Analog Design (part 1)

The essence of the analog approach is rooted in adding hand-drawn or sketched images into the mix of imagery prior to starting a design. See above example, an abstract sketch has been digitized and added to an interface for a website. This adds authenticity and individuality to the design. The shapes compliment the circular background, and the organic patterns fit this brand very well. I added additional color by filling in the shapes within the sketch in photoshop. These can be manipulated for custom integration in any design. My advice is to keep them subtle within the design, they will create a bit of mystery on the page. Since they are created at high resolution, print usage is still an option.  If you have questions about applying this technique, email me. Thank you.  More on this subject in a future post.

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Nigel & Baxter

This is not very creative, but here are our 2 terrors..

halloween 08: The Dead.

We hosted a party this halloween. 'Dead' was the theme. See pix here:

http://www.vincentburkhead.com/downloads/Halloween_08_gallery

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Marginal Design

The next time you design a website, or Art Direct one, do not forget to include the margins of the 'page'. Screen resolutions vary widely, no matter your target audience. I always design for a larger screen size, while making it work for the baseline of 1024 px x 768 px. See the image, this file is 1600 x 1550 px.

As you can see, the margins are designed. The design and content remain centered on the screen even at the smallest screen size. To reduce the load on the page, the large background image of water ripples can be used as highly compressed jpegs. Abstract and biomorphic shapes are better to compress that representative patterns. See the basic effect here: http://www.adagencycreative.com this site is still in development, to be live soon.. If you have any questions, please email me.

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Sketchbook Creatology

Greetings,

I'm pleased to announce my decision to start a blog about creativity. I decided to call it Creatologist. I'm happy to see it was available! My definition of the word is the merging of creativity and technology to help bring a concept to life. This applies to both commercial and personal work. The name is open enough, adds technology into the equation, and it does not limit my topics exclusively to the world of commercial graphic design.

Sketchbook Creatology:

If you are interested in extending the life of a doodle or sketch in your sketchbook, converting it into a vector file and editing it with adobe illustrator is one option. See below the original sketch using first pencil, then pen and ink.

I digitally photographed and imported the sketch into illustrator at high resolution, converted the file into vector, then colorized it using illustrator. 

Many color variables can be easily explored using both layers and filters in illustrator. Now the artwork is fully scalable to large sizes for printing on canvas or fine art paper. The opportunity for selling signed limited editions now exists. And the original pen & ink is still intact. Converting sketches into digital files offers an efficient way to explore many color variations much faster than by traditional means. This means you can produce more work, and share it with more people.

Technology is your friend if you know how to make it work for you both as a commercial Art Director as well as an illustrator or fine artist. For more detailed information about this process, feel free to email me.

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