Sexy New Header

As you may have noticed, I have a new header.


Originally, the robot was going to be used for an album cover for Lupe Fiasco's Fahrenheit 1/15 Part II: Revenge of the Nerds mixtape. The "official" album cover is this monstrosity:


Needless to say, I could not let this aggression stand, man. Especially when I have to look at it in my iTunes cover flow every time I want to listen to an otherwise good album. Lupe Fiasco has three Fahrenheit 1/15 mixtapes: the first, Part II: Revenge of the Nerds, and Part III: A Rhyming Ape. The album covers are all pretty bad.

I thought it would be a fun project to assign myself over winter break to remake the artwork in Illustrator as part of a series. I hadn't really decided on what Part I would look like, but Revenge of the Nerds would feature a robot MC stomping around an illustrated city and A Rhyming Ape, which is simply Fiasco rhyming over beats taken from the Gorillaz' Demon Days album, would feature King Kong, with mic in hand, terrorizing the city from the side of the Sears tower.* The idea was nerdy, but that's alright, because that's clearly a theme with Fiasco. Alas, I never got around to it though. No need to let the robot go to waste though.

Below is my original sketch that I traced in Illustrator.


And here's the final product.


I took the photo from the top floor of the Amsterdam public library (A place I've mentioned numerous times before on my blog). I haven't had the need to use Photoshop in a while, so this was kind of a refresher.

* Yes, I know that King Kong originally climbed up the Empire State Building, not the Sears Tower. But since Fiasco hails from a city in the Midwest, the best city in the whole wide, wide world (Chicago), I thought it was appropriate.

Make My Day

Look at what I just found on Netflix. Three of my favorite interests together in one fun package: Helvetica, Smith, and Wesson.

The Dirty Harry collection has been re-released with sick new packaging. Normally I think Helvetica looks dumb in a "gritty" context, or anywhere near an action movie, but I think it works well here with the retro feel of the movies. And the black, white, and red ties it all together. Here's another good one:

Helvetica

(Otherwise known as Neue Haas Grotesk)

A few days ago I finally got around to updating my X-Box to the new Live Experience. The new interface doesn't really add to the whole "experience," but it does offer a new feature that's given my 360 a new use. X-Box Live now lets you stream Netflix movies from your "Watch Instantly" queue, right onto your TV. Needless, to say, this is all I've been doing for the last few days.

Last night I watched Gary Hustwit's 2007 documentary Helvetica, a film that describes the history and the uses of the eponymous font. Originally created in 1975 by Max Miedinger and Edward Hoffmann at the Swiss Haas Type Foundry, it exploded in the design world in the sixties, and it's recently seen a resurgence thanks to brands like American Apparel. The documentary had interviews with a host of designers that belong to one of two camps: either they love the font, or they hate it with a passion. However, all of them agreed on a few key points. First, it's a very neutral font – so much so that its detractors say it's emotionless. Second, Helvetica's ubiquitous. The film showed plenty of examples of where the font can be found in the everyday world. For instance, Target's logo, the American Airlines Logo, and all of New York City's street signs are in one form of Helvetica or another. If you've seen any of the posters I've made in the last year, it's no secret that Helvetica is probably my favorite font. There's a nice tension between how plain it is and how unique it is – you can instantly tell it's Helvetica, as opposed to Arial. It's unassuming enough to be used in conjunction with an image, and interesting enough to be the only element in the design. In the documentary, one designer explained that he likes using Helvetica because it challenges him to create something new out of something so common. I appreciate it for the same reason. Instead of pencil or paint, it's like creating imagery using Helvetica as a medium. It's an essential design element, like a stripe or a dot.

Here are some of my favorite uses of Helvetica that I've seen:

Paul Sahre's cover design for Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Helvetica "sits" perfectly on top of the photography and commands just enough presence to make the copy noticeable without being the focus. A few of the designers in the film explained that Helvetica has the perfect balance of positive space (the font itself) and negative space (everything around it).

Experimental Jetset's oft-imitated Beatles shirt. Helvetica's just a "solid" font (it's actually kind of fat). Structurally, it's strong enough to be the only thing on the shirt.

And finally, Linotype's Helbotica. This is just really cool.

When the Apocalyptic ice storm hit the West Coast a few days ago, I was stuck in Yreka, California overnight, en route back to the Pac-N-Dub from Los Angeles. In my room at the "Comfort" Inn, I watched King of the Hill (one of my favorite animated TV shows) and saw, to my repulsion, that the Fox channel is using Helvetica as their main font. I might have to re-evaluate my love of Helvetica if they keep up this pedestrian mess (to sound as snobby as possible).