Lost Ideas

Tonight I was skimming through some old archived files and stumbled upon a lot of what I call "Lost Ideas." Most are design options presented to clients but never used, and some are ideas I played around with during the creative process but never presented.

All of them sit lonely amongst the 0's and 1's, in long forgotten files collecting dust on my HD.

I've been working digitally since 1991 so my archives are filled with graphic elements like this. I probably have thousands of things I can't even remember and I'm not sure if I could open some of them anymore? (FreeHand version 2.0) If I was smart I'd go back through everything and catalog all the art. I'll get to that Someday. (Yeah right.)

Perusing through these lost ideas from both the recent and long past was cathartic and nostalgic. So being a fair graphic warden I decided to let a handful of my designed captives out of their solitary confinement so they could see the light of day once again.


Collection of Lost Ideas.

Heart Worm™

Heart Worm™ Character Design.

Armin Vit is like the Mark Twain of the design industry. He's talented, creative, and witty. So when he asked me to be part of the re-branding of Valentine's Day for NPR Studio 360 I was happy to contribute to the effort.

(cue mission impossible theme music)

My specific task was to re-create a character to replace the standard "Cupid." This whole effort is tongue in cheek so immediately an idea formed in my mind and that was "Heart Worm™."


I Heart VDAY!

I decided to give a graphic nod to one of our industries most iconic designs with this usage of the Heart Worm™.


Twitter name application.

The Heart Worm™ can easily be adapted to work in any social media environment.


Heart Worm™ LOVE.

A classic and timeless application of the Heart Worm™ demonstrating it's versatility.

So on Valentine’s Day let your heart be infested with the Heart Worm™. Its burrowing presence will give you passionate heart burn for the apple of your eye. Eat your heart out Cupid! Plus, it can flex into a number of helpful shapes as you can see above.

Read more about this whole project at Brand New.

Download Heart Worm™
Download the Heart Worm™ Brand Sheet

Heart Worm™ T-Shirt
- Infest Your Chest with our Unique Heart Worm™ Tee.

http://www.zazzle.com/heart_worm_tshirt-235510814215009727

Fa La La La Lifetime - Take III

Original Hand Lettering for "Fa La La La Lifetime."

This now makes the third Christmas in a row that the Lifetime Channel has used my "Fa La La La Lifetime" branding for their holiday promotional efforts.


"Fa La La La Lifetime" bug graphic.

During this season you'll see it as a bug in the lower right hand corner of the screen and it'll also appear in numerous TV spots. (But the ones that look ugly and where their in house people added dimension to the letter forms I had nothing to do with.)


"Fa La La La Lifetime Movie Network"

Lifetime contacted me again this year to create additional custom lettering to augment their current seasonal branding efforts. The image above shows a stacked option and I also created a long horizontal option with everything resting on the same baseline as well.


"Fa La La La LMN" bug graphic.

This shows an abbreviated version I also created that can be used as a bug graphic.


"Fa La La La LMN" alternate bug graphic.

Sometimes when working on projects like this I explore beyond the requested deliverables. So on this project I also provided them with the type nested inside a fun shape as well. Not sure they'll ever use it but I liked it.

TV Promotional Spot - 2009

Hardy Har Har

Comedy Club Logo Mark.

One of my favorite agencies communication firms in these parts is ReThink Communications. They do some seriously cool work and are a blast to work with on projects too.

I've worked with them in the past to create some fun icons for their client Kolachy Co. The most recent project was a logo mark for the Vancouver Comedy Festival.


Vancouver Comedy Festival Logo.

Design is so much easier when you have a great concept. The CD on this job Jeff Harrison had dialed in on a great concept and we worked together to create what you see above.


Promotional poster designed by Rethink.

I love the promotional posters Rethink designed. Very funny. And the promotional TV spots they created are excellent too. You can watch them here.

Seek and You Will Find

Street Level Logo Design.

How do you motivate a group of stiff necked suits, or a room full of cubicle zombies, or any other garden variety form of corporate drone? Well, if you're "Street Level Adventures" you design custom treasure hunts to facilitate corporate team building for some of the nations largest companies.


Cycloptic Man.

The purpose behind the adventures is to help a team focus and operate in a unified manner. Because of that I decided to create a humanoid character with an all-seeing eye. A graphic nod to "E Pluribus Unum" if you will.

The adventures are fun and creative so I wanted the mark to be playful as well. The typography is all hand lettered too to go with the style of the artwork.


Unused Logo Concept.

This design approach played off of a man hole cover concept. Once again I kept the aesthetic playful and hand lettered the design.


Unused Logo Concept.

This business designs all types of adventures in various genres so I decided to play off a cloak and dagger theme motif. I liked it but felt it pigeon holed the perception of what type of genre adventures they offered, so it wasn't used.

The Saramond Quests

"Iron Dragons" book cover design.

A friend of mine by the name of Derek P. Gilbert is a multi-talented guy. He has done podcasting, worked as a rock music DJ on radio, hosting a FM talk radio show, a barber shop quartet member, seller of steel, and an author. He's like a utility player in baseball who can play any position he needs, to get the job done. And if that wasn't enough, he's also a really nice guy as well.

I finally got around to listening to his first audio book "Iron Dragons" about five months ago. I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of fantasy so that is why I put off getting into it for about a year. Well needless to say once I started listening to his book I was hooked, it's a compelling story with a nice twist and rich character development.

Since Derek has a voice for radio he also reads the book too, the fact it's FREE to anyone who wants to listen via Podiobooks.com is a no-brainer.

I was less impressed with the books cover however. I didn't think it did the story justice and felt the series needed to have a branded look established since this is "Book One of The Saramond Quests."

I had to tread lightly though, you see his wife Sharon designed the book cover and I didn't want to offend anyone, especially a friends better half.

Well, I never had to approach Derek because he beat me to it, and asked me to design a consistent brand for him. He's donated a lot of time sharing his work with everyone so I didn't mind sharing some of mine as well. If in the process I can help a friends work get the attention it deserves that is reward enough IMO.


"The Saramond Quests" brand logo.

Since these books will live online I kept the design streamlined. Each book will be branded with a new color but keep the same general format to create a branded coherent series. The first book is the crown jewel in the story arch so we settled on purple, this also had a lot to do with the fact that I negotiated a deal with one of the top fantasy artists in this genre Ciruelo Cabral. He gave us permission to use his dragon illustration on the cover. I was thrilled that he allowed us the privilege to use his art for this project, thank you Ciruelo!

Combine the incredible dragon art with a new branding for "The Saramond Quests" and we now have a firm visual foundation for future covers. Derek of course loves the new cover and I'll be helping him with his future covers as well.


"The Saramond Quests" brand logo.

I thought the iconic dragon looked pretty cool so I created a t-shirt design with it.

Derek has also just released another FREE audio book called "The God Conspiracy" which is in a totally different genre but once again another fun listen.

I didn't however design this latest cover, his wife did. Like Schultz on Hogan's Heros "I see nothing!"

The Designers of Summer

I love baseball. The sport, the history, the stats and even the analogies. I played it all the time growing up and during my summers in high school me and my friends would drive up to Seattle and hang out at the Kingdome all day collecting autographs, catching balls during batting practice and of course enjoying the game. (As much as one could enjoy it, because the Mariners really sucked back then)

I also collected baseball cards growing up. I had an awesome collection with hundreds of some of the best MLB all-stars from rookie all the way through to their retirement. Unfortunately after I graduated from art school it took me eight months to get my first job, the economy like now was pretty bad and I sold my collection to get some quick cash. (I still regret that decision)

In 1997 I accepted a job at Upper Deck Company as a senior designer in their baseball division. I worked at Upper Deck for three years and it was a great experience and I made some awesome friends I still keep in contact with to this day.

I was quickly blown away by how far trading cards had come since I was a collector. In fact you'll find the highest form of print technology in the trading card industry and they're always looking for next form of print tech they can integrate into cards.

Some of the technologies I designed for were:
- Printing full-color with multiple spot colors
- Metallic Inks
- Foil Stamping
- Embossing
- Die-Cutting
- Laser Cutting
- Holographic Foil and Imagery
- Custom Packaging and Paper Engineering
- Flexography
- Embroidery

The following is a grab bag sampling of a few of the hundreds of trading cards etc. I designed at Upper Deck.


1998 UD3™ card design.

The approach I took with this set was to make the card itself look like a high tech user interface. The design integrated a multitude of print technologies and I really liked how the whole set came out.

As in every industry however they're are always critics and the trading card industry is legion with them. One guy that goes by the name of "Bull Dog" made the following comment on the above design.

"This card set has everything but the kitchen sink. I hate it."

Maybe Bull Dog was right seeing as this card is worth a whopping quarter now?


Victory™ brand logo design.

I designed several brand logos for Upper Deck while I worked there and unfortunately Victory™ is one of them. I say that because I had exactly half a day to design a brand logo and at the end of that day we were going to meet with marketing and pick a direction for this new line of product.

I had done about 3-4 designs and put them up in the conference room along with other designers concepts and than at the last moment I stuck this one up. I didn't really like it that much but thought "One more won't hurt."

Well, guess which one marketing loved. Yep, dumb move and all the other designers groaned knowing they'd have to work this beast into their designs. I got a lot of sarcastic feedback from my fellow creatives over that one and it was all well deserved too.


Victory™ brand card design.

The Victory™ brand by Upper Deck was like the Toyota Tercel of Upper Decks products. No frills, basic full-color printing and not much else. But I still tried to make the design as interesting as I could for the childhood collectors who this was targeted at. (Nevermind the hideous logo I cursed our department with)


Another Victory™ brand insert card.

When designing cards at Upper Deck we had access to a photo room that archived thousands of pictures of pro athletes. I could pull the slides and scan them for my specific design and to use in my final mechanicals. The photo guys would use my design as a guide to pick the remaining set of player photos, and production would use my digital files to set up the gang run of all the cards.


"A Piece of History" Babe Ruth bat card.

Upper Deck is the industry leader when it comes to sports collectibles, creating unique one of a kind products for very avid fans of professional sports. Not every fan can afford an original bat used by Babe Ruth however, so Upper Deck purchased one from Sotheby's and decided to share the wealth with collectors everywhere by putting pieces of the bat on trading cards.

They had me design the official branded card that would showcase this piece of history.

As much fun as this project was the absolute best part of it was being able to handle this bat myself and take a few swings with it. Knowing it was destined to be cut into pieces, I insisted we photograph it and use that image in the card design as well. One VP at Upper Deck liked my work so much he gave me one of the cards when it was finally produced.


1999 Upper Deck Encore insert card.

This image doesn't do this card justice. It has a nice rainbow foil substrate it was printed on along with silver foil stamping. This was one of my favorite insert cards I designed while working there IMO.


1999 Upper Deck Century insert card.

I was kind of like a roaming designer at Upper Deck, I'd work on MLB, NBA, NFL and in this case NHL product lines. I know nothing about hockey, but due to the popularity of the whole "Techno" vibe I had developed for the other sports we adapted it to the new set of hockey cards.


1999 Upper Deck Retro brand foil pack design.

Foil pack design was always a hit or miss form of printing. Sometimes the flexography came out nice and other times it looked like a retarded monkey printed it. This specific design worked well for flexo.


1998 Upper Deck bobblehead cards.

One friend I made at Upper Deck was a very talented lead designer named Wayne Wilcoxen. The guy is brilliant when it comes to paper engineering (Anything actually) and he figured out a production method that allowed a card to lay flat in the package but once opened could be assembled into a paper bobble head doll.

I helped in picking the photos and did all the illustrations for the various sports. If I had these growing up they would have been no-brainer bb gun targets. ;-P


1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck CD card designs.

Upper Deck has never been shy about trying new approaches to trading card collecting. These CD cards had short videos on them, audio, interactive menus, and stats. All though well intentioned this product was not very well received by the collecting community. Simply put they prefer paper products.

Now if Upper Deck could integrate a Harry Potter like interactive paper experience they may have something they could bank on.


1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck POP mobile design.

This picture makes it hard to determine the scale of this mobile but the pyramid part of it was about 14 inches square at the top. I was responsible for all the marketing pieces for this new product launch and when it bombed the marketing guy I was working with (One of the nicest marketing people I've ever worked with BTW) was fired.

It's been nearly a decade since I worked at Upper Deck but they are a client of mine now and I still create a variety of work for them and consider my former employer one of the best jobs I ever had.

0-63 in 7 Seconds

Over the last 23 years I've worked on a lot of different type of illustrative design projects, but my favorite type of project is still logo designs. Sometimes it may be my own client, but most often it's for another agency or firm.

I always find logo designs challenging in that I have to discover that one concept that will be an appropriate, creative, and hopefully clever solution for my clients business or product.

Back in 2003 my friend Paul Howalt introduced me to Bill Gardner the author of "Logolounge I, II, III, IV and V." Bill invited me to submit for his second book and I've been addicted to his site Logolounge.com ever since.

The logo lounge books have become the most popular design publications in our industry and now they've started to put together a new series derived from the ever growing archive that is Logolounge.com and the first one out of the gate was "Logolounge: Master Library Vol. 1 - Crest Logos" which also featured "14" of my logo designs in it.

Logolounge Master Library 2 - Animals & Mythology
A few weeks back I was contacted by the publisher and notified that the next book in the series "Logolounge Master Library 2 - Animals & Mythology" would contain "63" of my logo designs. At first I thought someone made a typo, but was shocked to discover it was accurate.


Logolounge Master Library 2 - Animals & Mythology: 63 Logos in 7 seconds.

I'm so honored just to have any of my work in this wonderful collection. I didn't want to post all "63" so I figured the easiest way was to do a simple animation that loops through all of them. Kind of speed reading for bloggers I suppose?

Mrs. Green

Meet Mrs. Green.

I work with agencies both big and small and a local firm Design Point Inc. approached me about creating a character for one of their clients called "Mrs. Green."

I love doing character design. Creating an illustrative persona can be challenging since it'll be directly related to a company or product in the eyes of the public.

I was provided a list of characteristics the firm said needed to be reflected in Mrs. Green. When I first read them I couldn't help myself and laughed because I knew it was an unfiltered client wish list for the character. But that said it wasn't impossible, it was just an interesting mix of attributes pinpoined by their client.

- She needs to be a hip Mom (Not Betty Crocker)
- She needs to have a nice friendly smile
- Have her wearing Sarah Palin glasses
- Red hair like Ariel from the "Little Mermaid" (No I'm not kidding)
- Have her wearing a light green shirt

Pruning Mrs. Green.

I think we went through a total of four rounds making subtle changes to body language, hand position, frame thickness on glasses etc.


Final Mrs. Green brand created by Design Point Inc.

This shows the final branded mark the agency put together using my character art. It remains to be seen if she becomes as well known as other product characters like Mrs. Buttersworth, or The Pillsbury Doughboy, but word of mouth on the grocery shelves is that Mr. Clean has taken a shine to her, so her future looks promising.

Ambigram I am

"Von" ambigram.

Ever since "The Da Vinci Code" was published in 2003 I've been wanting to play around with an ambigram design. I've just never found the time.

The other day I doodled out my first name and figured it wouldn't take too long to build so I put this design together.


Ambigram in action.

My name is pretty easy to do this type of treatment too since it's only one letter away from being a very simple palindrome.

A real creative challenge would be taking my last name "Glitschka" and creating an ambigram from that. It may take another six years however before I get around to that though.

Billy Mays Magical Beard. (Take 2)

Impeccable + Grooming = Iconic

I've been fascinated with all things Billy Mays since I first saw him in person years ago pitching Quick N Brite at a state fair prior to his prime time pitchman glory. Nothing has changed really, he's still using the same modus operandi.

With the hit of the new reality TV show "Pitchmen" I've decided to repost the Billy Mays Magical Beard PDF I created back in January before I knew about the new TV show.

Accept no substitutes, this is the original, and authentic one of a kind "Magical Beard" from the worlds greatest pitchman. It's not the products, it's not his loud voice overs, it's not his thumbs up, it's the one and only mystical power of his immaculate facial hair that captivates viewers and closes the sale.

I'm honored that this design was included in The Best Custom Type List of 2009. (So far that is) Billy may no longer be among the living now but his infamous facial hair will live on via the wonder of the internet.

But wait there is more! You too can embrace the iconic whiskers of infomercial fame yourself! Download this hairy relic and hang it in your work area to inspire your own path to success.

PDF Art Download
Billy Mays Magical Beard PDF

Serial Design Killers

My original "Fa La La La Lifetime" Seasonal Branding.

For the past two holiday seasons Lifetime Television has used the Christmas Seasonal Branding I created to promote with. They keep using my art to promote because it's proven to be marketing gold and a ratings winner each year. Awesome!


Lifetime Lovers' Lame.

In our industry a marketing person falls into one of two categories IMO:

A Good Marketing Person: They understand and appreciate the role a designer plays in a project. They communicate well with creatives and equip them to produce appropriate solutions by providing a coherent marketing strategy. They avoid playing art director, and let the designer steer the design. They desire well conceived and executed design and artwork just as much as the designer does. And they know that when combined with common sense marketing the end result will be far more effective and compelling in the end. In other words the recipe for success is founded upon a solid creative process and a mutual respect relationship between creative and marketing.

A Bad Marketing Person: They don't care to understand nor appreciate the role a designer plays in a project. Their opinion is paramount. They think they communicate well with everyone, until someone questions their opinion. Their idea of an appropriate solution doesn't come about from a coherent marketing strategy, but rather based off of what they see someone else doing. Cloaking it in their own psycho-babble, they sell it as an original idea they came up with. They love to play art director, and can often be heard saying "I took art class in college." or "Can you make the logo bigger?" They desire to just get the job done, because designers are too picky and no one will notice or care about that anyway. They think the creative process is a derived formula, so re-heating borrowed ideas is their recipe for success. If it fails they blame the designer, if it succeeds they take all the credit and further feed their self-deception.

When I first worked on the Christmas Seasonal Branding for Lifetime I worked with a good marketing person. The end result was a very successful campaign using nice artwork.

Back in February a designer friend emailed me and asked if I'd done a "Valentines" project for Lifetime because she saw something on the channel that looked like my work but wasn't sure. I dialed in and discovered the above "Lifetime Lovers' Lane" being used to promote another seasonal campaign that was clearly derived from my original artwork. Someone at Lifetime had hacked together the words they needed and crudely Frankensteined a design worthy of flaming torches and pitch forks.

My first thought was "That looks like complete crap!" followed by "Why didn't they hire me to do something fresh?" It didn't make sense, this marketing person (Good) knew better than to do this so I contacted him and he was as surprised as I was. He had moved on to another division and a new marketing person (Bad) was running the show now. He agreed they should have hired me to do it and apologized. He passed my name on to the new marketing weasel...uh...person and that was the end of that.


Mother #$@! Lifetime.

It's now May and one thing is for sure, Lifetime wouldn't know good design if it sat in their lap and called them Mama.

The bad marketing person is playing art director again. A new type of Frankensteined design has been birthed to promote "Mothers Day." I wonder what the next bastardized incarnation will be?

Years ago me and former co-worker coined a phrase to define this type of marketing genius. We referred to them as "Serial Design Killers." This bad marketing person is headed for a Lifetime of design crime and the body count now stands at two.

Free Speech

Free Speech Mark.

When I first started blogging back in 2005 I had no idea what I'd really do with it? For the most part it seems like a natural online opportunity to exercise your "First Amendment" rights. Everyone has an opinion and blogging gave everyone an easy way to share that opinion with others.

And that is exactly what I use my blog for. I share my artwork, experiences (Both good and bad), fun and informative information, commentary and rants. Even though a blog can be very cathartic in a way, it can still serve a practical purpose for others to glean from and that is what I enjoy the most.

I don't often get into politics, frankly speaking I'm annoyed by almost every politician regardless of what side of the political fence they come from. One of my favorite sayings regarding politics is this:

POLITICS
Poly: Many Ticks: Blood Suckers

A friend of mine here in Portland Oregon has both a local talk radio show and a national talk radio show. His name is Lars Larson and he asked me to create some graphics to promote Free Speech and help get the word out regarding the new efforts on The Fairness Doctrine to restrict Free Speech on talk radio.


Topical Badge Graphics.

When I was given the saying "Don't Touch My Dial" I couldn't help but remember the funny scene from the movie Rush Hour where Lee (Jackie Chan) changes Carters (Chris Tucker) radio. OK, back to the regularly scheduled blog post.

I think Free Speech is arguably the most important aspect of freedom we have in this country and I've never understood how something like The Fairness Doctrine can even co-exist with it?

I don't want some Mulla like "Localism Council" telling me what I can and cannot listen to on the radio or worse, telling me I need to let someone else post on my blog so as to be more balanced. Maybe some like that approach to life, but I don't so I was happy to help with the graphics.


One of several promotional banner ads I created.

I created a media kit for the "Don't Touch My Dial" campaign to help them get the word out. (Not responsible for their web site design however)


Free Speech T-Shirts.

Free Speech Products-O-Plenty!
- View Mens T-Shirt (White)
- View Mens T-Shirt (Black)
- View Womens T-Shirt
- Stickers
- Buttons
- Coffee Mug

What ever your political views be it Repugnican or Democrap I think we can all agree that Free Speech is worth protecting. But I'm sure you'll exercise yours in my comments if you disagree. ;-P


Thumbnails from my project folder.

I thumbnail sketch ideas with what ever I have when I get inspired, hence red pens, pencils, vellum, and regular paper.

PS: Since I'm posting on the topic of "Free Speech" I thought it would be appropriate to share with you one of my favorite podcasts called "Future Quake." (Yeah I know their site is ugly but the content is excellent) Recently they interviewed Judge Andrew P. Napolitano and the information was nothing short of incredible. Listen to the interview here.