Upcoming AIGA Small Talks at Proof Advertising

My next AIGA Austin Small Talks is this Wednesday. I'm always a little nervous before these events, but this time the weatherman is predicting sleet. Eeek! Here's hoping the turnout will be solid anyway!

For this e-flyer I invoked the current allure/disdain for the 1960s 'Ad Man'—by combining the Lucky Strike cigarette branding with the prototypical Madison Avenue car ad.

I love this quote from Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool: "In this period, Madison Avenue was 'Ulcer Gulch,' the preserve of the famous 'Man in the Gray Flannel Suit'; it was the archetypal destination for look-alike commuters from Westchester; it was slow-moving, WASPy, and serious; it was populated by other-directed organization men. It was a shrine of 'Theory X' conformity, the seat of all that was wrong with American culture. Admen were hopeless yes-men, dedicated to affirming their clients' every whim." 

Lost and Found

I was searching through my hard drive for some AIGA logos today in preparation for hosting my first ever Small Talks (see poster here), and I came across some event promo materials I did for other AIGA events a while back .

Since this is work for designers, I took the opportunity of playing with typefaces that are usually too illegible for client work. But other designers won't accept everything—I was asked to remove the flies from the postcard design. I rather liked them. I thought they made the viewer do a double-take. But I guess flies are also kind of gross ;0)

But it was cool to run across some old work I had completely forgotten about. Has that ever happened to you?

Small talks poster

... is done.

AIGA Austin Small Talks Chair

My favorite event series sponsored by my local American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) has always been the Small Talks—where the public is invited inside local design studios to see where the magic happens. Well after years of being a spectator, I decided to lend a hand and joined as the Small Talks Chair yesterday. I'm very excited to be part of Austin's AIGA board, to get to know more local designers, and to help put on some fun and interesting events like the ones pictured here...

March's AIGA Creative Mass happy hour poster

The theme for next month's Creative Mass happy hour is handmade sustainable design. Conceptually, a handmade image would have been ideal for the event poster. Or at least I could have used some lovely scanned lettering like this from SketchType. But, but... Given the time and budget constraints, I decided to go with a (computer generated) allusion to Michelangelo's Creation of Man. Ol' Mickey at least did all his stuff by hand!


Looking back, I notice a similarity between this design and the one I did for a similar event last year (see here). I guess I like lists!

And here's one I did a few months later... more magenta and yellow.


But sometimes I go with a different feel. This one says "totalitarian mind control" ;0)

AIGA Poster for Creative Mass Happy Hour

The theme for this Creative Mass poster/email is resolutions. The only copy provided was the details for the event. After considering using some kind of illustration, I settled on a typographic solution instead.

The use of Trade Gothic Condensed is a reference to the gazillion business covers that use it. And I chose the CMYK color palette as a nod to 4-color printing.