Toot yer own horn they say

At least those promotion-minded folks. I’m not very good at tootin’ but here it goes. Did you just laugh at “tootin”?

4 of my projects won some awards. CASE District awards to be exact. What is CASE you ask? “Council for Advancement & Support of Education”. This is what their website says, “CASE is an international association of higher education institutions. Each of CASE’s North American districts presents awards for higher education communications”.
Here’s the list:
1. Silver award – KU Giving, Winter 2009
        Excellence in graphic design — Magazine Cover
2. Bronze award – KU Endowment Annual Report 09- “8 Great Things”
        Excellence in graphic design — Editorial design
3. Bronze award – KU Chancellors Club Gala invitational packet
        Excellence in graphic design — Special publications
4. Bronze award – KU Chancellors Club ad series
        Excellence in advertising — Print ad series

I sure do like the color bronze don’t I? I do think it compliments my complexion the best.

1. Magazine Cover. Those are actual WWII medical artifacts from the KU Med center's History of Medicine Library and Museum. There are some scary looking tools in that collection.

2. Annual Report

3. Chancellor's Club Invitations. That typeface is hand drawn. I'm old school!

4. Print ad campaign

Mr. Sapp

Here are a few sketches of my wife’s grandfather while he was still around. His name was Whitney, she calls him “G-Pa”

Whitney reading a book. A nap would soon follow.

Reading the newspaper.

I’m a poster child

I’m in a poster show! Well, not me, a couple of my posters are. The official title is Mid America Manifesto: Music Poster Design and Printmaker Showcase. It’s showcasing poster designs from designers in 5 states, We’ll see how it goes. Below is the poster for this show. And below that are the two posters of mine they chose to be in it. I shouldn’t show them so you have to go to see them. I bet if you get off the couch to see the real deal you’ll get some free wine out of it, but don’t hold me to that. There are bunch of great designers in it, including my bud Jud of Killer Kite Productions. Ha! ” bud Jud”, I’ve been waitin’ to use that unoriginal rhyme for quite a while.

Go see it at 1819 Central Gallery in KC. The opening is January 8 at 6 PM. (if your a little on the slow side, the address is the same as the name of the place)

1. The official show poster designed by DJG design

2. One of mine

3. The other of mine

Gimme a brake!

Here is a random post. Brake job time on the Dodge Dart. The thing about these old cars is they are simple enough a person like myself can work on them. It went smoothly. I did have to go back to the parts store 2 times to exchange the wrong parts I was given and the modern day parts don’t always fit these old timers right so there was some “jimmying” that had to happen.

After taking it apart, it sure makes me wonder how engineers design this stuff, especially older stuff that work with mechanics and not microchips. “This kind of spring here, a metal clip with a cable here, a little doohickey there and voilà, you gots yerself a brake system son”. Pretty amazing, and all these little parts work together to help my 3000-pound green bean come to a complete stop.

1. Those are standard issue mechanic's socks and slippers.

3. Before and After. Then I repeated this 3 more times, though a little different between the front and back brakes.

“Me want cookie! Om nom nom nom”

Here is some recent work I did for local company, Ancient Grains (no website yet, that’s my job as well). When I say “local” I mean in downtown Lawrence. When I say “company” I mean one woman, Hilary Kass, sweating away in a kitchen (certified of course) cranking out some super tasty baked goods. Her products are gluten free, egg free and dairy free. Yeah, I know, doesn’t sound very tasty, but believe you me, her stuff is yumscious. Double Chocolate Chip is so good it can cure blindness. That’s my own statement, not an official claim by Hilary. You can buy her goods at the Merc, The Casbah Market, (where her kitchen is located) and a handful of other places in and around Lawrence.

What I did here was tweak the logo just a bit. She really liked her existing so I just redrew the grain bushel, added some earthy colors and resized some elements so that all were proportionately harmonious with one another, just to give it that little oomph it needed.

I incorporated the oomphed-up logo and some of the colors into a new label format that she wanted to use with her cookies.

1. Left version is pre-tweak, right version is post-tweak

2. The actual ink drawing I created to replace the current grain bushel, before I scanned and digitized it.

3. I created different versions for all of the applications the logo might be used in.

4. Two new cookie labels

5. Old style vs. new style. The cookie can now be seen and gets to be the shining star it should be.

4 posters

Here are a few posters, or should it be “several” posters? Anyway, while you scramble to Google this hot debate I started, here are 4 posters. None with exciting behind-the-scenes stories, just something to look at.

A few illustrations/drawings

Not much to post right now, so here are a few illustrations and drawings I’ve dusted off to quench your millspaz thirst. I’ll be throwing some more up as well.

1. Watercolors, pastels, guache oh my

2. Some work from life drawings sessions

Put a spork in it, this poster is done

Here is another gig poster. The one band is called The Sunflower Colonels. Get it? Instead of sunflower kernels? I think its pretty damn genius myself. You is a bright one D. Barnhill. When concepting this, I wanted to come up with a famous Colonel to somehow use. At first I was thinking a military officer but when I put “Colonel” into google, THE Colonel, Harland Sanders, came up as the first image results. Perfect, I had forgot about that ol’ coot. So I drew a KFC bucket and the typefaces for band names (tweaking the “finger lickin’” tagline a bit to be more music related), scanned them in and converted it to digital line art. I then created some textures based off of images of a fried chicken leg and a potato sack. I tossed all that in and mixed it up with a secret flavor recipe of 11 herbs and spices and you got you some home cooked, chicken fried design. Enjoy, but lick your own fingers please.

1. Ink drawings of some of the poster elements. I used a cheap paper and inked very slow to allow the marker to bleed enough to create a roughish edge.

2. Using an image of a fried chicken leg, I created a texture for, well, the fried chicken leg. I did the same for the shadow of the bucket with an image of a potato sack texture.

3. The final fried-in-grease design.

Two bands, multiple married couples, one designer

Here are a couple of recent CD packages I did for The Midday Ramblers (I did their website too) and for MAW. Both bands are bluegrassy/old-timey. One is an all dudes band, the other an all chick band. 3 of the dudes from the one band are married to 3 of the chicks from the other band. Something very weird about that isn’t there? These were fun to work on as both bands are full of very cool people, and some of Lawrence’s finest, nicest musicians. The wood cut rabbit used on the The Ramblers cover was done by Katie Conrad, who plays in MAW. The painting used on the MAW cover was painted by local artist, Aaron Marable (no website for him, “get with the times man!”)

1. Package design for the Midday Ramblers

2. Package design for MAW

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks…

1. The master plan for my sidewalk wall

2. Various stages of build

3. I had to dig out the dirt. I even had to chip away some rough concrete at the
bottom of my trench to get a nice flushness to the sidewalk. One day I
dug in the mud and the rain. It was miserable.

4. The end product. Keeps the dirt off the sidewalk and makes it look fancy shmancy. You Lika da bonsai action on that juniper bush? That might be another post.

This aint no graphic design
BUT, It is something I designed and built, close enough for me. When it rains it washes dirt onto our sidewalk from the yard. The yard is higher than the sidewalk. Gravity had the water running downhill and it was taking my yard with it. Well, it was little, but if I didn’t fix it I would have another Grand Canyon in my hands—in 6 million years. I thought the most cost effective and funnest (you mean that still aint a word?) way was for me to fix it myself. I made up a design and did a watercolor sketch so my wife could envision it and have her mind put to ease. I bought the wood at the Habitat for Humanity Restore, so it was cheap. I had to buy the tin at Home Depot though, it was still cheap, just not reclaimed like the wood. As you can see above I cut, glued, sanded, painted, and sealed the little guys. I then dug out a trench along the sidewalk. Put them in, leveled, filled, packed and now—no more erosion. All for about $40. Now that I think about it, where I took the biggest loss was down the road, 6 million years, in potential tourism dollars had I allowed the erosion to form my own Grand Canyon. Dang, I’m not a very foresightful business person.