Wall
Of
Scribbles

Tell Me a Story

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Summary

I’ve made Tell Me a Story to do one thing: tell stories. The only requirements to tell a story are a title, and the story itself. If you don’t want to leave your name, you don’t have to. If you don’t want people to contact you via email, you don’t have to leave it. Like I said, the focus is on the story. There’s no real limit on the kinds of stories that you can tell.

- Excerpt from the press release: Link

Detail…

I love stories. I really do. I love stories so much that I wanted to create an easy way for others to tell their stories. I focused on the story, and the telling therein. I wanted to make sure that a story was the first thing that the user saw when they got there. I wanted it to be easy to get another story, and I wanted to take the pain out of telling stories.

So I kept it simple. to view another story, you just click the “tell me another” button. to tell a story, it’s one form with only two required fields. That’s it. No signing up, no account that needs to be made, no CAPSHA, nothing. Just story telling.

Feel free to tell your own.

http://storiesshouldbetold.com

Danielle & Mike

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Summary

I was asked to make Stag & Doe tickets, as well as Wine Labels for Danielle & Mike. They had the fantastic idea of having a “black and white” wedding. Everything was to be done in a sort of 1920’s black and white motif which was what most heavily influenced my ideas.

Detail…

I was asked to try and stay with the theme of both events, and as an added bonus, the Stag & Doe was referred to as a “Speakeasy.” Now I don’t know how much illegal moonshine they were swigging during the night, but it was a fantastic idea. I opted to use some old-fashioned fonts and arrange the tickets to look like an olde-time newspaper ad. The tickets were printed on a thick light brown card stock, and the end result turned out great.

The wine labels presented an interesting problem. As they already had the wine label sheets, I had to create a 4-up layout with the labels aligned to the crop marks on the paper. The actual cropped areas were actually misaligned and so my end result was all slightly askew. Running them on the printer was an adventure for me and the print guy, but in the end we got it all sorted out. We also found out that one of the printers needs some serious re-alignment.

Everything worked out in the end, and I wish Danielle and Mike all the best in their future together.

What the clients had to say

[Corey] went above and beyond our expectations when we commissioned him with the job of designing our Stag and Doe tickets. His creative and precision work definitely fulfilled the simple, classic design we were looking for. His timely delivery of the product greatly benefited us as we were able to sell more tickets due to having them before we expected. All in all we were more then happy with his work and professionalism and would definitely use his services again and again!

- Mike Rita-Procter

Amplified Analytics

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Summary

Found through Twitter, Amplified Analytics and I got to chatting about getting a blog set up for their website: AmplifiedAnalytics.com. They wanted the blog to look the exact same so that the user wouldn’t be jarred by the sudden change in layout. They had a small window for me to do the work, as they wanted to launch the blog along with their updated layout.

Details…

Amplified Analytics came to me wondering if I would be able to develop a theme for WordPress based off of their websites’ current layout. They also needed it done in about 4 days. After looking everything over, I agreed to help them and dug in to ripping their layout apart and into a WordPress theme.

I restructured some of the HTML and cleaned up the CSS, taking out everything that wasn’t needed for the new theme. I added styles for nested commenting so that if Amplified Analytics ever chose, they could enable that up to 5 levels without any issues. The layout was browser tested from ie6 and up and turned out great. I made sure that all of the different views were polished and working including Search, Archives, and the 404 page.

After a live updating session to fine tune the design to their liking, Amplified Analytics were happy with the result and went off to get their blog up and running.

They have since gone live with the design, and it’s working out great for them.

What the clients had to say

“We hired Corey to create a wordpress theme that would integrate with the style of our corporate website.  We gave Corey about a 4 day window to complete the project and he completed it in 9 hours! Well before our deadline.”

“I was really happy with the whole engagement: Corey was quick, detailed, asked the right questions to elicit requirements for an otherwise informally documented project. Communication was amazing throughout the whole process.”

- Matthew Yankelovich, Amplified Analytics

http://www.amplifiedanalytics.com/

Editorial Layout

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Summary

Using an existing magazine layout, recreate it for a different subject matter, including your own copy with a minimum word count, images, and remaking any logos that are used.

Detail…

Easily the most entertaining assignment from our Design Composition class, we were given the assignment of re-using an existing magazine layout (no online magazines allowed). We had to find or create our own copy, images, and had to change attributes of the layout as required.

After scouring at least 50 magazines, I found a layout that really stood out to me. It was from an issue of  Road & Track, and actually worked well. It was a two page spread, very colourful, yet still had enough copy area for me to meet all of the requirements.

I pulled my images from stock.xchng, which is a stock photography website offering both free and premium high resolution photos. I am a huge fan of the website. My copy came from a very extensive Wiki article about cycling, which I had to trim up and try and construct into a workable story. We didn’t have to write a whole story from scratch, but the teacher didn’t want Lipsum either, so the content had to at least make some sense.

I had to make alterations to the layout due the the dominating colours of the layout. Where the original was mostly black and olive greens, I opted to go with red, due to the logo and use of red in the large image. I also had to add a gradient to the image in the bottom right in order to read the text that is placed there. The original layout had a much lighter photo, which allowed the text to be black with little readability issues. Given that I was now using a rich blue image, it made the text blend a lot more, and so I had to compensate.

I also added the gear to the start of the story, the red tab under the left page number, changed the top logo – It used to be R&Ts Ampersand – and altered some of the small, supporting symbols on the page to better reflect the content.

Overall I’m really happy with how it all turned out, and this piece was featured in a recent Open House at Mohawk College.

Taste of Tawse

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Summary

Final project for our Image Editing Fundamentals class, we were given the chance to create an invitation and coaster design for Tawse Winery, a Winery located in the Niagara Region of Ontario. We had to photograph the product(s) in question, and using those photos and supplied copy, create an invitation and coaster. I left the die lines on this assignment, so that you can see what would have been bleed, versus what would have actually been used.

Detail…

I opted to use a bottle of red for the coaster design, because I felt it looked a fair bit stronger against the white backdrop than their white wine bottles. The deep red used in the label, along with the black bottle made for a strong contrast that I’m pretty happy about.

The invitation was more difficult, as we were required to use a picture of wine in this as well. Had I had the option, I would have opted to leave it out in lieu of a more refined and simplified invitation layout. Given the restrictions at hand though, I feel that my invitation design denoted the class and sophistication for the event. I chose a script font, despite suggestion otherwise, because I felt that it being an invitation, it added a bit of a personal touch. To that end, I made sure to select an easy to read font so as not to lose the message in the fonts designs.

Though I am happy with how the end products came out, some of the restrictions applied to the assignment limited what we could have done. It was a good exercise in working with what you have, and I’m very grateful that Tawse Winery allowed us to use their brand .

Imposition Booklet

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Summary

Our final project for our Printing Process & Workflow class, we were given 9 pages of copy and images, and told to create a 16 page spread complete with front panel, back panel, and a table of contents. We were not allowed to remove any of the copy or images, but could add any copy we felt worked.

Detail…

I can assure you that getting the copy to fit 14 pages was no easy task. given that we were encouraged to adjust margins, create our own headers and footers, and generally create our own look and feel.

Given that the copy was basically a crash course in creating Impositions, I opted to go with a construction colour theme (Black and Yellow) and split the content into logical chapters. I used typography to creatively define chapters (both in the table of contents and with chapter headings), as well as for a touch of decoration (last page of the book)

I found it difficult to space everything out without ruining the general look and feel of the text. To get the text to go the extra pages, our options were limited to increasing the font size, leading, etc. and/or adjusting margins. Though I did both within what looked good, I still found I was pages short.

This inspired me to create the Chapter headings and additional resource sections. By adding these sections, I was able to add a touch of style to the booklet, as well as organize everything into logical sections. The overall result was an increase in readability and overall aesthetic increase.

Band Logo Exercise

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Summary

The Band Logo exercise was a 3 part exercise for our first year typography and design course, all to be done using only Adobe Illustrator CS3.

Detail…

In the first portion, we were told to select an artist that we liked, in my case Butch Walker, and create three new logo ideas. We were also given the opportunity to create a band for the exercise, but I opted to go with an existing musician. We had to sketch out at least 10 ideas, and select three that we thought were our best work. I chose three very different designs due to Butch Walker’s wide range of musical styles.

From there, we were told to select one of those three logos, and create an album cover and inside using provided die lines. I opted to go with what I still feel is one of Butch Walkers strongest albums: Letters. I wanted a disco-effect with a splash of Franz Ferdinand in the design. This lead to the angled lines and choice of text. The teacher denied us the chance to colourize the cover due to time constraints, so sadly my cover is grayscale only.

The last part was to create a venue poster for our selected band. I opted to go with a retro-feeling design because I felt it went best with the logo that I ran with. I kept the background in dark shades, and used bright colours to really bring out the text. Using only some built in effects in Illustrator, I was able to create a retro glass shine that really compliments the text.

Overall I feel the project was an interesting exercise, though I wouldn’t have done it all in Illustrator, if only to avoid some of the layout headaches that are accompanied with the program. It gave us a chance to really flex our creative muscles and do more than simply follow instructions. In this case, the instructions were only guidelines; we were only limited by what we could come up with.