Re: Logos

Creating a logo is hard.

Creating a logo by yourself—without feedback—is way hard.

Creating a logo by yourself, without feedback and without a proper brief is TOO hard.

And yet...

Dear Designers

Everyone, I've discovered this amazing line of paper that I think everyone should know about. It's called Heaven 42 by Scheufelen. It's ultra white. Nothing warm about it; it's stark white, cold white, laboratory white. And it feels amazing. It feels like you can't hurt it. Like it has a sort of innate protection magicked into it—it feels otherworldly. We ran a job at work a while ago, ordered parent sheets and cut it down ourselves. There was scrap left over which would normally be tossed, but I set it aside because I knew we had something special on our hands and I wasn't going to let it go so easily. The scraps were only about three inches wide, so I made note pads out of them. It's been one of the most rewarding decisions of my recent life. I yearnto take notes on this paper—100 # coated text weight. I should explain that it's not a gloss coat (obviously not, you couldn't write on it then), it's a soft smooth coating that just... oh, you just want to touch it and you want to draw on it and doodle on it with just about anything you can get your hands on. It's fine for pencil; it's marvelous for pen. I recently bought a new technical pen—.35— and when I combined the two, it was... there's no other word for it. Heaven.

Heaven 42, I reckon.

I'm getting a little tired of high speed cameras. Slow motion has always been awesome, of course, and it really came into its own as film and editing quality went way up in the last ten years or so. But once Mythbusters got a hold of it...well there just wasn't much for it from that point on. There's a show on Discovery called Time Warp that consists almost exclusively of high speed cinematography. It's gotten to be a bit much.

Hopefully it'll go out of style soon... and then come back in style around the time I'm ready to make my first commercial or music video or something.

Zach Kimmel: Graphic Designer/Window Washer

Indeed, I can design a business card for you, I can give your website a facelift, and I can do a complete communications overhaul for your company.

I also am discovering that I clean a mean window.

Oh my, I do hope this is all building towards something.

Michelle and I are watching The Sopranos together, start to finish. I'd never even seen a whole episode up until last night. Four episodes deep, I immediately see what the fuss was about. I'm so sorry I missed it while it was a thing. Better late than never, though.

Did you know that there are people out there who start their own businesses? I mean, from nothing. Like, before they decided to create the business, the shop, the store, the firm, whatever it is, before that decision, there was nothing there. How can a person do that? How does a person figure out that there is a need for a service that is not being met or met properly, and how does a person make other people understand that they are being left wanting?

And then, once the thing's going, how do you deal with the endless hordes of people who tell you that you're charging too much for your product or service? How do you deal with people who always expect more for less, who don't consider for a moment just how ungodly hard you work just to keep the doors open?

Oh ye downtrodden entrepreneurs of America, my hat is off to you.

George Cayley's Glider

An important step on the road to manned flight, George Cayley's glider is an invention that is too often overlooked in history. Not only did Cayley invent the first manned glider, but he also earned for himself the title of "Father of Aerodynamics." These booklets illustrate the history and science behind the Glider, as well as the many milestones achieved in flight because of this invention.

Guns or Butter

This informational poster illustrates the economic principle known as "guns or butter," which postulates that a government only spends money on one of two things: Defense or Social programs. This poster, designed to be mailed to tax payers, illustrates the magnitude of the US military budget by building big-ticket items out of people. Other information displayed includes amounts of each item in the US arsenal, and other associations with the cost of food aid in relation to populations of various nations, as compared with the cost of military equipment.

2009: A Pessimist's Calendar

A pessimist sees all of the greatest holidays through a very different lens. Where most see joy and time with family, a pessimist sees hassle and headache. This series of postcards chronicles a year through the eyes of a pessimist, illustrated by hand with expressive images and type combined with photography.

This project saw a lot of ups and downs. I'm finally at a point where I'm happy with it, though.