 My first Penguins
posted: July 1, 2010
rejected comp So you've all seen my personal work and school projects, but now comes the exciting part; real-live design work.
In my first month at Penguin, I've been lucky enough to work on a dozen books or so, and even design a few myself. These are far from being ready for print, and will probably go through some minor changes along the way, but so far the art directors, editors, and authors have approved the results.
My first project is one I started on a few weeks before I even got to New York. I guess Paul Buckley wanted to be sure he was getting his money's worth, so he sent me the hardcover ofThis is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry, and told me to have something in mind for the paperback by the time I came in on to work.
The book is about a man dealing with a failing marriage and an autistic son. He owns a landscaping business, which factors largely into the story, as well as my designs.
Rejected comp
Approved Mechanical
A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, by Slavenka Drakulic is a series of short stories, told by different animals about history and experiences of communism. A few of the more memorable characters in the book are the Mouse and the Bear, so I knew right away that I wanted to use them somehow for the cover.
Rejected comps, with minor changes to the last one.
Approved Mechanical
Lies of the Heart is my first non-illustrated book cover.
It's a novel about a woman whose husband is murdered by the mentally challenged man that they were taking care of. The story deals with a lot of issues of emotional culpability and relationship dynamics, so the image for the paperback had to be understated and contemplative.
Rejected Comps
Approved Mechanical
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Also, Design Related just ran a nice interview with Paul Buckley about his new Penguin 75 book, and a few of my illustrations are featured on the side bar
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How are you feeling today?
posted: May 5, 2010
Self-explanatory:   The King of Comedy
posted: April 2, 2010
Our latest assignment for Katherine Streeter was a open-ended celebrity portrait. I chose a straightforward representation of Buster Keaton.
 This project also taught me a new photoshop trick for eliminating those awful stepped gradients without resorting to imports from illustrator. Simply applied the "Add Noise" filter to the gradient layer. The example above is intentionally grainy, but as long as you keep the noise level low, you can get a very smooth finish. Firefox vs Safari: Color Wars
posted: March 20, 2010
For most of you, this might be old news, but for the rest it is the solution to a problem that seems to be plaguing a lot of artists who post images on the web. I've noticed that some images look very different in different browsers, and some don't. Until last night I had no idea how to control this. So, If you are frustrated with the same problem yourself, read on. If not, then snicker to yourself at my dreadfully delayed technological puberty and be on your way.
All of the message boards I found simply offered the advice "make sure your images are converted to sRGB", which I was already doing with little results. So I decided to try some other things. Of course, your photoshop file is the image you want everyone else to see:  So then you sRGB it, save at 72 dpi, and upload, only to be greeted by some pale washy colors in firefox. Safari seems to be doing things right, though... My solution is this: After you convert to sRGB, click on View>Proof Setup>Monitor RGB:  AHA! That's what shows up online, is it not? All that's left to do now is adjust the image back to the way you want it...  And "save for web", using any file type you like:  And that seems to solve the problem. Safari and Firefox are finally getting along. There are a few minor differences, but nothing like what we were dealing with before:  I've tried a bunch of things, and this seems to work pretty well. However, it is probably a sketchy, roundabout way to do something that could easily be done another way. If you know a better way to do this, please let me know, since I am only stumbling my way blindly through this incoherent voodoo-babble myself. |
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