Jeff the Designer

Details. Send Details.

Jeff — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:24:01 +0000

Spend any time being responsible for a Web site, and you will get an email saying the site is broken. Too often, “broken” is the full description of the error encountered by the helpful / outraged sender. While I agree that “broken” is bad news, it’s a bit broad when it comes to directing my efforts toward the actual malfunction. The addition of even a few basic details would be an enormous help.

I understand on one level why people would be reluctant to offer more information about something odd that happened on a Web site they visited. Nobody likes seeming uninformed, and without some knowledge of how Web sites work what insight can they offer?

I recently received the answer to this question, and not coincidentally it came attached to the first “your site’s broken” email that I did not hate receiving. The person who sent it simply attached a screen capture of what he saw when the error happened. This is a fantastically simple solution. It saved me who knows how much time chasing shadows in the back corner of the server- an effort as fruitless as chasing a monkey through a leprechaun fight. All that was necessary was to send a few details.

Snakehead? That’s not appetizing.

Jeff — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:34:33 +0000

The Northern Snakehead is a ravenous aquatic killing machine. An extra-thick coating of mucous covers the skin of this invasive species of fish. It has the look of a fossil that swam loose from it’s chunk of limestone to menace the native fishes of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and modern civilization in general. Is this an appetizing description which belongs on the menu of an exclusive New York City restaurant? An article published in the Huffington Post details the efforts of the Gramercy Tavern to tease the palettes of their wealthy patrons with the Northern Snakehead in the name of locally-sourced sustainable cuisine.

The idea of an organic (if you disregard the rogue chemistry in the Chesapeake basin), locally grown, sustainable, food that also reduces risks to native fish is a fantastic sell. Adding this fantastic super-food to one’s menu under the name “Snakehead” is a mistake. The actual name of, or part of, the critter from which our lunch came is immaterial. Diners just want a name by which to identify their new favorite. For example, restaurants do not sell “bovine maternal excretion”, they sell “milk”.

The Snakehead could benefit from a similar type of obfuscation, or as we in the industry call it- rebranding. The Latin name of the northern snakehead is Channa argus, so why not add this to the menu as Argus? Or Chesapeake Argus? Or “sea bass”, as any number of vaguely-related ocean species are known to fish aficionados? Instead of asking a customer to overlook the true identity of a fish which a cosmopolitan sensibility will naturally find unappetizing (that’s “yucky” to us simple Midwestern folk), why not simply assign the mystery fish a new identity? A rebrand. Cedar plank grilled Chesapeake Argus with angel hair pasta anyone?

It’s a Major Award!

Jeff — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:26:39 +0000

Graphic design awards are the purest indicator of artistic genius and market savvy. Unless I don’t receive one for which I sent an entry, in which case they are hollow popularity contests. The American Package Design Awards are clearly in the former category. Nothing says “integrity” like giving me an award.

On paper the award was given to my employer, The Spangler Design Team. However, as this award-winning packaging came to life, I was the primary creative, client liaison, sales guy wrangler, and fish-species selector.

This packaging line has been very successful in getting from the shelves to the consumer, which is the best assessment of its effectiveness. Getting an award from people who see 1600 entries, 80% of which don’t get recognized, is kind of nice too.

Apes on a Unicycle?

Jeff — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:34:54 +0000

Some lucky person discovered part of my Web site using the truly unlikely image search string “apes on a unicycle”. Here are the results for that search. I noticed this unlikely visitor during my regular visit to the dashboard of SlimStat, the plug-in I use to log traffic here.

This discovery was an eye-opener on two levels. First, it is a demonstration of the enormous reach of Google. This version of my site is only a couple months old at the time of this writing, and it is hardly a high-traffic destination. Yet, the hard-working search spiders located and indexed my site thoroughly enough to find one obscure drawing in my sketchbook.

Second, it is a reminder of how differently it is possible to view the same subject. I could have spent weeks writing a list of search strings that might potentially return my site and never thought of the words “apes on a unicycle”. However, to the programmer that wrote the search spider it is just as valid a way to describe my site as my own name. To the person who ran this unlikely search, “apes on a unicycle” is how they will remember their visit. I’ll have to review my own preconceptions about my site, as well as apes for that matter.

What Does Creativity Look Like?

Jeff — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:00:22 +0000

Only a tiny number of times in the many years I’ve been a graphic designer has an idea occurred to me that was fully resolved the moment it fired the appropriate synapse. Usually it is just the unresolved outline of an idea that arrives unexpectedly. I must quickly document the idea in the form of a quick sketch. If I fail to record a good idea when it happens, later I’ll remember only that I HAD a good idea, but not what that idea was.

It is not necessary for me to draw an intricate and refined sketch to record an idea, I just need to get down the basic shape. Often the finished product is quite different from my first drawing. This difference is what I discover and resolve during the mysterious and intangible Creative Process. An idea that became a T-Shirt crept up on me one afternoon while I was waiting for something or another, I don’t remember exactly what. Probably on hold with tech support, waiting for a bunch of files to upload, coffee to brew, or just for the clock to strike 5pm.

The Pout-O-Rama is a winter fishing expedition to northern Minnesota to catch burbot, commonly known as eelpout. As per usual my mind drifted to my next fishing expedition and the beginning of the official Pout-O-Rama T-shirt took shape.

I have some idea what an eelpout looks like, but can not draw one from memory accurately enough to satisfy the many sharp-eyed anglers who would one day wear this shirt. So, I found a photo from a previous Pout-O-Rama showing an eelpout at the appropriate angle, and traced it using Adobe Illustrator.

Once I had created the shape of the eelpout, I added it to my art board and began building some of the other elements that would be a part of the artwork. It’s not necessary at this stage to be concerned with the color of the various elements. I just use colors that contrast with one another in order to keep track of everything.

I experimented with different typefaces, looking for one that read well but didn’t appear too serious and refined. The type would, after all, say “Pout-O-Rama”. Elegant, laboriously hand-kerned, serif type just wouldn’t properly reflect the feel of this event. I paid particular attention to the shape of the capital letter “O”. I intended to use the “O” as a design element and hoped to find one that was basically symmetrical. However, while every capital O is basically round, very few are perfect circles. I would eventually substitute an set of actual circles for the cap O. The mysterious and intangible Creative Process at work.

The basic elements of the Pout-O-Rama art are assembled. The idea of using the center of the “O” as a hole in the ice occurred by accident. I was scaling the circles that form the “O” and a set accidentally remained in the original position. Knowing which accidents to later attribute to artistic inspiration is an important part of the Creative Process. If the Pout-O-Rama shirt ever ends up in the Guggenheim, I’m going to claim the idea struck while I was meditating on man’s inhumanity to man over a pint of absinthe.

The most frustrating and important part of any project is when you realize the art is just not coming together the way you originally sketched it. I was monkeying around with the colors and shapes of the type trying to make “Pout-O-Rama” very prominent. The horizontal format was keeping the type too small when constrained to the width of a T-Shirt graphic (about 10-11 inches). That doggone eelpout in the center draws the reader’s eye into the center of the design, and the type just flaps in the breeze on both sides. Cover your ears kids, I’m about to start cursing…

The discovery that your art is going to need a date with the wrecking ball is not easy to take. Sometimes it’s best to just begin the delicate editing process, also expressed as “Slash and Burn! Spare nothing! Yar har har har!!!” Other times you need to ease into it, by developing some textures and color ideas that will eventually be useful. I used lines and a few circles in a lighter blue to suggest scratches, ridges, cracks, and bubbles seen in natural river ice. I simplified the shape of the ring of ice chips around the hole and tightened up the auger marks and cracks running down the hole as well. Still, this thing was going to need a major restructuring.

As it turned out, I needed to break the type out of the horizontal line I originally sketched and stack the words so that they could be larger in relation to the other elements. Now I felt the art was looking good, it made good use of the available space and balanced nicely. I had to carefully simplify everything in the art so that it could be printed with the tacky silkscreen ink that goes on T-Shirts.

The T-Shirt will be printed with five different inks. Since I selected a dark blue shirt, white ink needed to be printed first so that the lighter colors would look correct. Almost all printing inks are formulated to be printed on a white medium such as a white T-Shirt or white paper. Printing this white base first takes this into account. I built a separate ‘plate’ that gave the printer the exact shape, size, and position of the area each ink would cover. The printer uses this art to make silkscreens which are used to print the finished T-Shirts. The large picture to the left is the white plate. Ink is printed where there is white, nothing is printed where there is black. The black part of the file is just used to position the inks in relation to a fixed size frame.

The pictures to the left are the dark blue, light blue, dark tan, and light tan plates. These inks are printed one at a time on top of the white base layer.

Here is the final art printed on a shirt, complete with fabric wrinkles and flare from the camera flash. Isn’t it amazing how simple the process is from the first idea to finished product? Only several hundred steps!

Can Your Plug-in Do This?

Jeff — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:50:47 +0000

Every so often I create something I’m proud of which is so subtle that many viewers will not even notice my work. Digitally-modified photography, popularly referred to as a picture that’s been “airbrushed” or “Photoshopped” is so common that an original unmodified image has become the rare exception. Many of these modified photos are created by inexperienced users. The poor-quality results are often viewed by those with so little understanding of this process that they don’t realize an “airbrushed” image has almost certainly NOT been retouched with an actual airbrush (an air -powered tool that sprays a very fine stream of liquid pigment).

The human eye is very adept at spotting unnatural variations in light, shadow, or color. While many viewers aren’t aware of the technical deficiencies of the modified photos they see, they do have the sense that the photo looks “funny”, or “just a little off”. It takes experience and attention to detail to create a digital image that does not immediately appear unnatural to the viewer.

I earned the title Prince of Shadows while working on a project that required me to build a number of drop-shadows using excellent photography of expensive jewelry. My final images were used in a catalog that was (despite the fact that I did not design it) very well designed. My altered photos were used alongside photos that were essentially unmodified which gave the viewer a consistent reference point for natural lighting. Because this was going to be the case, I took extra care to make my images look as natural as possible.

The pearl necklace in this photo was shot on a piece of textured paper. The white field at the bottom of the photo was added with Photoshop and it was my responsibility to rebuild the shadow to look as though it continues naturally. These photos show the individual parts of the shadow that it was necessary to build.

Each spot of black that was added as I built the shadow was shaped to match a particular part of the necklace. I feathered the edges and adjusted the opacity by trial-and-error until that section of the necklace, or individual pearl, looked as though it was casting a natural shadow. Photoshop offers native functions to create shadows, and any number of third-party plug-ins are available to make this kind of task go more quickly. In some instances, this image included, the time that might be saved using a canned function to produce a mediocre shadow was not worth the sacrifice in quality.

Step 1 – The Original Photo

Step 3 – The Overall Shadow

Step 5 – Adding Details

Step 7 – Adding Details

Step 9 – Adding Details

Step 2 – Adding the White Field

Step 4 – Adding Details

Step 6 – Adding Details

Step 8 – Adding Details

Step 10 – The Final Image

NuAire 40th Anniversary Logo on Cake

Jeff — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:26:42 +0000

I’ve designed many logos in my career, but only one has appeared on a cake. I consider this quite an honor. NuAire is a long-time client of my employer, The Spangler Design Team, and as such I have worked with them for many years. Their 40th Anniversary logo rendered surprisingly well in frosting. Now I wish the original design had a tasty green border.

Designer Launches New Web Site, Logos Featuring Cartoon Fish Prominent

Jeff — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:39:57 +0000

Jeff Kaphingst, an award-winning Graphic Designer, launched a newly updated Web site today. The long-anticipated update includes new and better creative, improved design, hybrid fuel system, and also many funny and sarcastic cartoons.

New and unconventional creative such as the official T-Shirt designs for southeast Minnesotas most famous fishing event, the Roughfish Roundup, are included. New and unconventional creative such as the official T-Shirt designs for southeast Minnesota’s most famous fishing event, the Roughfish Roundup, are included.

Mastery Series Initial Concepts – 3M Scientific Anglers

Jeff — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:12:27 +0000

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3M Scientific Anglers Mastery Series Packaging

Jeff — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:18:37 +0000

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