When I watched Charlie McDonnell (charlieissocoollike)’s video Don’t Break the Chain last week, I knew that I had to design a calendar to try it out for myself. The idea is that you set a task and a minimum time for something that you want to do every day – whether it be exercise for 30 minutes or study French for an hour. Every day that you complete the task, you X the day off the calendar, and as you get a longer and longer string of X’s, it becomes more motivation to do that task every day so that you don’t break the chain.
Originally I had wanted to draw the whole calendar by hand, but as I began sketching it out, I knew that it would take far too long and I’d never get it done by May 1st. So, I hopped on Photoshop and laid the whole thing out in one of my new favorite fonts, which I originally bought for last week’s style videos. I decided to only design it in black and white so that people with only black and white printers wouldn’t get a sub-par product, and also so that people could customize it however they wanted, like this or this.
Fun fact – on the night April 30th when I was finishing up the design, I had a terrible headache, but I really wanted to get it done by the 1st. So, I ended up squinting at the computer lining up numbers and editing photos while clutching my head in pain. But I’m so glad I got it finished that night and I think it came out really well!
And finally, to answer a very frequently asked question, I will indeed make a full-year version. Just send me a reminder in December, and if there’s still interest, I promise I’ll design it by January 1st :)
You can download the PDF of the calendar right here and check out the original Tumblr post right here. Thanks so much to Charlie for making the video that inspired this, and I hope all of you find it useful when trying to stick to your goals!
In December, John and Hank Green asked me to put together some designs for the 2012 Tour de Nerdfighting. I knew that I wanted the designs to reference the 2008 Tour de Nerdfighting map, which was one of the first things I designed for John and Hank. So first I got to work on the t-shirt design, which actually ended up being the cover of the exclusive tour CD.
(Click to see larger)
After the map was finished, I got to work on the poster. Right around that time, I had just read the book Sterographics: Graphics in New Dimensions, which inspired me to use photography and real world elements, rather than doing the whole thing digitally. I decided to gather up all the nerdfighter memorabilia I’ve collected over the years to make just a big colorful explosion of awesome. I cut the map outline out of a cereal box and painted black, while the red 2012 is made from paper which I then painted. You can see a behind the scenes look at the photoshoot in this video (starting at 1:40):
We took a ton of photos from all different angles. This was literally just set up on an IKEA table in my bedroom – design doesn’t have to be fancy and expensive!
After I chose the photo I wanted, I printed it out at full size and penciled in all of the city names and the title (doing a test version first to make sure the concept wouldn’t look completely awful). After trying way too many types of black markers to find one that didn’t bleed on the paper, I inked the whole thing, scanned it in, and composited it in Photoshop. As you can see from the photo of the title, I ended up changing it around in Photoshop a bit, in order to make the poster feel cleaner and more balanced.
(Test drawing, done on a letter-size printout of the photo)
I hope you guys like the poster and CD, and managed to grab a copy from the merch table if you went to any of the tour stops. You can also check out my video from the Redwood City tour stop at the end of this post. It was a fantastic night and I’m so happy to be part of such an awesome community!
A few years ago, I had the idea to make a miniature copy of the book Paper Towns by John Green, and film the process of creating it. John’s newest book The Fault in Our Stars was just released about a week ago, so I decided to redo that video, except with a copy of TFioS. I hope you enjoy watching, and check out more photos below!
Thanks again to kaysyconundrum for allowing me to use her gorgeous original song in the video.
A few months ago, I got an email asking if I wanted to design the first official t-shirt for Elmify. Seeing as how her channel is one of my absolute favorites on YouTube, I could not pass this up.
We went through a bunch of different designs and color combinations before settling on the final one, a typographic imagining of her famous No! FRODO! video clip.
I also wanted to make a handwritten logo for her name, which meant writing her name over and over in my sketchbook until it came out right. Anyone who looks through it will probably think I have the biggest elementary school crush on her.
This is the final design we settled on, which is now available for purchase on dftba.com. You can see more photos of it below as well as the video Elmify made when it was released. Thanks for reading!
Ever since LeakyCon last July, I’ve been meaning to put up a blog post with all the design work I did for the conference that I didn’t cover in my previous LeakyCon post. Well, we’re only about three months late, so let’s get to it. I’m not covering every little graphic I did for the conference, but below I’ve detailed my three main projects.
(Click to see the maps larger)
My biggest project was designing the maps of the hotel’s convention center and vendor room for the programming book. The challenge here was bringing in decorative elements to make it flow with the rest of the book, while still keeping it readable and useful. I had never been to the hotel before, so I really just had to use my best judgement on how much detail to include from the original map that the hotel provided. Overall though, I think both maps were quite successful aesthetically, and I hope they were useful to people trying to navigate the conference!
Another project I worked on was completing the library of icons for the mobile app. Jordan designed the first batch and I picked up the rest, seen above, as the deadline for submitting the app grew nearer. The icons still needed to be readable when they were only about 50 pixels tall, so while it was tempting to put in a ton of detail, they really needed to be kept simple. Overall though, I think the icons were a nice custom touch for the app. My favorite icon is still Signings, in that the “Jo” could be taken to mean either Jo Rowling or John Green, who did actually do a signing at LeakyCon.
I also became the go-to person for intros and outros for various LeakyCon videos. It was awesome seeing the intro I designed on the big screen as part of the opening ceremonies video. And the intro and outro for the LeakyCon Ball video just added a nice finishing touch to the beautifully edited video of the event.
I have to say, LeakyCon was one of the best conventions I’ve attended, and I’m so honored to have been a part of the staff for it. Everyone who helped to make it happen was fantastic and incredibly talented, and these designs were only one small part of tons of people’s work and effort. I really can’t wait to work with everyone again on LeakyCon 2012. See you guys there!
