Hard-edge color field digital art, 2006

I love the subtlety of low chroma near-analogous color palettes. I usually discover great colors while walking around the city. This digital piece is actually based on a photo I snapped in the late winter. It’s got the quintessential Pacific Northwest color palette!! The composition is like some hybrid of my childhood fascination with airplanes and military stuff, my love of beautifully complex chromatic grays and my appreciation of modern architecture. I love to do these kinds of paintings or prints, but they are exceedingly difficult to get just right. I made dozens of iterations just to dial in the colors. Click the image to see a larger version.

Italian Festival Poster

This is a poster I did for the Italian Festival back in 2006, just prior to when I started working at Teague. I scanned a blank page at the end of an old book to get that rustic background. I was dying to use my recent purchase of Linotype’s Optima nova Titling, so I used it as the main typeface. I was really infatuated with those cool ligatures... I must have used ’em all! The italic is my personal digital version of Hermann Zapf’s Palatino–the Stempel foundry version, based on a 54 point letterpress specimen I’ve had for several years. I “distressed” the type in Photoshop and added the “pencil lines”. The leaf fleuron is from Zapf’s Renaissance Antiqua. I really like the aspect ratio of this poster- very classical. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Another typeface

This one’s a take on a linear, geometric template-like typeface, similar to OCR-A, but with a twist. It’s got an Erector Set quality, that when propagated to extremes, becomes lacy and almost baroque. I like it. I might even try to finish this one. Lots of points, though. Click on the images to see more detail.

Hmmm...

I love the great Catalan artists Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, and their fellow countryman architect Antoni Gaudi. Their blobby, semi-anthropomorphic aesthetic genius inspires me often. One day last year I was messing around and created this thing. Hmmm...

Click on image for more detail... if you dare.

Latest Roman type design

I’ve been struggling with keeping up the momentum on my latest Roman type. I generally work on my type designs during the fall and winter months, because the cold, wet and dark days are conducive to settling indoors in front of a warm computer display. I’ve been really, really busy at my real, day job, and that’s made it a little more challenging, too. But, I really like the direction this design is going. Kinda a weird blend of Hermann Zapf, Oldrich Menhart and Matthew Carter. Maybe it’s a little too sharp and condensed, but it seems to set nicely at smallish sizes. I often get this far on a design, and then I seem to lose interest and begin something else. Must keep going... must finish a typeface design... just one...

Typographic experiment

I’ve been experimenting with software for years, and I have a thousand tricks to mess with type and imagery. Here is one example of me trying to pay homage to those 80s and 90s Cranbrook pioneers, like Ed Fella and the late, great P. Scott Makela, sorta. Now, Messrs Fella and Makela will ALWAYS kick my ass when it comes to raw creative horsepower, but I’m having fun. My main problem is I always prefer to take naps than get off my butt and be creative. I used to draw and paint until dawn, but since I’ve been a parent (pushing 18 years as of this writing), I can’t do those marathon stints anymore. Click on the image to get a bigger preview.

http://www.edfella.com/