the people I admire? It can be kind of scary actually - if I can't even get this logo looking decent, what hope is there that I will ever get a real job? I suppose this is something everyone must feel at some point in their respective fields. There is just so much out there to learn, and the graphic design field is so incredibly competitive that it's scary to think that soon I'll have to make my own way through it, and just hope that I've gathered enough skills and knowledge to be qualified for the kind of job I want to get.

I guess the only thing left to do now is to keep on going, to try to learn as much as I can without realizing just how much I will never learn at all. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter either as a comment here or on Twitter. I may do a follow-up to this blog soon, so get commenting so I have something to actually respond to. And thank you so much for reading my rambling thoughts even when I'm not just showing you artwork.

6.20.10 Life in NYC

2010-06-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

Hello again everyone. As you have probably noticed, unless you're scarily unobservant, I've done some work on this blog layout, mostly to be able to accommodate larger photos. I'll probably be working on it more over the next week or two, so if you visit and everything's looking a bit wacky, just come back in a while and hopefully it will be back to normal.

Anyway, this is the first of a new series of posts in which I document my time spent in New York this summer through photography. It is inspired by Nubby Twiglet's The Week in Pictures posts, though I'll probably be tweaking the format of mine in the coming weeks so it's not quite as blatantly copying hers. I apologize for the quality of some of these photos - many were taken with the camera in my Blackberry since I only just got my new point and shoot which I'll be carrying around in the future.

:: The View (not the talk show) ::

The view from my room is really beautiful on a nice day. I'm glad I escaped the New York City stereotype of having a window that looks at a brick wall!

:: Brooklyn Bridge ::

Last Friday, two of my friends and I trekked down to the bottom of Manhattan to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. These photos really don't do it justice, so make sure to walk it yourself if you're ever in the area!

:: Festival of India Parade ::

One of the things I'm loving most about New York is that you never know what you're going to get. Case in point, last Saturday I walk out the front door to see a parade going by for the Festival of India. It was total craziness but a fun surprise nevertheless.

:: ADVENTURE TIME ::

Similarly, just wandering around the Columbus Mall two days ago, I come across this beautiful poster for my favorite cartoon ever, Adventure Time!

:: Nerdfighter Note ::

It always makes my day when I find a nerdfighter note (though I look like a crazy person flipping through all of John Green's books to find them!) This one was found in the Barnes & Noble by Columbus Circle. Did you leave it? Let me know in the comments!

:: The Mermaid Parade ::

I'm so glad I got to go to the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island this year. I've been meaning to go for the past two years but never made it, but this year it was a beautiful day and everything worked out well. It was hot and sweaty and crowded, but the costumes and floats were beautiful and everyone seemed to have a great time.

:: New York at Sunset ::

And to finish off this (absurdly long) post, a photo I took while walking back to my apartment at sunset last night. New York City can be really beautiful sometimes.

Nigtmare & the Cat Banner

2010-06-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I got an email asking if I could design a banner for a new band that was starting up, Nightmare and the Cat. I really enjoyed the music on their site, and was given some great source photos of the band to use, so of course I said yes. The band wanted the banner to have a vintage, collaged style. This was really fun for me, because this is the kind of work I used to do before I even went to RISD - just blending photos and random objects into beautiful looking collages. It was nice not having to worry about color profiles and print specifications since it was just for the web. The band is very happy with what I came up with, as am I.

A larger version of the banner can be seen at the link above.

VidCon Poster

2010-06-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today's post is something that I just finished designing last week, which nobody has seen yet and most people won't see until July - a poster for VidCon 2010. When Hank asked me to make the poster, he didn't give many guidelines; he basically told me to include the logo and date and to make it look cool. I had a lot of fun exploring the themes and purposes of VidCon in a visual way; the thumbnails are what we see on YouTube every day, but at VidCon we will be ripping through the 2D-ness of the computer screen and meeting everybody in real life. The poster is tabloid size and will be available for free at VidCon, and will also be on the cover of the VidCon programs.

Dan Brown Shirt Photos

2010-06-17T05:51:00.000-07:00

I don't have a new project for you today, but rather an update on one that I blogged about before. I received the shirt I designed for Dan Brown in the mail, and I wanted to show you guys what it looks like as an actual shirt. Dan decided to print it on purple instead of the gray I suggested, and while that color wouldn't have been my first choice, I think it still works well. The shirts are still available for purchase here if you are interested in buying one for yourself.

TARDIS Clock

2010-06-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Today's post isn't about a school project but a really nerdy thing I just did on my own. I was having a really strong urge to paint something about two weeks ago, so I decided to customize my boring white clock. Being the huge Doctor Who fan that I am, I painted it to be TARDIS themed. I first painted the rim a dark blue, layering on bronze, silver, and black to make it look more wooden and aged. Then I designed a custom insert for the actual clock, copying the design of the sign on the front of the TARDIS. I printed it on watercolor paper to give it a little more texture, and added some paint around the edge so the transition from the blue to the off-white wasn't so drastic.

Looking for Alaska Cover

2010-06-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

Another John Green-related project today. Today I'm going to share with you the cover I designed for the contest John Green's Dutch publishers put on, where they asked nerdfighters to design the cover for their new edition of Looking for Alaska. This was right in the middle of what was probably my busiest week at school which is why it isn't necessarily my best work. I only had about 4 hours to work on it one night, and there are definitely some things I would change now. However it is already sent off for consideration so I can't really fix it now.

When I was designing the cover, I wanted to use imagery from the book without making it too literal. It is meant to appeal to teenagers so I tried to use bright colors to make it really pop off the shelf. If used, I would ask that the silhouette of the girl be replaced with the iStockPhoto one I traced, but I didn't see the sense in spending $15 on the download if it wasn't going to be used.

John Green's Website Icons

2010-06-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

A couple of you may have heard of an author named John Green. I hear his books are pretty good, but he also makes videos on the internet? That's actually kind of weird...

Ok, just kidding. Today's post is about the icons I designed for John Green's new website, which was designed by Alan Lastufka. Alan asked me to design icons for each of John's books and a couple other pages, which he wanted to look hand-drawn and simple. I chose symbols from each of the books from the various covers and drew them out with the pen tool in Photoshop. For the text, I couldn't find a typeface that looked exactly how I wanted it to, so I wrote the alphabet out by hand, scanned it, and pieced together the words in Photoshop. It became a weird hybrid of a typeface and handwriting, and I think it works well for John's site. Below you can see all the icons I designed, including the ones that Alan didn't end up using in the final design.

The letters with the dots over them are the ones I used for the text.

By the way, I didn't make the colored versions of the icons that you see when you mouse over them on the site. You can thank Alan for that feature.

Final Review Photos

2010-06-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

Today I don't have just one project to show you but many. Namely, photos from my final review at the end of junior year. Basically, all the graphic design majors must bring all their finished work from the entire year to their appointment to get an overall review from their assigned professors. Even though we don't get a grade from it, it is an incentive to have all of our work finished and in one place, and it is helpful to be able to see it all as a whole. My review went really well this year, and here are the photos I took of what I had set up.

The work that you can see in the edges of some of the photos is not mine; it is by my friend who had her review after mine. So don't think I'm not showing you guys everything, because I most certainly am. Well, except for some of them which I'm not really all that proud of and don't want to show off in high quality. But I'm showing you the rest =)

Photography

2010-06-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

Let's take a break from graphic design today and delve into the wonderful world of photography, shall we? I took a photography class last semester and I really feel like I learned a lot about editing photos to make them look professional. I would like to share some photos I took for my analog photography class last semester. I scanned the negatives (on a very, very expensive scanner) and worked on the photos extensively in Photoshop. Even though it might not look like it, each photo has several Levels and Curves adjustment layers and look vastly better than the original scans.

Visual Systems Process Books

2010-06-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

For the final project for Visual Systems, we had to create a process book showing our notes from the lectures and our process for the two projects we had done during the semester. I chose to split my book into three smaller books that all obviously went together as a system. I chose to use the typeface Folio, because it works at both the large scale on the cover, and as body text. I am very happy with how these books came out; my paper cutting and book binding skills have definitely improved drastically in the last two years.

Visual Systems Posters

2010-06-10T06:18:00.001-07:00

It seemed like I was constantly making mock-ups of posters last semester and the project I have to show you today is one of the reasons for that. Our second assignment in Visual Systems was to design a series of three posters for an exhibit at the Canadian Center for Architecture. We had to make posters for exhibits of the work of Richard Neutra, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Gehry, and we were given all the text. That posed a bit of a challenge since there wasn't an equal amount of text on each poster but we still had to create a system that would make it clear that the three posters went together.

When it came to sketching out ideas, I first researched the three architects’ styles and their impact on architecture history. I discovered that Louis Sullivan is essentially the “father of modernism.” He designed many of the first high-rise buildings and also used massive arches in many of his designs. Richard Neutra’s designs were all very geometric, combining metal and stucco to make light, open spaces. Frank Gehry designs in a deconstructivist style, where the form can take more precedence than the function. After I felt like I had a good idea of the architects, I sketched out ideas that were inspired by the posters. I experimented with grids, but ultimately decided that I really wanted t o explore the possibilities of having a large letter to stand for each designer being the focus of each poster. I was inspired by many posters, especially this one:

I love having a large graphic element like that and the typography is handled and balanced beautifully. In my posters, it just so happened that the first letter of each of the architects' last names mirrored their architecture style, so I decided to run with that when designing the main form of the poster.

Ode to Typography Book

2010-06-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

Today's post is about my final project for Typography III, a book laying out the poem Ode to Typography by Pablo Neruda. We had to include the entire poem, and the book had to be tabloid size (11x17). With those parameters in mind, I read the poem several times to try to get a sense of what he was trying to say. Maybe I just don't appreciate poetry, but I found it to be overly long and repetitive. While at the end of it I did feel very appreciative of letterforms and all that they accomplish, I really felt like it took way too long to get there. In the end, I decided to use my own photography in my book to show the uses typography has had through history up to modern times. It gave me a chance to explore many different styles and layouts, and, while I did have some trouble reining it in to make the whole book cohesive, I think many of the spreads ended up working very beautifully.

The Crystal Goblet Book & Poster

2010-06-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

The project I would like to share with you today is a book/poster for Typography III. We were told to read the essay The Crystal Goblet by Beatrice Warde and then lay it out in a way that showed our interpretation and opinion on the subject. The main idea that Beatrice Warde was trying to get across in this essay is that typography should only be used for conveying information; she believed that the typography itself should be invisible so that the message can shine through without distraction. I agree that there is a time and a place for invisible typography, but I disagree that it must always be that way. I believe typography can be an art form not in just laying out information but also in the way the letters themselves are constructed. While it may not always be appropriate, there are times when expressive, possibly unreadable typography can be used to get across a point or just be a beautiful form in itself. Typography is such a rich subject filled with meaning and history that I don't understand why Beatrice Warde believes it should be limited to just one purpose.

When it came to doing the actual project, I took inspiration from the layout of linotype books, since the typography in these books is not supposed to be invisible. In fact, the whole purpose of these books is to show the forms and uses of all the different typeface options so linotype machine owners will purchase them.

However, I decided to design some of my own letterforms which may not mean anything to us English-speakers but can still be beautiful in their own right. I based my letterforms on the typeface Poster Bodoni, designed by Chauncey H. Griffith in 1929 and based on Bodoni, designed by Giambattista Bodoni in 1798.

Poster:

Book:

In these spreads I crossed out what I felt were the most typographically limiting points in her essay.

I printed it on a textured cream colored paper, to try to soften the harshness of so much solid black on white. It also invokes a feeling of history, which is appropriate since this project needs so much historical context to be meaningful.

Two Process Books

2010-06-07T14:38:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I want to apologize for not updating this blog for exactly two months now. It was finals time at school and I was too busy actually making my projects to be blogging about them. But now that it is summer, I'd like to share with you all the things I've been designing for the past two months. For about the next two weeks, I will be posting every day until I've gotten through the (way too long) list of projects still to be written about here. However, if you want to comment, I ask that you do it through either twitter (@karenkavett) or email (karenkavett at gmail), just so it is easier for me to reply. Thanks for reading, and let the blogging commence!

Today's book is actually from fall semester, from my Color class. It is my final book, and since I had to hand it in basically as soon as I finished it, I never had time to photograph it until I got it back about 2 weeks ago. It is your basic process book showing the projects done each semester with a short description of each one, but I am proud of the design I came up with considering how little time I had to put it together.

Another book I had to quickly make and wasn't able to photograph until now is the process book for the animation I made for Making Meaning during fall semester:

It is a fairly simple book, just going through the process of watching and transcribing the movie, looking for inspiration, storyboarding the animation, and finally making the final product.

Two Shirts for Two YouTubers

2010-04-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

Today's blog post is about two shirts I designed recently, for Dan Brown and for WheezyWaiter.

Most of my thought process for Dan Brown's shirt is explained in the video I made for him:

I thought it would be a fun project since he has several clear graphic symbols that can be used to reference him and the Pogotribe community. I went through several ideas involving the Rubik's Cube, like having sillhouettes of different countries on the blocks, or even the letters in Hello World all mixed up on the Rubik's Cube, but they seemed unnecessarily complicated. Those ideas also didn't really involve the "eweniverse" idea, so in the end I went with the Rubik's Cube in space, which I think turned out pretty nice.

The WheezyWaiter shirt is much less involved, since I didn't come up with the concept; I simply put the design together. Alan messaged me asking if I could design a Coffee Craig shirt in the style of the Pizza John one, which was originally designed by Valerie2776. He sent me several photos to choose from, and I thought the one of Craig looking straight at the camera would be the most recognizable. I put it into Photoshop and removed the color and background, and then added posterization adjustment layer, which turned the image into only black and white pixels. Then I had to go back and burn and dodge parts of Craig's face so that it was recognizable as him without huge parts being in shadow or light without any detail. Once I was happy with that, I brought it into Illustrator and put a simple live trace on it to match the texture of the original Pizza John shirt. It doesn't look super professional and polished, but I think that is part of the charm of the original, and I wanted to duplicate that in Craig's shirt.

Both shirts are now available for purchase:
http://www.districtlines.com/17782-Hello-World-T-Shirt/Dan-Brown
http://www.dftba.com/coffee

Thanks everyone for reading, and as usual, leave any questions or comments in the comments section below.

Custom Ukulele

2010-03-24T19:26:00.000-07:00

Today I'll be showing you guys the custom ukulele and business cards I designed for Lauren Fairweather. Lauren asked me to design the front for her ukulele which ended up being a really fun project. She wanted it to be purple and green and gave me the quote "All you need is love" to incorporate into it. I tried to keep it fairly simple since the attention should be on Lauren when she's performing and not entirely on her ukulele. I used transparent purple circles to make an interesting texture for the background and then pumped it up a bit with the green illustrations. Lauren is such a happy and upbeat person and I wanted her ukulele to reflect that.

Lauren then asked me to design some business cards for her, to be ordered from moo.com. I decided to use a lot of the same design elements as in the ukulele, but then I also brought in imagery of other things Lauren likes, such as owls, dice (for 5AG), music notes, and Harry Potter. I tried to make each card as interesting as the rest, with lots of different levels of imagery and transparency, while keeping them all united with the same four-color color scheme. They look great together as a set and really represent Lauren and what she's all about.

Also, I'm thinking of starting a regular question and answer segment, so if you have any questions about graphic design, art schools, youtube, etc. feel free to leave them in the comments as well (or message them to me through email, twitter, owl post...) and I'll answer them as well as I can in an upcoming post!

Typography III Magazine Spread

2010-03-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. So, I've kind of failed at updating my blog this month. Sorry about that. It's just that a lot of the work we've been doing in my studio classes has been long-term projects so I haven't had a lot to show you guys so far. I also have a couple older projects that I still need to blog about but I just haven't gotten around to it. So expect several posts over the next couple days.

For today, I'll be showing you guys my first project for Typography III. We had to redesign the table of contents and a food section spread for the New York Times Magazine. Here are my solutions (click for larger images):

I decided to use Avenir for the body text and Din for the headers. One thing I had to learn was to keep the body text fairly large even though it meant going onto a third page. However, as cute as tiny text is, it's not practical for older readers of the magazine. Also, since the recipes also have to be functional in the kitchen, I made the type size 12, much larger than I would otherwise.

When it came to the table of contents, I had a lot of fun just experimenting with type and the different ways it could be represented.

Above you can see one of my experiments, in which I tried to show each article a different way even though it became completely illegible. In the end, I decided to go with a very obvious grid, with the feature articles getting more space on the page. Also, I tried to make the page numbers very obvious since I always get annoyed when it's hard to tell which page number goes with which article. I chose not to use any imagery in order to put the emphasis on the typographic system I had set up.

The original article can be found online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/magazine/21food-t-000.html. Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Alice in Wonderland Hat Version 2

2010-03-10T19:15:00.000-08:00

Lately I've really been wanting to make some sort of tutorial video, so I decided to make one showing how to make a smaller version of my Alice in Wonderland hat. It ended up being 2 parts and a nightmare to export and upload, but I think it came out pretty well. Check out the video and photos below and let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

Alice in Wonderland Hat

2010-03-07T19:48:00.001-08:00

So, remember when I said in my last post that I was going to redesigning this blog? Well I never really got around to it during Wintersession and I don't have time to figure it out now, so hopefully it'll get done this summer. In the meantime, I'll continue posting my new work.

On Friday I went to see Alice in Wonderland, and RISD had a "Mad Hatter" contest to see who could make the best hat. I ended up being one of three winners. So that was cool.

When I was making it, I made this sketch and then just jumped right into it.

The hat itself is made of chipboard, and it's all held together with duct tape on the inside. Then I covered it with black and white duct tape and wrapped wire around it. The lower brim is made up of actual playing cards that were glued down and covered with packing tape, and the upper brim is covered with lace printed packing tape. Then, I dirtied it up with black and bronze paint, and decorated the top with a custom bow and the number 12, to reference a clock. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!

Self-Portrait Photography

2010-02-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

For the other large project in my Digital Photo class, we had to take a self portrait every day for the six weeks that the class lasted. Below you'll find a selection of my favorites from that project. Some are fairly traditional self portraits of my face, but with some I decided to get more conceptual. Let me know in the comments if you like them!

PS: Over the next week I'm going to be doing some work on revamping this blog (if my fairly limited coding skills are up to it), so if you see stuff moved around or looking crazy, don't be alarmed.

Harry Potter Photoshoot

2010-02-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

My Digital Photo class is over now, so I'm going to be posting up some of the stuff I've been working on. All these photos were taken with a Nikon D3000. My final project was based on a photo series by Abe Morell in which he reconstructed scenes from Alice in Wonderland using cutouts of illustrations from the book and miniature props. For a previous assignment, we had to recreate a famous photograph, so you can see my recreation of one of Abe Morell's photos here (his is on the left):

Next, for the final, I decided to take photos in the same style except with Harry Potter and Mary GrandPre's illustrations. The photos ended up very dark and moody, since I wanted to emphasize shadows and the dark themes in the books. I made them very high-contrast, and they were all lit with just an LED flashlight (most had very long shutter speeds). I also played with moving things in front of the camera while the shutter was open, such as in the Ravenclaw ghost photo and the crazy light effect in the prophecy photo. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments!

New Business Cards

2010-02-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

About two weeks ago, I designed some business cards for Lauren Fairweather and also decided I wanted some for myself. Lauren introduced me to moo.com, who have really great prices for a lot of different types of printing. I ordered 100 minicards for only $20, and Moo lets you have different images on the backs of the cards, so I got them in three different colors. The idea is that I can fill in the blank with whatever I am to whoever I give it to - when I go to internship interviews I can write in graphic designer, and when I go to YouTube gatherings I can write in video blogger, and when I go to Hogwarts I can write in Slytherin. Let me know what you think in the comments!

YouTube Wallpaper

2010-01-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

When I made my 1000 Subscribers video, I decided to also give everyone a little gift to thank them for subscribing. So, I took a few hours and designed this wallpaper using the lyrics that I wrote for A Whole New YouTube.

I didn't really have much of a plan going into it, I just decided to throw myself in and see where it ended up. I used Serifa 45 Light and 75 Black, and I think this is the first time I've actually used that font. Originally I was going to use Rockwell, but it just felt too heavy for the look I was going for, and Serifa Light seemed like it fit better. The background wasn't always red; in fact, it was white until about halfway through. But then when I tried the red it seemed to bring more variety to the design since I could play with different shades of red, and white and black text next to each other. I think it kind of ended up looking like some Coca-Cola designs, which I absolutely love.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions!

Wallpaper:

Print quality: Right click and save link as

Making the Miniature Paper Towns

2010-01-12T19:21:00.000-08:00

After posting a video on Sunday in which I made a miniature version of Paper Towns, I got lots of comments and messages in which people asked for help in making one of their own. So, I come to you in this magical blog post with all the answers you could ever want. (Actually, that's a lie. All the answers you could ever want belong to Google.)

First, why don't we all refresh our memories by rewatching the video? (Totally not trying to up my video views, what are you talking about?)

Ok, the first thing to do is to decide what book you want to make. Now it's time to recreate the pages on the computer. You're going to need InDesign or another program that can lay out multiple pages in the same document. First measure the book to get the page proportion and then use basic algebra to figure out how big your tiny version's going to be (so if the book is 6"x8" and you want it to be 4" tall, it's going to have to be 3" wide). Then just start typing and laying out the pages, trying to match them as closely as you can to the original. Don't be afraid to use really, really tiny type, especially if you have a laser printer that can print it nice and sharp. This is probably the most time-consuming part of the entire process, honestly.

Once you have it all laid out and perfect, it's time to print. You're going to need to print double-sided, so either find a double-sided printer or feed the pages back through a regular printer carefully (and when you mess up, know that you're feeling the same frustration graphic design students feel every week). Now use the same proportion you came up with before to figure out how many blank sheets of paper you'll need in order to make the mini book the same thickness proportionally as the original book (the easiest way to do this is to find the thickness you'll need, like .25" and then make a stack of paper that thickness and count how many are in that pile.)

Cut out the printed pages and as many blank sheets as you need, taking care to make them all exactly the same size. If they're a little off, you can sand the edges with really fine sandpaper to make it more exact.

Now comes the actual book-making. Get some archival glue (or regular glue if you don't need it to last forever). Clamp the end of the book that's going to be open in the end and apply glue liberally to the other side, putting just a smidge over the top and bottom corners. Take off the clamp and leave the book between wax paper under heavy books for at least an hour, or however long you think it'll take the glue to dry. After the glue is dry, flip through the book a little, and if the binding seems loose, put another coat of glue on and put it back under the books (I had to do two coats on the Paper Towns book). If you're an experienced bookbinder and want to sew the book, go ahead and do that - I just wasn't brave enough to try it at such a small scale (though if you're ever making a full size book, glue alone usually isn't enough to hold it together).

While that's drying, you can start making the hardcover. You'll need Davey Board or really any kind of thick (non-corrugated) cardboard. Cut three pieces - two for the front and back that are a little bigger than the page size (use your judgment for how much bigger you want to make it). Cut the third piece just a little wider than the thickness of the book and the same height as the front and back. Then get some bookcloth or any kind of thick paper. Glue the board onto it with about double the thickness of the board between each piece. Cut the cloth or paper so there's an even border, and then cut off the corners at the 45 degree angle. Apply glue to the cloth edges one at the time and fold them over, taking care not to have any bumps. Fold the hardcover like a book to make sure it'll take it's shape nicely.

Now cut blank paper to be the endsheets. You'll probably want to use cardstock or something thicker than regular paper. Cut it so it can fit over the exposed board with a small border and then be folded so it's also the endsheet for the book (sorry if that didn't make sense, just watch the video if you're confused). Cut two of those and glue them to the exposed board on the front and the book with the rest of it scored and folded. Get your text block out from under the blocks and glue it carefully to the endsheets you just glued in, making sure everything is neatly lined up. Press this under books for a while until the glue is dry.

Now the only thing left is to make the book jacket, which is the easiest part of the whole thing. Just scan the original jacket and then resize it so it's the same height as your minibook, print it and score it along the folds, and slip it on.

That's all there is to it! This is a very simplified version of the full-size bookmaking process, so if you're interested in that just google it and you'll be able to find many tutorials much better than this one. I don't claim to be a professional book-maker by any means, so if you try something and it works better than the way I suggest, let me know so I can learn too. And if you decide to make one, send me photos!

Good luck :)

Site updates

2010-01-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

After meaning to be finished pretty much every day since December 27th, I've finally finished updating my site with all my work from Fall semester. A lot of it I've posted here before, but some of it is final projects which most of you haven't seen yet. I'll post below some of my favorite new pieces and some information about them, but be sure to poke around on the site a bit more if you want to see everything.

Map of the Cereal Aisle:

For the second final project in Making Meaning, we had to make a series of three maps, one objective, one subjective, and one that can be a mix of the two. I decided to map the cereal aisle in the grocery store. In the first one, I tried to present cost and sugar content in an easy to read way. The second is an abstract composition of what jumped out at me while looking at the mess of colors and logos and cartoon characters that is found in the cereal aisle. In the third, I tried to present the location and ingredients of the different brands in an aesthetically pleasing way while trying to recreate the difficulty of finding what you need while standing in the actual store.

Custom Puzz3D:

For my sister's Christmas present this year, I made her a custom Puzz3D of the caboose in our backyard. This has been a work in progress since the summer, which is when I took the photos that appear on the final puzzle. I went through a pretty long process getting everything to fit together correctly, so I might make a separate blog post detailing all of that in the future.

Moaning Myrtles Merchandise:

I already wrote a blog post about the designs of the new merchandise for The Moaning Myrtles, but I added photos of the actual products that give a more complete look at what the designs look like in the real world.

Thanks again for reading. If you find a broken link or an image that doesn't work, please let me know either in a comment here or an email. And even if everything is working perfectly (cross your fingers), any comments are always appreciated!

Christmas Artstuffs

2009-12-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

Apologies for lack of updates on this blog lately. I got so busy finishing final projects that I never got around to posting them here as I finished them. However, I will be updating my site in the next few days so keep an eye out for a very long post soon with information about all the new stuff.

For now, here are some Christmas-themed pieces that probably won't go on my site but that I wanted a record of anyway. First, the 12 Days of Nerdfighter Christmas wallpaper I made for the Project for Awesome 2009. The charity: water campaign is now over and it ended up raising $835, which is just incredible. Thank you to everyone who donated, and enjoy the wallpaper:

Second, I spent a day last week letterpressing Christmas cards, which I then made into wallpapers so even people who I didn't send cards to could enjoy them. Watch the video of my process of making the cards, and then check out the wallpapers:

Wallpaper 1
Wallpaper 2

Thank you so much for reading my blog and I hope you all had very merry Christmases!

"Take Me Home" EP Cover

2009-11-30T13:46:00.001-08:00

Here is the cover I just finished (this morning, actually) for Paul (songsfrompaul)'s new EP Take Me Home, which can be downloaded for free at http://tinyurl.com/TakeMeHomeEP. Paul wanted the imagery to feature a man walking away in the rain, and I decided that using watercolors as the medium would compliment his music style well. I went through lots of paper just dripping the watercolors down in different patterns, and then pieced it together in Photoshop. I had some trouble deciding on how to handle the title, since no typeface seemed to match the organic quality of the rest of the image (I tried to get Futura to work, but it just wasn't happening), so I ended up writing it with a calligraphy pen and scanning it in. It was a fun project, and I'm happy to have worked with such a talented musician as Paul.

Simultaneous Contrast!

2009-11-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

For Color class, we had to do a project on simultaneous contrast, or the effect that happens when you put different colors next to each other. We had to make a light gray and medium gray look the same by manipulating the background colors, and the same with medium and dark gray. Then we expanded it into monochrome and analogous colors.

I chose to present mine as if it was a toy kids could buy. I made cards where the "background" color swings on top of the colors that are supposed to look the same, and can swing backwards so you get two illusions on each card. I also designed some packaging to bring the whole thing together.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

Nature Lab Photography

2009-11-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

I should have more graphic design work to show you guys soon (I'm almost done with a color project which should go up next week) but for now here's more photography. The assignment for this week was to photograph a place, so I chose RISD's Nature Lab. If you have any questions, let me know.

They're better in real life where you can actually see the cuts in the paper and they come out from the wall a bit, but this is about as good of a scan I can probably get.

Color Spellbook

2009-10-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

For Color class, we had an assignment to make a book with pages that represented each of the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors on both white and black backrounds. Being the nerd that I am, I decided to make it a spellbook based off the spells from Harry Potter. Some were easy, like Lumos and Incendio for yellow, and some were obvious after a little thought, like Levicorpus, a spell made up by Half-Blood Prince, for purple. Some of them I just kind of went off a gut feeling, and I think they all turned out nicely. Below are photos of the actual book and then the digital version of the entire book. It's not lined up exactly right here, but in the actual book the lines flow into each page perfectly. Also, the colors got a bit screwed up in all the changing programs and saving for web, but you get the idea. Enjoy!

Full Book
[LARGE FILE]

Moaning Myrtles Merch

2009-10-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

Now that Lauren's put the new Moaning Myrtles merchandise up for sale, I can reveal that designing it was one of my secret projects. Lauren contacted me at the end of August, and I designed a new shirt, a tote bag, and a frisbee for her to sell at Wrockstock and other wizard rock shows. While designing them, I was really inspired by Nicolas Saunders' work, so definitely go drool over his gorgeous designs after you finish reading this.

For the first shirt, Lauren wanted the quote "Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am." I decided to draw the type in a very informal way and surround it with simple illustrations of things that have to do with Luna. I tried to make it look like a shirt you could just buy in a store, and not necessarily scream wizard rock from every inch of the design.

The tote bag was originally another shirt design, but we decided it was more fit for a bag. I had the idea of using bathroom sign pictograms, but making them specific to Lauren and Nina. I really got to play with iconography, making the lightning bolt guitar strap stand for Lauren and the piano scarf stand for Nina. It's a design that you only fully understand if you really know the Moaning Myrtles, but it's also accessible on a basic level to people who don't know them at all.

The frisbee was very much inspired by Nicolas Saunder's work which I linked to above. I didn't want to directly copy his aesthetic, so I stayed away from the grungy style and instead tried to make it look slightly old-fashioned but in that magical way that the films do so well.

Thanks for reading guys. I'll definitely have more work to show you soon :)

Creepy Business

2009-10-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

I took some photos over the weekend that I'm really excited about, so I'm posting them here before I even present them to my class. I set them up by putting playing cards in the sink and getting them damp and then dropping ink on them, and I love how in black and white the ink looks like blood. The hands are from the Peter Petrelli action figure and are now stained grayish from all the ink.

A few more where I'm playing with dripping the devloper onto the paper and bending the paper while shining the light on it:

And because I can't seem to go through a week without photographing something Harry Potter related:

More Photography

2009-10-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

I promise I'll have more design-y stuff to show you guys soon, but right now it's all still secret. In the meantime, here's some more analog photography:

I tried something different with the last two. Instead of just putting the whole photo into the tray of developer, I used a paintbrush to drip the developer onto the paper, so that some parts developed more than others. I think they turned out pretty cool, and I'm going to be trying it again in my assignment for next week, so be on the lookout for that :)

Analog Photography

2009-10-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

If you read the post a couple down from this, you know that I'm taking an analog photography class this semester. The first couple weeks were kind of an epic fail, in which I couldn't figure out how to open the camera, then how to get the film out of the canister, and then how to change the developer so the photos would actually develop properly instead of all gray and gross. I think I've overcome most of those obstacles, and since we finally learned how to englarge photos in the darkroom, I thought I'd show you guys the ones I developed. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

(You can probably tell that I really like using my macro lens.)

DFTBA Button

2009-09-22T18:33:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, Alan Lastufka messaged me on Skype and asked me to design a button for DFTBA Records saying "Imagine me complexly." Seeing as how it was the end of summer and I really wanted to procrastinate from packing, I did it right away, and a few hours later presented him with this design which is now available for purchase on dftba.com.

I don't have all that much to say about it, since it is fairly simple. The typeface I ended up using is ITC Goudy Sans Std Black, which I mostly picked because the A is so beautiful. I played around with adding imagery to the button as well, and I tried to put together a version where the words were sort of sitting in grass, to reference Paper Towns, but it ended up being too complicated of a design for such a small object. I'm not sure if I like how much the "me" stands out, since "complexly" is probably the most imporant word there, but the difference in the number of letters was so great that this ended up being the most aestethically pleasing solution. Please go buy the button pack to support DFTBA Records, and thanks again for reading this blog.

Round-up of Week 1 at RISD

2009-09-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

I've concluded with certainty that this semester at RISD is going to be very expensive. And busy. Don't forget busy.

I'm starting my 3rd year here, and I'm taking 3 studio classes and 1 liberal arts class. The required studios for graphic design majors are Making Meaning (which meets twice a week) and Color, and I'm also in a photography elective called Intro to Photo for Non-Majors. The liberal arts class is called Philosophy of Religion.

First up, last Wednesday, was Intro to Photo, which is all about analog photography and learning to use the darkroom. The first class was kind of overwhelming, because there's so much to learn, and my teacher didn't exactly tell us everything in order. Also, I've never done photography so manually, where I need to keept track of the light meter, F stop, aperature, etc.

I had a bit of a fail when it came time to do the homework as well. I took the required 2 rolls of film with no problems (though I have no idea if they're going to end up being completely blurry or washed out or whatever), so I thought processing the film wouldn't be very hard either. I mean, I had the handout with the order all the chemicals need to go in, and I've got my shiny new funnels and thermometer. But no. When I went into the tiny completely dark room to move the film from the film canister onto the reels that the chemicals are dumped on, I tried for 30 minutes to crack the top off the canister and could not get it off. So now my film is trapped inside a impenetrable cylinder of plastic and metal, so close and yet so far away. Keep track of my Twitter if you want to know how this saga is going to end, because I'm sure I'll continue to post my annoyances there.

Thursday brought a class I was very glad to see, Making Meaning, which I was mostly looking foward to because it meant the computer was relevant again. We started with a series of lectures by all the different section professors who are teaching Making Meaning, and some of them were absolutely brilliant. They spoke about how images and ideas can stand for other images and ideas, and how the world is really a big mess of symbolism if you just know how to think. Also, one of the teachers had a very entertaining talk in which he discussed what a broom could represent, and he "flew" around the stage on Harry Potter's flying broom and joked about picking up Emma Watson. My professor for the class is an adorable Polish guy who has a very strong accent and a non-completely-complete grasp of the English language, and whose posters he showed us at the beginning of class were abolutely beautiful.

The assignment he have us wasn't quite as beautiful, however. I'm not exactly sure where he's going with it, since right how we're not designing anything, just using words. Basically, we had to come up with a list of 5 people, 5 places, and 5 things, and then for each of the 15, write 5 words that could represent it, going in a progression from most specific to most abstract. For example, one of mine is Coffeehouse > Mugs of Foreign Coffee > Comfy Couches > Books of Poetry > Pastries > Conversation. After that, we need to write a short story using all five people, places, and things. I don't know if I'm doing it exactly right, but I guess we'll find out tomorrow afternoon.

Today was the first Color class. I've been looking foward to this all summer because I honestly don't know much about color. When I need a color palette, I often just steal one from the internet instead of figuring out how to make it myself. However, I wasn't expecting having to buy quite so many materials. The first thing our professor said after taking attendance was that she was handing out the supply list and we should go buy everything before coming back in half an hour. About half the stuff was basic things like rulers and tape, but I had to purchase a lot of gouache (basically expensive, opaque watercolors), some special brushes, a porcelein dish to mix paints in, an 11"x14" sketchpad, and an 11"x14" Bristol pad. Luckily, I've done a few commissions lately that will help to pay for it all so I don't feel so bad about spending so much of my parents' money.

Once we got back to class, we spent the next 3 hours painting color swatches that would represent words like life, love, peace, etc. It wasn't very exciting, but it was useful to get used to using gouache again, since I haven't used it regularly in about 2.5 years. I really couldn't stop myself from thinking the whole time though, "This woule be so much less expensive and so much more precise in Photoshop." I know there are some skills you really do need to learn off the computer, and mixing colors is probably one of them, but still.

So that's been a summary of my first week. I didn't write about my Liberal Arts class since all we've done so far is one reading and buy some textbooks. But I'm excited to learn about religion since right now it just doesn't make any sense to me, at all. Hopefully by the end of the semester I'll at least understand it, even though I doubt my athiest beliefs are going to change ;)

Overall I think I'll learn a lot this semester, even though I'm going to be incredibly busy. Doing 4 studio days is a lot of work, but add on a liberal arts class and everything I do online, and there's basically no free time unless I sacrifice sleeping or eating. Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming, when I think about all the videos and fun graphic design projects I would do if I didn't have homework, and then I remember all the homework I do have and how little time there is in the day. But I think it'll all work out ok, although if you see me tweeting about how stressed I am, now you know why.

If you've managed to read this far, I commend you, and I would offer you a cookie if the nature of the internet didn't prevent such things. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll probably be posting some new work (both homework and other stuff) onto here soon.

New post? What?

2009-09-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

Um, hey guys. Remember this? I'm really sorry I haven't posted in a month. It's just that I've been in the middle of several large projects that won't be ready for a while, and all the stuff that's short-term is secret for now. However, since classes are starting again, I'll be much more prolific in the next few months, so hopefully more posts will be coming soon. Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know that I updated my website with the work I did at my charity: water internship. So, if you want to take a look, go to:
http://karenkavett.com/other.html
http://karenkavett.com/identity.html

Enjoy!

More Twitter Backgrounds

2009-08-14T17:51:00.001-07:00

As you saw in a previous post the Twitter Backgrounds I designed for charity: water are online. I made more than the ones you see there though, so I thought I'd share two more which didn't end up making it onto the site. Enjoy :)

Background 1

Background 2

(Sorry for the short posts lately; I'll try to put up a longer one this weekend.)

Liane's CD Cover

2009-08-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Back in October, I designed the album art Liane Graham's CD Wit, A Little Bit, which can be seen here. As I was designed it, I took some "behind the scenes" photos, which I never ended up showing anyone, so here they are. In them, you can see how much color correction I had to end up doing, and how low-budget the photoshoot was :P

(Sorry for the lack of thumbnails)

One
Two
Three
Four

Enjoy, and comments are always appreciated!

Twitter Backgrounds

2009-08-08T06:30:00.001-07:00

Yeah, so I kind of failed once again at updating this week. Sorry about that. Anyway, I've been trying to Tweet about this, but Twitter isn't letting me post and it's getting quite annoying. As many of you know, I'm doing an internship at charity: water and one of the things I've been working on is promotional Twitter backgrounds for them. They finally went up for the public yesterday, so go take a look if you're interested :)

Click here!

[Update] Yeah, so I just searched @charitywater on Twitter to see what kind of response they had gotten to the Twitter backgrounds, and TONS of people had retweeted about them and posted that they were using one. That's kind of awesome :)

New Layout!

2009-08-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates here, but I've been really busy getting my Etsy store together and finishing the new layout on my site. Eventually I may make a more detailed post talking about the different decisions that went into it, but for now, just enjoy :)

The new karenkavett.com!

And don't forget to check out my Etsy shop!

If anything on the site doesn't work for you, please leave a comment!

Old Layouts

2009-07-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

With the redesign of my website being launched soon, I thought I'd write a blog post going through all the past layouts that the site has seen, starting all the back in April 2006 when I first launched it. Also, I've decided to reveal the design I was working on in Summer 2007 but never used, which has never been seen by anyone before. Enjoy!

I first put together my site for my web design class spring semester of junior year of high school. This was my first introduction to HTML, so the design is pretty basic though still functional. Also, I used to call the site Perpetual Motion, instead of just karenkavett.com, so that's where my YouTube username comes from. The photos were all taken by me and the fonts used are Velvet, Georgia, Edition, Ma Sexy, Dance Floor Exit. It was launched on April 20, 2006.

I put together this next layout in August 2006. I just wanted a change, and I also needed room to link to the other site I had just started which had resources like brushes and light stocks to give away. This is also the first time I used the cat with umbrella, which I had just stuck together randomly one day, and then I liked it enough to use it from then on. I traced the vector image of the girl from a photo of one of the Olsen twins, and the fonts used are Arial Narrow, Manzanita, and Tall Paul.

In July 2007, I decided to design the site again, but I didn't really have a clear image of what I was going for. These next two designs were candidates for the main portfolio site and the resources site, but I never ended up using them, because I wanted to expand the site a bit and these didn't really have room to do that.

So, still in the same time frame, I went on to design this layout, which was eventually launched December 31, 2007. This was right around when I started vlogging and when I tried to sell my duct tape stuff for the first time, so I wanted a way to link to all of those different projects easily. I don't really have much to say about the design, other than that it served its purpose for what I needed back then.

That stayed online until December 2008, when I designed what is online now. I decided to get rid of the Manzanita/Tall Paul logo and use a simple Helvetica instead. Also, I decided to change the name of the site from Perpetual Motion to just karenkavett.com. I decided I didn't need such an elaborate home page anymore, so I tried to simplify it a lot and only keep what was really necessary. When I put up this layout, I also decided to take all the fanart off my portfolio and only keep the stuff that was likely to get me a job.

As for what's coming next, you'll have to wait a little while until I finish coding it to find out. But rest assured it's unlike any of what I've done in the past (well, the color scheme is similar to the previous layout but the way it's organized is different).

Thanks so much for reading this, and please leave any comments below!

New site design sneak peak

2009-07-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't told anyone about this yet, but I am working on redesigning my website. It's coming along really well, so I thought I'd give you guys a little sneak peak. It's still similar to what is up now, but cleaner and just better designed. I'm not going to show the whole layout until it goes live, but here's a sneak peak: CLICK HERE.

(The colors didn't save quite right but I don't feel like messing with them now.)

Also, expect a post within the next few days talking about all the past layouts that have been on the site!

Two posters

2009-07-17T08:39:00.001-07:00

This post contains some posters I made back in April but never put on my website. So I'm posting them here so I don't forget next time I update it.

First, my sister asked me to design a poster for her college's production of Merrily We Roll Along. I drew inspiration for the posters from the original poster. As you can see, some elements are the same or similar, but I also added in some of my own ideas. It was kind of tough since I didn't actually see the play until it was being performed, so I only had the wikipedia article to go off of in terms of knowing the plot and other context.

I don't really have much to say about the poster, because I think it's fairly self-explanitory. I think I'm happy with how it came out, but as usual, there are definitely things I could tweak and change. The typeface used is Futura, and it was printed as an 8.5"x11" flyer.

Also, a little while before that, my sister asked me to design a poster for the other show her school had put on, Lend Me a Tenor . This poster wasn't advertising the show; instead it was advertising the opera within the show (that makes more sense if you read the synopsis on Wikipedia, linked above). All the text comes from the canon within the play, and the photo is of the guy that played the part of the opera singer in the opera within the play (did you follow that?).

Anyway, I designed the poster to look like it was made in 1934, which meant doing research in my history of graphic design books and old poster websites. I spent a long time trying to get the photo to look painted without it looking like a cheesy photoshop filter, which ended up being kind of pointless since the way they printed it, you couldn't see the texture at all. As for the typography, I don't know if I got it all right, but I tried to use fonts that were popular back then, in the sort of disorganized way that a lot of them were designed. I don't know if it's entirely historically accurate, but hopefully it's close enough.

No more Myspace

2009-07-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

I decided today to delete my Myspace account, simply because I never log in anymore and I don't really have a use for it now that I'm keeping up with this blog. So here are all the wallpapers and stuff that I used to have on there, most of them made back when I was still a Mugglecast fangirl. Enjoy :)

- Mugglecast Live at Portus -

1280x1024

1280x1024
- Nerdfighters -

1280x1024
- Wrock Show Flyers -

8.5"x11"

8.5"x11"

8.5"x11"

8.5"x11"

8.5"x11"
- How to Apparate -

1280x1024
- Wizrockateers -

1280x1024
- HP Alliance/Whomping Willows -

1280x1024

1024x768
DOWNLOAD THIS IN POSTER FORM
9x12
18x24

1280x1024

1024x768

1280x1024

1024x768
- Wizard Rock -

1280x1024

1280x1024

1280x1024
1024x768

1280x1024
1024x768
- Mugglecast -

1024x768

1280x1024

1024x768

1024x768

1024x768

1280x1024
1024x768

1280x1024
1024x768

1280x1024
1024x768

NYDA

2009-07-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

This post is about the New York Dumbledore's Army flyer that I designed. Info about the NYDA can be found in this video I posted this morning:

As I said in the video, I kind of appointed myself graphic designer for the group, which meant coming up with a logo and basic design style to sort of brand us, so that all future promotional material will all look like it belongs together. I also wanted to have it done by about now so that we could have something to give out at the NY red carpet premiere of HBP, which meant I had about a week. I think with more time I'll be able to flesh out the design a bit better, but I think it turned out fine for now.

Anyway, my first thoughts for the logo were of combining the I love New York graphic (into which the HP Alliance logo would fit perfectly) with the DA logo from the fifth movie. Obviously we couldn't just steal that logo, so in my sketchbook I used various objects like screws, pen caps, and brads dipped in ink to draw DA over and over again until I got something I liked. I scanned them for you to see, if you're interested (sorry for the lack of thumbnails):
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
(Can you find the one I ended up using?)

After that I scanned them in and livetraced one in Illustrator, and began to think about the font that NY should be in. At first I was leaning toward Futura (as seen here) but it didn't really go well with the messy look of the ink, and it was difficult to keep the reference to the I <3 NY symbol there without it being a slab serif font. So in the end I decided to go with Rockwell, which is nice and bold and looks similar to American Typewriter, the font used in the original I <3 NY graphic.

After that I started thinking about the actual design of the flyer. First I just put into a text document all the information that needed to be in it, in order of hierarchy. In terms of typefaces, I decided to use Perpetua as a supporting typeface to Rockwell because it's ery delicate looking and has a nice contrast to the sharp corners of the slab serifs (also, I just love the font and use it whenever I can). I tried to make the design envoke old wood type posters and old newspaper design, because most of the design in the HP movies seems very late 1800s-early 1900s-ish. I tried to keep the sense of magic and whimsy there with the decoratve corners and little stars.

You can see an earlier draft of the flyer and the final version (big enough to print if you so wish) here:
First version
Final version

Please let me know what you think, and if you're in New York, please consider joining the NYDA!

Photos

2009-07-06T20:22:00.001-07:00

I went out taking pictures on Sunday and these were my favorites. Enjoy :)

Fake CD Cover

2009-07-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

In this post I'm going to talk about the album cover I designed for my final challenge in Vlog a Goal Every Day:

This project was fun because there were really no restrictions beyond the title, so I could go in any direction I wanted graphically, and I got to use all kinds of fun effects that usually way to cheesy for real work. As I said above, I decided to make the band a very pretentious contemporary rock band with a touch of emo-ness, who try to be all artsy but just kind of fail. I decided to make the main image the groucho marx glasses but replace the eye holes with other images that are kind of reminiscent of eyes, namely a ferris wheel and an inverted image of the moon. Then, because all emo CD covers need blood on them, I added a drop of blood that could also be taken as a tear coming out of the glasses, because that seemed very, "Ooh, look how clever we are!" Then on top of all of that, I added an image of a serene farm landscape with really dramatic clouds, which I guess could be taken to mean they're masking the pain inside of them with a peaceful exterior, but really I just thought the colors and textures would look cool.

The text I tried to keep pretty simple because I didn't want it competing with the image. The typeface is Helvetica.

Also, if you want to see what my layers palette ended up looking like, you can see it here:
http://www.karenkavett.com/blogp/fakecdlayers.jpg
And if you want to see the original stock photos, they are here:
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/851577
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/868563
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1154350
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1032927
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/515677

Please let me know if you have any questions. This was quite fun :)

Questions. Answered.

2009-07-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone for leaving your questions. Hopefully I'll answer them satisfactorally :)

I love typography. So I wanna know what basic tools you would need to get started in doing some. Is there programs you can get for free/cheaper that someone just starting out could buy/get? How much experience with computers do you think someone would need to be able to do it successfully?
-Sara (Cleverest_Witch)

Well that depends on what you mean by "doing" typography. If you mean making your own fonts, I can't help you there since I've never done it, only read about the basics and then got scared off from how much work goes into it. But if you mean things like laying out books and magazines, the best programs (in my, and most of the industry's opinion) are Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. Illustrator's the best for manipulating letterforms for making logos, while InDesign is the best for any multi-page publication, especially if it has a lot of text. They're pretty expensive, but you can get a student discount which should make it a lot cheaper. But if you're really serious about this, you will need to know those programs really well, so you might as well start now.

In terms of experience, some of it is knowing about the computer but a lot of it is just learning about typography the same as you would learn any other subject. I highly recommend The Type Primer by John Kane. It was my textbook for my Typography I class, and it's great for learning the basics. Once you've learned the basic rules, the best thing to do is experiment. Give yourself fake projects like redesigning an ugly brochure and see what you can come up with. Also, if you ever want feedback, feel free to send me an email.

What has your curriculum been like at during art school, since you're doing graphic design? Is it all art classes, or are there other general education requirements? Do they try to incorporate art-y things into them, since it's an art school and all?

Early on, do you find yourself taking the same sort of classes as people specializing in others things like people doing illustration, painting, and photography? Is only later on that you get to really get into the nitty-gritty of what you'd like to do?
-Jethro

Well at RISD, freshman year is foundation year, which means all the freshman take classes together. Both semesters, we were required to take 2D Design, 3D Design, and Drawing, as well as two liberal arts classes which could be either art history, english, or social sciences (as far as I know, math and science classes taken at Brown don't count for anything so no one takes them).

All the freshman declare majors around March, and then starting sophomore year, we all take classes within our majors. For graphic design, the required courses for sophomores are Typography I and II (which is six credits), Form and Communication (also six credits), and History of Graphic Design. That leaves enough time to also take two liberal arts classes each semester, in which people from all majors are mixed together. Also, we have a short six-week semester called wintersession in which we're encouraged to take studio classes outside our major, so all wintersession classes are also mixed.

Do certain "camps" of art school get along very well, or are there some that are always at odds with each other? (I have in mind that at my school, philosophy/English and business majors would not usually get along so well).
-Jethro

Well, sort of. Almost all the apparel design people I've met have been pretty snotty, so I don't tend to hang around them. And the architecture majors have so much work we hardly ever see them (it's nicknamed archi-torture). But otherwise, the cliques that seem to form don't really seem to be around each major, it's just whoever ends up being friends. So no, from what I've seen, there isn't all that much rivalry between majors.

What programs do you use?
How did you start?
I really want to get into graphic design but I don't know where to begin.
-Laura

I use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign CS3. They're really the standard for graphic design, so it's in your best interest to learn them. I started 6 years ago just by experimenting. I didn't know all that much about the programs, but I wanted to be better at it so I just worked really hard and made stuff in Photoshop for a few hours every day for about 4 years. If you want to start, I'd recommend checking some books on graphic design out of the library just so you have some idea of what typography is, and what is considered "good" design, and then just experiment. Don't worry if the stuff you make at first doesn't look good; if you keep at it, you will improve. Find things that aren't well designed and challenge yourself to redo them, or make up a product or band or something and create a logo and poster design for them. Or, try to design something in the style of a poster or website you like. I promise it's not copying, since you'll inevitably put in some of your own style. And if you ever want feedback, please send me an email and I'd be happy to help.

What sparked your interest in graphic design?
-phampants

This question has slowly been answered throughout older posts from this blog, so I don't really want to go through it all again. This post: http://karenkavett.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheesiness-alert.html is about as much as I'm going to tell you :P

Well, I think that was all the questions. Thank you so much to everyone who commented and I hope I answered your questions fully. If you have any followup questions or if something was unclear, please send me an email or leave a comment!

Questions?

2009-06-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, wow. I completely forgot to update this last week. Well, actually I didn't forget, I just realized every time I was about to, that I didn't really have any ideas for posts. But I've come up with a few for this week, so hopefully they'll come out okay and I can post a few times this week.

One of my ideas was to ask you guys to leave questions about graphic design or typography, or even things about art school, or computer programs, or websites, or anything. So if you guys leave some good questions I'll put up a post in a few days answering them, and hopefully it will be interesting.

Because I feel bad about not posting any actual art things on here for a while, here's another old piece that most of you guys have never seen, a blend featuring Anna from the band Play. Even though I made it in April 2006, I still think it's kind of cute :)

So, please leave questions in the comments! I can't wait to read them :)

Update Fail and Links

2009-06-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I kind of failed at updating this week. I just feel bad always posting old stuff, since it seems like kind of a cop-out. But the trouble is, the only new stuff I'm really doing at the moment is for my internship and I'm not allowed to post it online. So it's kind of a dilemma.

However, I think for this post I'll stop being completely narcissistic and talk about other people for a change, namely recommend design books and podcasts and things that I've found helpful and you guys might like too.

Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-Critical-Designers-Students/dp/1568984480/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245553038&sr=8-3
This is the first book about typeography I read, and it's a really good introduction to the formal things about type. It has sections about the history of type, the parts of the letterforms, and paragraph and book formatting. I really can't recommend it enough for someone who wants an introduction to type in a way that's not completely dull (there are lots of pictures!).

Read Between the Leading Podcast
http://readbetweentheleading.com/
This is a podcast about typography. Yes, it's one of the dorkiest things you can listen to. It's hosted by Aaron Heth and Matt McInerney, two students at Savannah College of Art and Design (I think that's what SCAD stands for. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) It's nice that it's hosted by students because they don't claim to know everything and they talk a lot about design education, which, being an art student, is something I'm quite interested in. They also get some really interesting and prominent guests on the show, like John Boardley from ILoveTypography (see below). Also, none of the shows are over an hour, so it stays interesting without dragging on for too long.

ILoveTypegraphy
http://ilovetypography.com/
This blog is probably the best typography blog out there. It has so much information and John posts mega-awesome-long posts with links to tons of work you never would have see otherwise. It's a really great place to go for inspiration or just to be jealous of other people's talents.

I think that's all I'll write for today. Let me know if you like this kind of post and maybe I can make it a weekly thing.

Drawings

2009-06-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

I said in the last post that I would share some other drawings here. These are probably the only ones you'll see since the rest are kind of embarassing how terrible they are. I don't know, maybe my standards are too high, since half my friends at RISD are illustration majors and they're all incredibly talented. But whatever. Enjoy.

This is probably the drawing I'm most proud of. It was for the RISD home test, which is where they give you three topics and you have to submit drawings of them as with your application and portfolio. The one they do every year is to draw a bike. I spent about three weeks on this, even though it was also from a photo (don't tell the RISD application people). However, if I had tried to do this from life I think I would have permanent neck damage. Anyway, it's in graphite on 18"x24" paper.

This one was also for the RISD home test, and the topic was to draw whatever you want in graphite on 18"x24". So I decided to draw a deer skull with a piece of rope and my dad's gun (it's heavier than it looks). This one probably took about 2 weeks, and I'm pretty happy with it, especially the texture on the skull which took forever. (For full disclosure, I'll admit this was also from a photo).

Ok, this one was from life. It's a drawing of a model I made for drawing class first semester, which was later turned into the larger drawing below. The sketch is in charcoal pencil and the final piece is in charcoal. I'm actually happier with the sketch than the final; I think the little figurines turned out kind of adorable.

This one was also from a model for that class. I don't really have much to say about it since I don't think it's that great of a drawing. It just took forever to get the perspective looking almost acceptable (still not perfect). Oh, maybe I should also explain what it's of. The assignment was to draw an event that happened in our childhood, so I chose the time that a bat got into my room and my mom had to hit it with a racketball racket and trap it under the garbage can.

This was from my second semester drawing class (yes, it was required, otherwise I never would have taken it). I probably spent a good five or six hours getting this to where it is now, so when I remember that day I kind of want to rip my eyes out in boredom.

Finally, this is also from that drawing class. It's really big, probably six feet across, and I also wanted to rip it into tiny little pieces because drawing it was so painful. I think I spent two classes on it, which would probably add up to more than 12 hours in total. I still think the drawing really sucks, but after putting that much time into it, I might as well put it out there.

John Green Drawing

2009-06-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Most of you have probably seen the video I posted of drawing John Green, but if not, here it is:

And here is a scan of the final drawing:

As I said in the beginning of that video, I usually hate to draw. I understand how some people can find it relaxing, but I just feel bored and frustrated when I try to draw from life. Friends of mine who are illustration majors tell me about how they just zone out and lose track of time when they draw, but that zoning out is what I do when I'm designing somthing, not drawing. I know it just takes practice and if I really wanted to, I could get better at it. However, as a graphic designer, I don't really think it's a necessary skill, past doing readable thumbnails.

The thing with drawing for me is moderation. For example, when doing the John Green drawing, I would work for about ten minutes and then take a half hour break. However drawing for any longer than that just makes me tired and annoyed, and you can only imagine what torture the 7.5 hour drawing studio freshman year was.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a little background information on the video. Tomorrow I'll be posting drawings I've done in the past, so be on the lookout for that (I would have included them in this post, but it's late and I don't feel like finding all the images). Let me know in the comments why or why not you like to draw and what your methods are. Also, do you think drawing is a necessary skill for graphic designers?

E-cards

2009-06-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to share what I did last week at my internship, which was making e-cards. It's really exciting because a lot of people will see these and send them, and how well they're designed might play a factor in whether someone sends one, which could cost the charity a donation, which was also kind of nervewracking. But anyway, without further ado, here's how to see them:

Go to https://www.charitywater.org/store/

The cards that I designed are:
Father's Day: 3rd and 4th on the top row, 2nd and 3rd on the bottom row
Birthday: 2nd on the top row
Get Well Soon
In Memoriam
Wedding, Engagement and Anniversary: All

If you like them, please consider sending one and making a donation! It's a really great cause!

Unfinished art

2009-06-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to share some art that I started a while ago and don't really plan on finishing anytime soon. However, I think they still have some potentional so I'd like to share them.

First is this Illustrator piece that I was working on in August 2006 to enter into one of these contests. The skin was fairly easy since I was working right on top of the photo but I was a bit intimidated by the hair and never got around to finishing it.

This was just a random vector illustration that I decided to make one day in December 2007. However, I never really had a use for it so I would periodically forget about it, then come across it in an old folder and try to think of a use for it, and then forget about it again.

Next is a layout I was working on in January 2008 for when I was going to put together a website for my duct tape stuff. I doubt I'll ever use it, but I still think it's kind of cute.

Finally is a logo I was working on in February 2008 for the Chudley Cannons (a Quidditch team from HP) which I was going to put on a purse. I actually think I still have the purse I was working on so if I can find it I might put a picture later. I'm not sure if I'm still a fan of the font, but I might try to work with it more if I have time.

Cheesiness Alert

2009-06-04T09:02:00.001-07:00

What's this? A new blog post? Well, I'm really sorry I didn't post for the past few days; I just started an internship in New York City, which means I leave the house at 7:30AM and don't get back until 7 at night three days a week. It's exhausting but I love it, which is what this blog post is about. I'm warning you, it might get cheesy, so back away now if you don't want to read that sort of thing.

When I opened up Photoshop for the first time 6 years ago and began posting in the blending forum I've mentioned before, I wasn't expecting it to become my career. I was just bored and liked the people who were posting there. So, like a true nerdfighter, I had to get involved. Obviously I wasn't very good at the beginning, but over 4 years of using Photoshop almost every day, I began to pick up on what was good design and what wasn't. I liked the people who were posting and I liked the community, though looking back at it, we were probably very annoying to everyone else on the forum. But it gave me something to do, and it gave me a goal to try to achieve: to become the best blender there. I don't know if I was actually the best, but by the time I stopped posting there two years ago I was certainly better than most of the other people. I had achieved my goal of becoming well-known within the community. Of course, that's when I started getting bored with the forum. I had recently done RISD's pre-college summer program, which showed me that there was a lot more to graphic design than just making computer wallpapers. I decided that I wanted to go to college for graphic design, mostly because I wasn't really that interested in anything else. I got into RISD somehow (looking back at it, my portfolio was horrible), and now I'm learning so much about technical things in design that you can't learn just from experimenting.

Fast foward to this summer. One of my first assignments at my internship was to design some e-cards. These were basically 800x600 graphics that had a short message and the URL put with whatever I could design to show the holiday creatively. And as I was designing them, I realized that these graphics aren't far off from the kind of graphics I was making back in that forum four years ago. Of course they're much better designed than the stuff I was making back then, but the techniques were all the same. And it was just so rewarding that what I had worked so hard on during high school as a way to not be bored could turn into a valuable skill that I can someday make a living off of.

I guess what I'm trying to say through all this rambling is that I love graphic design. And I want to give my 14-year-old self a hug for deciding to stick with it.

That's all for now. I'll try to post more artwork tomorrow.

DFTBA Wallpaper

2009-05-31T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today I want to share with you a wallpaper I made yesterday based on the song DFTBA by Hank Green. I think I got the idea on the train to LeakyCon but only felt like fleshing it out and actually making it yesterday.

To make it, I first wrote out DFTBA in the typeface Din (which incidently is the typeface RISD uses in all their publications, so I kept getting reminded of RISD flyers while making it). I decided to use Din because it was bold enough to fit lots of text inside and it was narrow enough to not look oddly proportioned on a wallpaper. Then I laid out all the text for the letter D, using many different typefaces which I don't feel like listing here (if you want to know what a specific one is, feel free to ask). Then I laid out the rest of the letters, keeping the typeface and color consistant for each phrase and trying to keep the size as consistant as I could, though some of them had to be made larger or smaller to get everything to fit.

That's about all there is to it. I may work with it more in the future to give it an actual application, but for now I think it works fine standing alone as a wallpaper. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

Photo Manipulations

2009-05-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to take a break from graphic design and show you guys some photo manipulations. For a while in high school, I entered contests on www.worth1000.com, and while I usually didn't do very well, I occasionally did alright. For example, this piece got something like 8th place in an advanced contest, which was pretty cool. The contest was to put wings on an object that usually doesn't have them, so I made a flying anvil. This was made in January 2006.

This one was made for a class in high school, in April 2007. I forget exactly what the assignment was, but I decided to manga-ize my face, and put the two sides of my personality on the two sides - the art and creative stuff on one side and the math and organized stuff on the other side (yes, I was kind of a math nerd in high school).

Next are two invisibles. These are some of my favorite manipulations to make, since they combine using the clone tool to obscure part of the photo with using the brush tool to draw in parts of the clothing that need to be there. The first is of some random model, but I'm really happy with it, especially since it was one of the first ones I made, back in December 2005. The other one is of Hank Green of the vlogbrothers, which I made to give him on the Boston Tour de Nerdfighting stop in October 2008.

One last note, I haven't really been getting a lot of comments on this blog. I'm not going to sit here and beg for them, but I really do appreciate what you guys think, so any feedback is welcome :)

Green Day Wallpaper

2009-05-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Today's post takes us back to June 17, 2007. It was right around the time when I was starting to get bored with the blend challenge forum I had been entering contests in, so I decided to make one last wallpaper for there and then call it quits. This wallpaper is kind of the pinnicle of about 3 years of experimenting by myself in Photoshop, before I started RISD and started getting actual design training. While there are definitely things I hate about it now, such as the lack of focal point and the abundance of overly decorative type, I still have a soft spot in my heart for it. I do think I managed to create a pretty nice texture for the photos, and it could be the starting point for a whole promotional campaign (with many major changes, of course). I don't feel like looking up the typefaces, but they were all from dafont.com.

If you guys have any thoughts, please let me know! I recently went through my old hard drive and pulled out some stuff I thought was still fairly decent, so there will be a couple posts coming up with stuff that's 1 or 2 years old. I hope you guys like them; no one has seen most of this stuff in years. I'm kind of nervous showing it, but I don't have much new stuff to post, so hopefully this will suffice.

Without further ado, here is that wallpaper:

(Click to make it bigger)

Dr. Horrible Wallpaper

2009-05-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

I apologize if some of the stuff I'm posting here is now are things you guys have seen before; I really just want to get a record on here of the work I've done recently. I promise you, new work is coming soon!

Today I'm going to talk about the Dr. Horrible wallpaper I made in March and posted a video of on my YouTube channel. It was over spring break and I was being nostaligic looking at old posts of this blending site I used to go on, so I decided to create some fanart for the first time in a long time. It was nice to just go crazy in Photoshop without worrying about a critique in class or having to be sure to put in all the necessary information from some complicated assignment. Overall, it took about 2 hours, and while there are definitely things I could go back and change, I'm still fairly happy with how it came out. The typeface used is AkzidenzGrotesk.

The video:

The wallpaper: Click here

Pottercast Poster

2009-05-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

The first piece I'm writing about here is one that I just made for fun without any real purpose, so I never really got feedback on it. I was bored one night about a month ago so I decided to make a tour poster for Pottercast, using all the shiny new knowledge I had acquired in my Typography and History of Graphic Design classes. I was inspired by a lecture we had had in History of GD about political posters from the 1800s (including one amazing poster for Lincoln which I am very annoyed I cannot find online). Overall I'm pretty happy with it, though I'm still second-guessing the decorative borders on the sides. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

The typefaces used are Joanna, Impact, Clarendon, Playbill, and Wingdings.

(Click the image to see it larger.)

Welcome to karenkavett / blog

2009-05-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. I'm not exactly sure how to start this blog, so I guess I'll just jump in. The purpose of this blog is to show my artwork. You're probably thinking, Wait, don't you have a website? Why do you need two places, you self-indulgent person? Well the reason is that this is will be a place to show work that isn't professional enough to go on my site (like fanart) and to show work that will eventually go on the site when I update it several months from when I make the piece and I don't want to forget it existed (did you follow all that?).

Of course, in the interest of full-disclosure, I will admit that I have previously attempted to blog and epically failed at it. I started one in 2008 which was abandoned after 3 posts. However, I'm really going to try to keep this one up, and if I begin to lose interest, just poke me (...through the internet) until I update again. Also, I will admit upfront that I am not a very good writer. There is a reason why I went to art school and not liberal art school, and why I will make posters for fun but will procrastinate for 5 hours for a paper that takes 30 minutes to write. So don't be expecting blogging on the awesome level of Maureen Johnson, because that's not happening here.

Anyway, I hope that was a suitable explanation for why I am starting this blog. Expect more posts (with actual art in them) soon.