The Album Cover Game

Some of you may have seen this floating around the world of Facebook already. For the non-design user, it may seem like another dumb game to facilitate procrastination, but for the creative professional, the game serves as a great jump-start for the brain. It's also closer to real life then one may think. You're usually going to have a set of elements that you HAVE to use. The client really likes a certain photo, or you have to have that all of those words you have to squeeze in to satisfy legal. Whatever the case may be, these things are simulated in the game. Where the real creativity comes in is how you put these things together, how you add other relevant graphics and of course, typography.
Once again, we turned the game into an art floor challenge. It started out just going back and forth, but then my creative director kicked it up a notch and gave us 5 minutes to create a cover. Don't over-think, just do. As I mentioned before its a wonderful creative tool. Stuck in a design rut? Take 10 or 20 minutes to make album covers and come back to your project. Sometimes your brain just needs a quick change of scenery. Scroll to the end of this post for the rules and links for the game.

Here are a couple of my creations:


And here is some of the art from my very talented coworkers:

Sheena

Jodie

Myra
Jess
Mandy

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" and TAG the friends you want to join in. (feel free to untag yourself...)

Oh, Sweet Summer, How You Torture Me So....

As I sat staring at the flying snow, and freezing my damn ass off, I started day dreaming of the glorious days of summer. I got to thinking about how this will be my first summer living on Lake Michigan. I will be able to enjoy sunsets on the beach, the cry of sea birds and the sound of the waves breaking gently on the shore. And then I looked out side again. Blast. So instead of whining (too much) about it, I created this shirt to reminisce about the days when we won't have to spend 20 minutes scraping ice chunks off our windshields or breaking our ass down icy steps. I wanted to branch out from your typical summer cliché and create something a little more off the wall and quirky. Tee shirts, hoodies and totes featuring the design are available in my Cafepress shop. Let me know what you think!

Stay warm ;-)

VS Pink Contest

Victoria's Secret tee shirt design contest is coming to a close today. A fun little ditty to express your creativity while staying consistent with the brand image and what VS Pink stands for. The contest has become a bit of a rivalry at the office, with my creative director leading the charge (what he wants with a $500 VS gift card, I'll never know). So here is my hollar-back to the challenge.
There are 30,000 + entries, so if I don't win anything, I will put a variation of the design for sale in my Cafepress shop... Enjoy, and check out the other entries!