design

NCMA: Porsche by Design

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Last year Laura treated me to spending far too much time in the Porsche by Design exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Since they were allowed, of course I dragged my camera with me.

I'm not sure what the final exposure count was to yield these 10, but it was up there. Turns out, I married a very patient woman.

In hindsight, I think I fell into the trap of shooting against what I was working with. Instead of working so hard to isolate the objects on display, maybe I should have worked to include the audience. It'd have yielded a very different set.

I'm goint to chalk that up to not shooting as often as I'd like and the rust that comes along with that.

What's not to love?

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Look, I'm a fan of web, ePub and the whole Brave New World of publishing. But books that manage to transcend the expected and emerge as mechanical art objects are reminders that, technology be damned, there's a special place for print.

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Expression Tunnel

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I spend a lot of time thinking and working on graphic design. It's how I pay the bills. But I've tried to refrain from including it here—a site I've tried to keep focused on photograph. However, I've had a category for design on this site since launching. I'm thinking it needs to get used every once and while. Occasionally they collide. Like now. I'm working on a cover for boundary 2. These covers are great to work on from a design perspective: challenging.

For this next issue, American Poetry After 1975, I found myself looking for graffiti, largely for textures to build a cover from. In Raleigh, the most accessible (and reliable) graffiti is the Free Expression Tunnel on NCSU's campus.

Now, the chore of editing these and finding a way to make them work as duotones. On a cover.

(Oh. And I'll probably loosen up a bit on posting design related stuff here. At least until the Sky2x site is launched. Which, is actually in production. Shocking.)

macro work

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Right. So, I’m trying to get my act together on the design front after 3 years of working for myself and get a site launched. Well, beyond the joys of 99% content free information contact forms. Fine. The issue being that on the print work, the easy route is rendering JPEGs from InDesign or Illustrator and throwing them up on the site. Okay. “Throwing them up.” isn’t the best phrasing to go with.

boundary 2 detail

It seems the right solution is to shoot them. (Which is why I’m posting about it here.) This isn’t easy. Do I shoot it straight up? (If that’s the case am I just taking the long way to deliver, flat, boring, two dimensional images?) Or do I play with depth of field and try to make them interesting beyond just a simple design sample? I think it’s the later. If I throw in the towel and acknowledge that there’s nothing the same as holding a sample in your hands, pawing through the pages, seeing the way the piece comes together, etc. Then I get some creative license.

That’s good. And horrible all at the same time.

Anyhow, this is a cover for boundary 2 a journal published by Duke University Press. Ed. offices up at the University of Pittsburgh. Speaking of design, I need to get back to it. There’s another of these covers on the horizon.

Off to Atlanta tomorrow for the Doublecross challenge. Sadly, I’ll more than likely not bring the big camera so no action shots.