grab bag blog

I’ve been deep into a lot of really satisfying projects recently, but one of my favorites has been the publishing of my first major book. Dumbstruck, Vol: Starting Line Detour is a collection of the first year of my autobiographical comic strip that I began creating and publishing online in 2003. I spent the better part of a year cleaning up my old strips, and in some cases re-scanning and recreating the strips when the digital files had been lost. On top of that, I added a brand new prologue and a number of other new strips to flesh out the “story.” In the end, I had a 128-page book with over 200 comic strips as well as other incidental art. The book is currently for sale on the Dumbstruck website as either a physical book or a pay-what-you-like digital download.

What did I learn on this undertaking? A lot, actually.

I love drawing and illustration, and I also quite enjoy taking different pieces of imagery and combining them into something new. But sometimes, all I need is an amazing photograph and my work is done.

This might seem an easy way out for a designer, but finding just the right photograph is a time-consuming process, and requires knowing exactly what you want, but with the flexibility of knowing that you might be surprised by something you hadn’t considered. Most of the time, you won’t find such an image on a stock photo site. Case in point is this poster I recently made for BoHo Theatre’s upcoming production of Amadeus:

You may have recently started seeing one of my projects around town. I’ve been doing design work for a new organization, the Belmont Theater District. This is a venture of the Lakeview and Lakeview East chambers of commerce to bring attention to the amount of theater in their neighborhood and entice people visit. It is aimed at both locals who might not know what their own area has to offer as well as tourists who might not know that there exists a wealth of stage art outside of the expensive Loop neighborhood.

A lot of designers love creating Christmas/Holiday Season cards for the simple reason that it’s a project that we can do just for ourselves, with no need to get client approval or worry about communicating a huge message. It’s just a fun little side project. We use it to show off a little bit.

Since I started freelancing, I have sent a New Years card at the end of each year. It seemed a convenient way to sidestep the whole “what holiday might they be celebrating?” issue. It also gave me a great opportunity to thank each of my clients for making me a part of their projects during the year, and to let them know that I appreciate the work we’ve done together.

“So enjoy yourself, do the things that matter
Cause there isn’t time and space to do it all”

–Jonathan Coultan, A Talk With George

Every now and then, I think “should I be on Tumblr?”

I have an account on the microblogging site, but I’ve never really used it. And whenever I see an artist that I like using Tumblr, I think “I should be on there too! I could get more exposure and see more cool things.” But then a day goes by and I completely forget about it.