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Design Process: Two Hungry Dudes

One of our very first commissions was to design business cards for Two Hungry Dudes. Joe and Henry are two Detroit food bloggers who have written about everything from humble homemade cornbread to foie gras. They were wonderful to work with, and simply asked us to “design something you’re proud of.” So we did!

photo credit: @Wattyz

I thought you guys might like to see a peek behind the curtain at what it was like to design something for a client for the first time. Behind the cut, you’ll see the whole process from initial sketches, to the finished design, to smiles from happy customers.

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The Perfect Laughter Guide to Screen Printing Problems

Learning to screen print can really pay off, but it’s pretty intimidating to try it. There are so many ways something can go wrong, it’s really difficult for rookies to get decent results. It’s no wonder than many people who like the screen printed aesthetic go the Gocco route. But with supplies getting scarcer and more expensive, it’s worth it to learn regular old screen printing.

As you can see from these photos, we don’t have any fancy equipment. We’ve never bought any kind of beginner “kit”, only screens, emulsion, and transparencies from Kinkos. Our screen is sitting on a black t-shirt and our hardware store light is supported by a board, a washing machine and a ladder. Our “press” is just a large board with some screen printing specific hinges (Available at Dick Blick) screwed to it. The real investment we made is was the time we spent getting it to work!

We wrote this guide to help people avoid some of the frustration that we experienced when we screen printed our wedding invitations. It’s not a beginner’s guide – it assumes that you’ve researched the basic process, tried it yourself and need help troubleshooting. (If you’re a beginner, the Gigposter forums are a great place to start.)

Our complete guide is behind the cut. We hope we can improve it over time, so please comment with any suggestions!

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Starred #6

 

‘delight’ twinkle board (diy instructions @ design*sponge)

 

Floor at the Standard Hotel New York (via NOTCOT)

 

Birth announcement by The Mandate Press (via Oh So Beautiful Paper)

 

Part 1 of Cory Arcangel‘s Super Mario Movie (via Arrested Motion)

 

Named after the Add Star feature in Google Reader, “Starred” is a column about things that catch my eye as I peruse the blogs I subscribe to. If you’d like to subscribe to Perfect Laughter, here’s a link to our RSS Feed.

p.s. I had set this to publish Friday morning as usual, but apparently it didn’t work while I was away!

Rosemarie Fiore’s Firework Collages

I found Rosemarie Fiore via Wooster Collective, which usually concentrates on street art. But Rosemarie is not so much a graffiti artist as she is a mad scientist that can’t be contained inside of a building. She explodes fireworks. Then she contains the colorful smoke inside of vessels to make circular shapes.

Or she drags them across her canvas to make streaks.  Both techniques create surprisingly saturated colors.

In between explosions, she layers circular paper to create these amazing collages.

You can see much more of her work at rosemariefiore.com.

Creative Process

I had been wanting to document my creative process, from conceptualization to completion. So here goes…
This is how I created Nora

After I am satisfied with the illustration, I go to the local print shop to have large format black and white printouts of it. These printouts will be used as my stencil.

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