Too Many Shows

I made a whole heap of cards this month, and even with a few shows getting pushed, I still wound up with six cards. Whew. I'm trying to mix it up between illustrated cards and photographic cards. Keeps things interesting. Though I did overuse Futura, now that I look back over the batch. I'm particularly fond of the VMW graphic, and not so much of the names that were added to the bottom at the very last minute.

Mustache March!

My friend Avi's office has a Mustache March competition where the guys grow mustaches during March and then submit photos of their mustaches for official judging in random categories. He had the brilliant idea of dressing up as an old-timey villain and posing menacingly in photos with another friend of ours. He sent me the raw photos to dress them up and put together a single graphic for submission. It's hilarious. The judges thought so too, awarding Avi's mustache Most Daring. Hooray!

Theater May-hem

Super corny, I know. I quite like the quiet simplicity of the Before Sex/After Sex card, and the photo effect on the Love, Lust card. The other one is kind of eh. This month is very red, apparently.

Only Two Shows

Kinda skimpy this month. I realized I've subconsciously been making an effort to make each card different in style and color. I think it's partially a result of boredom with my "regular" style and trying to experiment and see what kinds of strange things I can imagine. Though looking at the cards as a whole, I think that my preferences for bold colors and singular images are still very apparent.

Spray Paint is Awesome!

I've been itching to make art again for a while. In college I made a screenprint of a woman wearing an artichoke as a dress, and I'd always planned on continuing that series to include other vegetables but didn't get around to it until about a month ago. I designed two more prints and revised the artichoke one, sent them off to be laser-cut into stencils (cheating, I know), bought spray paint at 33third (huge selection of colors, cheap, local, and very helpful), and waited eagerly for my stencils to arrive. I painted my first batch February 19 and when I brought them down to Jewlicious to show off, people liked them so much they all sold! I even got tweeted! I made a second batch earlier this week, and I'm hoping to experiment with different materials in the near future. Let me know if you want to buy one or three!

Here's a single artichoke print, three colors on cardboard, the inside rectangle being 6" x 11":

And one with all three on one board, from left bok choi, broccoli, artichoke:

Happy Go Marni! Now Happier!

I just redesigned the blog of a good friend and baker/blogger extraordinaire, Marni Landes, aka Happy Go Marni. We wanted something that reflected her perpetually sunny disposition and showcased her subject matter, but didn't overshadow the photos of the delicious pastries. I was very pleased with it, she loved it, and best of all, reading the comments, it seems everyone else did too! I will shamelessly quote here:

• "it's awesome!!! great job! i love the mini-marni!"
• "Lovely and bright! Very Happy Go Marni. :)"
• "Super cute new design!"
• "I love it!!!"
• "Love the new look! Yellow makes me happy, and it's a unique blog color. Perfect."
• "Congrats on the new look! It DOES seem more fitting. It looks more vibrant and bubbly -- just as you always are. ;)"
• "Love the wonderful logo and sunny mood of your new design! Makes me happier, too, for "happy go marni"!"

Here's the new look on the blog:

And a close up of the logo:

Theater Theater

New shows. I was feeling the stark single images this month.

Jewlicious 6.0!

I was down in Long Beach today at Jewlicious, an incredible weekend of Jewish arts, culture, thought, and socializing in the 18-30 crowd. This is the third year I've sold my M.o.T.s Jewish t-shirts there and it may have been my most successful yet. I met some cool people, got tweeted, and got to stick around for an acoustic set by Matisyahu at the end of the day!

This lady wasn't there for Jewlicious but had come to bring her daughter to Hebrew school. She hung around for a while to chat and bought a shirt. Kinda random.

Purim Party

I recently started doing some work for Temple Beth Hillel, a borderline-confusing exercise because of the name. Here is my first project for them, a 5" x 7" postcard for their 4th Annual Purim at the Pier event at the Santa Monica Pier. They wanted the card to be hip and evoke club party fliers, but it still had to be family-friendly to target families with kids. We were all very happy with the result.

New Year, New Shows

Theater postcards for the new year. These were done on a super-quick turnaround, and while I'm happy with how they came out, I wish I had a bit more time to finesse them. Two of the cards this time around are photographic. While the Chicago card in particular looks very straight-forward, it took quite a bit of work to make a photo that had just the right quality to it: nothing too modern to keep it timeless, simultaneously sharp and nostalgic, recognizable and distinctive. I had to use all the tools in my photo-editing and color-correction toolbox to make something that looks like it didn't have any work done to it.

Annie's Got a Gun

This past weekend was a production of Annie Get Your Gun by the Jewish Women's Repertory Company. I was originally brought in to design the poster for the show, and though they later decided to go in a different direction and use another designer, they paid me for my work and we parted on good terms, as it should be. I liked my poster and thought it would be a shame if no one else saw it. We went through multiple ideas and rounds of revisions on this one. Here's my favorite of the bunch.

Christmas in the Theater

Here are some new theater cards I made. I like the house on the Timeless Christmas one.

How Much Can You Bench?

It's a common tradition in some Jewish circles to give out a bencher, or Grace After Meals prayer book, as a souvenir at weddings and bar mitzvahs. My friend Rachel is getting married today and instead of going with one of the standard benchers out there, she asked me to designed a custom bencher for her wedding. Rachel loves to sing, and one of the things she wanted to include was a whole section of songs in the back. It was hard work typesetting the Hebrew and getting all the text in, but we made our deadline and it came out great. Check it out here. Click on the arrows on the right and left to flip the pages.

Children's Theater

Two more cards for kids’ shows.

Urban Sweetness

A friend of mine runs her own wedding cake and pastry company called Urban Sweets Bakery and wanted to spruce up the look of her blog, which you can find here. She had been using a standard blog template and wanted something more personal that reflected her brand and her tastes. Here's the result:

Seriously, how awesome are those cakes!

Cheesesteak Latkes

My friend Ben is directing a show that our friend Matt wrote. It's hilarious, so check it out this weekend. Show info here. Guess who made the poster.

Lotsa Cards

So many shows going on now. Here are some postcards.

I'm on Broadway!

Well, not quite. Over the summer I designed the title and key art for a show in the New York Musical Theater Festival, which starts next week. It's a musical about vampires called The Cure. If you're in the area, why not check it out.

Happy New Year!

Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. It is a time for reflection when we assess the previous year and make our aspirations for the coming one. Our family has a tradition that at the ritual-filled dinner the first night of Rosh Hashanah, we go around the table and say one nice thing that happened this year. My year has been an interesting one. What has meant the most to me are the new things I've seen, and that I've managed to be entirely self-supporting as a freelance designer. Hell, I'm impressed I pulled it off. Here's to bigger and better things.

This is the Rosh Hashanah card I sent out to friends and family. The yellow spells out "Shana Tova" or "Good Year" in Hebrew, the traditional greeting this time of year.

Cards Cards Cards

For some upcoming shows. Pinocchio’s Playhouse is their children’s program, and I’m now doing cards for that as well.