The December 2011 issue of The Planetary Report went out at the end of the year. The final issue of the year is historically a “year-in-pictures” issue, and this issue did not disappoint with some truly stunning images splayed across the pages of the magazine.
I was very happy with the work of our printer (The Dot Printer in Irvine, CA); they worked hard to capture my intent with each picture.
When I get a minute (kinda busy right now), a few people have asked for a “before/after” comparison: what we did in the redesign to give the magazine a new identity. I would like to do that, although I must say that the design firm who did the magazine before HCS did a tremendous job for decades, so any “improvements” that I made truly attempted to take what had worked for years in the old magazine and bring it up to date.
But that will have to be in another blog post. For now, check out these beautiful spreads…
Join the Planetary Society today and get this magazine in your mailbox four times a year, and know that your donation goes towards space research, education, and advocating space within the governments of the world!
I don’t get to talk about the award-winning logos that Hearken Creative Services has produced over the years. And I’m waiting for client approval on a project this morning. So I thought I should upload a few that we have done:
We have actually done an update on this one, changing the typography to reflect the new organization. But the logomark still works wonderfully.
Included in the American Corporate Identity line of books.
These are just a few of the many successful logo design and re-design projects that we have worked on over the years. We have a long and successful track record of working with clients to
- determine need
- assess the values and strategies of the organization that should help shape the logo design process
- work with owners, management, and employees to come to consensus on marketing values
- present useful logo design strategies and work through the revision process, on time and on budget
- complete fulfilment of digital and physical artwork for use by other design firms as well as internal staff
We would love to work with you on your next logo design project.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : October 2011
Planetary Society Headquarters, Pasadena, CA
Hearken Creative (www.hearkencreative.com) of Pasadena, CA is proud to announce a historic magazine redesign — the first in the magazine’s 31-year history. The Planetary Report is a highly-regarded quarterly member magazine, bringing space research and advocacy news to 50,000 readers worldwide and commissioned by the Planetary Society of Pasadena, CA. The first two redesigned issues were released in June 2011 and October 2011.
The Planetary Report was introduced soon after the Planetary Society was launched in 1980 by scientist/author Carl Sagan, JPL/Caltech professor Bruce Murray, and JPL scientist Louis Friedman. The desire for a new look and focus prompted incoming executive director Bill Nye to turn to Loren A. Roberts of Hearken Creative for a complete re-design of the magazine, including adding a brand new kids’ section that capitalizes on the Bill Nye the Science Guy™ brand.
“Loren gave our 31-year-old magazine a beautiful new look,” said Bill Nye, executive director of the Planetary Society. “Beautiful pictures just jump out at you, and the text is mysteriously easier than before to read. We are delighted with his work.”
“It’s an honor for us to assume the creative mantle for a magazine seen around the world,” said Loren A. Roberts, principal of Hearken Creative. “We are proud of the Planetary Society’s mission, and our partnership with them over fourteen years; and we look forward to this new chapter in our history together.”
The relationship between the Society and Hearken Creative began in 1997 when Roberts designed all of the graphics for Planetfest’97, a convention where tens of thousands of people watched Mars Pathfinder land on Mars using a real-time link from JPL at the Pasadena Convention Center. All printed graphics, banners, signage, advertising, and online graphics were designed by Hearken Creative. Since then the partnership has grown, with Hearken Creative designing t-shirts, logos, posters, websites, brochures and more for the Society.
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So I’m on the board of the Pasadena Musical Theatre program, and we get to do all sorts of fun and cool stuff. In addition to year-round programs, we put on two big musicals every summer — one for 4th-6th graders, and one for 7th-12 graders. So here’s what I get to do:
ADVERTISING DESIGN
All postcards and posters and such are developed by me, in concert with the directors. Here is the keyart for the two shows this summer:
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The Jasper in Deadland keyart was developed with strong direction from the composer/conductor, Ryan Scott Oliver, because this is his baby. I’m very excited to be helping him bring this original musical to life.
PRODUCT & BRAND DESIGN
As part of the story for Jasper in Deadland, the protagonist crosses the river Lethe (get out your mythology books!) and keeps getting offered Lethe™ Brand water, so we decided that we needed to offer Lethe™ Brand products as well.
It’s a clever, simple brand, but people are loving it, and I expect that we’ll see tote bags and water bottles with this logo all around campus in a week or two…
VIDEO
I have found a way to use the Canon 7D for quick, news-gathering-style video: 1) simply accept the limitations of the on-board microphone, and 2) stop the iris down a little so things don’t go out of focus so quickly. And so, every day of the program, we have posted a 2-minute recap, showing warmups, rehearsals, discussions, and antics of the kids in the program. It’s a win-win for the families in the program: parents get to see what’s going on, students get to show their day off to their friends, and PMTP gets added exposure through the hundreds of views we have gotten on Youtube. Here are two of the most popular recaps so far:
Filming these giving me a chance to understand how to choose shots quickly and follow the action. Everything is handheld except for performance video.
IN OTHER NEWS
Tomorrow (I hope) I’m going to roll out a press release announcing one of the newest projects that I have been working on. We’re very proud of the design work that Hearken Creative is doing these days, and I can’t wait to update my portfolio. It’s just a busy time of year for us!
Wow, I’m so excited. We will issue a press release sometime in the next few hours.
Not That Funny is a movie that is shooting currently in Sierra Madre, CA. I am an associate producer on the show. What does that mean? Well, it can mean anything, but for me, what it has meant so far is
- recording production sound for a week before our wonderful sound guy came on board
- renting my Canon 7D camera, lights, hard drives, and other useful stuff to the production
- managing the digital workflow for set-to-editor-to-director-to-post, as well as managing dailies
- general help on-set and off-set
- even some graphic design! (see the photo of a fake poster above)
- maybe sound design.
The cast and crew is incredible. We are halfway through 25 days of shooting, followed by some additional pickups and various projects to get the film ready for completion. The editing process will take several months of massaging the footage to make it serve the story. Our hope is that it will get picked up for a few film festivals in early 2011, and then see theatrical distribution sometime during the year.
Our cast is outstanding, anchored by John Kapelos (remember Breakfast Club?), K Callan, Brigid Brannagh (Army Wives), and the amazing Tony Hale (Arrested Development).
Check the movie out:
Well, I’m finishing up another CD this week, but the T-Lou CD is out and people liked the art, so I’m going to talk through how we came to the final art. Oh, and by the way, if you want to buy the album on iTunes, you can do it here. Unsure when the CD is going to show up on Amazon…
Initial Design Brief
First, we’ll talk about what the client brought to the table. They wanted something that said “party” and “Zydeco” and “fun” with the artist front and center, since it’s been a really long time since his last record. We needed to position the talent front and center. The producer sent me a few dozen images as reference, which included:
Essentially, focus on bright colors that conjure a Louisiana feel and the outsized personality of T-Lou.
Photography
My first recommendation was to schedule a photo shoot with T-Lou. The images from the studio (taken with a good camera by the producer) were still not good enough to make beautiful key art, so we needed new photography. Fortunately, I’ve been doing quite a bit of work with my new Canon 7D, so we scheduled the shoot and went to work. Several hundred shots later, here are some of the highlights:
So we now have great key art: the artist and the producer were both really happy with the proofs from the shoot.
First Design Presentation
Now it was my turn to interpret what feel they were looking for. Let’s look at some of the different concept pieces that I presented to the artist and the producer at our first design presentation:
Interestingly, the first proof is the one that is closest to the final. I went for a big and bold typeface, an image of T-Lou loving’ life and playin’ music, and some “dancing” crabs to tie into the album’s title. I was unsure about the crabs, because they kinda looked like the tripod aliens from Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” but this was first proof territory, so everything is fair game.
Now I got even bolder and funkier. There were these pictures where T-Lou just looks badass, so I married that up with some distressed type and some pretty heavy color correction (lots of desaturation, but adding contrast), and we get this beautiful bold look. But then why can’t I take it one step further?…
I think this might be my favorite design from the first round. I made the T-Lou art bigger and happier, and pulled all the color out of his photo. All of a sudden he pops off the CD cover. Still using distressed type on the artist name, but really clean on the album title. Simple and bold…perfect.
But my concern with the previous art was that it was getting way too non-traditional for a genre that has lots of tradition in it. So I tried a few looks that sit more comfortably within the established “look” of Zydeco artists. This first one has some issues, because T-Lou feels a little too low, and the ratio/balance between him, his name, and the album title just seems off. But still a good exercise, and if the client had liked it, we could have worked all of those issues out…
And then I went completely traditional. We added a sepia look to a non-retouched photo, did the “type on a curve” thing that lots of oldies/traditional albums do, and still added a crab — more now as just a graphic element — to keep it fun and tied-in with the album title.
Still loving the “badass T-Lou” look, I couldn’t resist doing something completely different. This keeps my mind fresh, and shows the client that there are options out there. If they don’t like something here, we can go a completely different direction. I had downloaded the curly background art from iStockphoto a few weeks previous for another project (that didn’t end up getting made) — it was originally blue — repurposed it for this proof by making it gold/brown and framing the artist. The type glows; the whole thing says “me and my accordion are not to be messed with.” Cool.
So wait, I had pretty much ignored the “let’s make it colorful” request from the client, so I did one with everything but the kitchen sink. The mardi gras feathers, some New Orleans brick in the background, a wood sign from a beach somewhere — making it bold and messy and colorful.
You will notice that I didn’t just present the artwork in a square on a piece of paper. I snagged a CD I had photographed from another project, and superimposed the T-Lou artwork onto that photograph. I believe that one extra step — making the art look like the final packaging — gives the client a much better idea of what his CD will look like once everything is done and shipping.
Client Reactions + Second Round of Proofs
Well, the clients flipped — they loved that first round of proofs. The energy, the photography, even lots of the typefaces chosen, were really making T-Lou excited.
They loved the crabs, but didn’t think they were “fun” enough, so I suggested maybe adding some cartoon eyes that I had found but discarded while working on the first set of design ideas. They liked that. So we decided to work on revising the first proof to everyone’s liking.
T-Lou comes from Louisiana, and really wanted the Louisiana coast to play a large role in the art. While almost all of the backgrounds are of Gulf Coast beaches, I had bleached out the colors of the backgrounds to focus attention on the artist. T-Lou said no, we want to see the blue of the ocean and the sky; adding back more colors would get us to that “make it colorful” initial request, too.
T-Lou also doesn’t like sans serif typefaces that much; he likes the refinement and formality of serif type better. So I needed to give him some options with different typefaces, since that first proof had the really big, thick, sans serif type for the “T-LOU” at the top.
So here is what we delivered for a second round:
Blue ocean, crabs with cartoon eyes, curved serif type across the top. Nice.
Maybe using the beach/weathered wood signpost plus the cartoon-y crabs? And we have a really bold typeface for “T-LOU,” but it still has serifs on it. Tricky, aren’t I?
Now here I have used the same design as above, but changed the colors up to see what happens. The light green allows the crabs to move to the forefront (the yellow was pretty strong), but I’m still not sure if the balance is right.
Ah, so the honkin’ big type was the problem. Pull that out, and replace it with a very refined slab serif, and the balance between all of the elements on the cover works out. So what did we accomplish? A few things:
- lots of color,
- T-Lou looking awesome and havin’ a great time,
- a proper balance between his name, his photo, the crabs, and the album title,
- a Louisiana coastal feel
- the crabs with the cartoon eyes ensure that you know this album isn’t taking itself too seriously; in fact, you know that this guy likes to have fun.
The finished product! If I get around to it, I’ll take pictures of the traycard and CD face, which look awesome too. But for now, we see how I got from the client’s initial design brief to the final product. Everyone is very pleased with the outcome.
T-Lou Zydeco makes some crazy-cool Zydeco music. See for yourself:
This guy knows how to make a party hop. And I got to create a cool look for his new CD.
The client is really happy (“Thanks, Loren; it was a pleasure working with you…job well done. Good job!”), the producer is happy, and we have another winner. Just listen to this wonderful music:
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Tomorrow, I think I might upload some of the original proofs that were presented to the client, so that you can see some of the thought that went into creating this cover.
But overall, this was a wonderfully successful project. I have another CD design that is going to press this week, so I’ll post that one in a few weeks when it comes off press.
Forgot to mention: I did the photoshoot for the artist, in the studio while they were mixing the album down. This is another benefit of hiring Hearken Creative — we work across disciplines to make the best possible product for the client. It also is a benefit of purchasing the new Canon EOS 7D a few months ago.
Did I mention we were busy this summer? (By the way, my son is the one in the yellow cap above…playing the nerd. Perfect casting.)(Oh, and the fantastic photos of this summer’s shows were taken by New York-based pro photographer Matthew Murphy. He got some incredible shots.)
The Pasadena Musical Theatre Program is a decades-old training program for kids in Pasadena, CA. But I would call this a kid’s program on steroids, or, better, a pro theatre program that just happens to have kids as its focus. But this summer we held a master class with Megan Hilty of Wicked fame, held a class entitled Pursuing a Career in Musical Theatre, and did a American Idol-style solo competition, in addition to the two main shows that are produced every summer. Ryan Scott Oliver (award-winning musical composer), Cindy Abbott (wonderfully dedicated Pasadena music teacher), and Emily Clark (fabulous musical theatre performer and teacher) have transformed this program into a powerhouse that trains over 125 students every summer.
So what did Hearken Creative do? Well, for starters, I joined the board of the program last summer, because funding for arts has dried up with local school districts and I feel strongly about arts education. So, on our own, we have raised somewhere in the range of $50,000 every summer to make the program happen. In addition, Hearken Creative
- provided all design services for print media, programs, and press releases,
- photographed the Megan Hilty master class,
- filmed the Promise Competition,
- ran sound for all events, including the master class, meetings and competitions, and
- sound designed both major shows — the Juniors (4th-6th graders) and the Seniors (7th-12th grade) shows.
Essentially, this was two weeks of wrangling a high school auditorium (that a friend aptly called an “airplane hangar”) into submission, using Hearken Creative-provided equipment, rented equipment, and the high school’s 40-year-old 24-channel mixer, as well as my own 16-channel digital mixer. Twenty wireless body mics, plus choir mics and band sound reinforcement.
And boy, did it sound good! We don’t have the professionally-produced video from KLRN yet, but several people have posted their home videos already. Here’s one:
and my son singing a solo at the Promise Competition:
The purpose of the program is twofold: first, arts education is vital to a well-rounded education, and music/dance hits so many of the other disciplines — math, reasoning, spatial relationships — that it seems stupid the schools are cutting performing arts. Secondly, there is an erroneous meme out there that there are no viable career options in performing arts. We aim to change that perception.
By using Hearken Creative’s graphic design skills, our production and sound design skills, as well as our music background and fundraising acumen, we were able to help make this summer’s Pasadena Musical Theatre Program a complete success.
Flickr Photos
