I went to Pecha Kucha Night last night with my NFGDFs (New Found Graphic Designer Friends). Thanks for the invite! Good idea to have artists talk about their work with 20 photos and 20 seconds per photo. So true that people really don’t need more than that. Unless of course you are Michael Bierut. He can go on and on for hours, it will be music to my ears.

They had it at Shangri-La’s movie theater. Venue is nice and comfy. But between you and me, I will never EVER watch a movie here because I cannot bring in a Big Chill or any drink or dish from any establishment other than their snack bar. Whatsup with that?! Anyway, enough of that. It’s their cinema, they can do whatever they want with it.

I loved Mark Maily’s deck. He was the best really. He’s just great, so entertaining. Read his Wiki bio here.

Hinay hinay lang… free Golden Spoon ice cream with the tickets. Yay!

Thank you to my now good friend Paolo Dizon who is one of the editors of Plus63.net. This is my first time to visit the site, I love it! Good concept, cool layout. Bookmarked! Thank you thank you Paolo!!!

Love the caption… back with a vengeance… hehehe. Thanks Paolo!!!

I just had another one of those fall-off-my-seat moments. Look what I saw on Twitter yesterday:

Is this really happening? Simon C Page is an English graphic designer and mathematician. He really is one of those amazing ones! Really.  He designed the International Year of Astronomy posters which I love. If you want to know who he is click here to check out his interview by Grain Edit, an online design magazine.

Extremely happy. Oh my. Don’t know what to say really. I got back into graphic design just a couple of months ago and I never expected comments like this to surface. Too lucky too soon.

Thank you Simon C Page!!!

But because I am talentless in music, let’s just make it happen through art direction, shall we?

With a bunch of intense folks… Gboy, Mark and Paolo. a.k.a. The Loose ScRuins. Does this seem a little Introvoys to you? Hahaha, eck.

Lots of bromance last weekend. Hanging out with Gboy again and meeting these guys made me remember all the rock and artsy stuff I was into as a teenager, it’s all coming back now.

Anyway, good times guys!!!

I am so happy to see that smile on Bing Leonardia’s face. Yeah! Wow, so this is it… this is the real thing. Got my receipts, talked to my lawyer (who happens to be my brother), just bought an accounting ledger notebook, we are good to go. Just about to fix my conforme checklist so my lawyer/brother can formalize my copyright terms & conditions. This is official business and I’m paying my taxes. Let’s get the ball rollin!

Melissa’s one of those girls you meet for the first time and become friends with instantly. When she asked me to do identity and packaging for her new business, I just went for it! They now bottle organic honey from the breezy province of Iloilo. Ok I really don’t do much when I’m there but there’s this siopao store there that rocks!

I was so excited to do this. It would be my first packaging project. Melissa sent me a bottle of honey with a gold cover that I had to work with. I wanted the honey to look like it retails in a deli. So I did a creative logo type to give it that “homemade” feel but with a very sophisticated secondary typeface to match. Also, subtle touches of stripes (yes, honey comes from bees) because I didn’t want it to look juvenile. I also decided to put a sticker on the bottle cover, because it just looks cute with that!  How brave of Melissa to approve a black background!

Here’s how it looks now printed on a refrigerator-friendly sticker. The printers really did a good job with this one because the yellow looks so so good. It’s not Aquino yellow. It’s Pantone 116!

Cap sticker

Then when Melissa and I met up last week, she was talking about Christmas and how the bottles would be great gifts. This is when I got carried away. I went to buy ribbons and wrapping stuff right away. She hasn’t seen this yet but how nice if it would be wrapped this way for Christmas noh? Just cos it’s Christmas doesn’t mean that we have to work with red… let’s stick to the palette shall we?

Oh the beauty of ribbons! I wanted to play with scale and work with an oversized ribbon but a very skinny card that says “Merry Christmas.”

And if thats not enough, maybe we can pair it with a black paper bag with a textured black ribbon?

I can’t wait for Christmas! Orders may be made now, 300g bottles will be available by October at Php 200 each, call Melissa Salvador at 0917 302 0961. Thanks for asking me to do this Mel! I had so much fun with this one!

September 1, first day of the month, time for a new issue of Rogue Magazine! Only this time there’s something in there I designed. I cannot tell you how happy I am.

I was so happy when Katz asked me to do this year’s Black Tie Brawl identity requirements. Black Tie Brawl is an annual event organized by Rogue Magazine. They get URCC to organize the MMA fights and have it in a five-star hotel ballroom. It really is the works. Swanky event. As the name suggests, the dress code is black tie. I love how every time I go to Black Tie Brawl, the guys are all in tuxedos… makes the hot guys look even hotter! When you get into your seat, you get a cigar. Your ticket comes with a five course dinner and all that scotch. Niiiice!

Anyway, I was working on the contrast idea. It’s an event with blood and violence but its set in a glamorous context. I wanted to apply this on to the logotype so I worked with calligraphy… here’s my attempt to do it myself…

I’ve never done calligraphy but it’s really one of those things I would like to be good at in this lifetime. After 11 sheets of paper, I wasn’t successful. Realized that it takes years to be good at that. So I researched on the best calligraphers and fell in love with the work of Louis Madarasz, a famous calligrapher from the 1900s. Really looks graceful. What do you expect? This is all he did his entire life!

And worked with a clean Art Deco inspired typeface but in bold of course because this is the BLACK tie BRAWL!

For the poster, I wanted to make it monochromatic with red for the simple reason that there’s a lot of blood going on in that event… and that’s why we like it noh? I thought of the ACDC song Back in Black and applied it to the headline that now says “The Brawl is Back.”

Here’s the final ad:

Now in the September issue of Rogue (sorry the lighting in the house is yellow so it’s not so clear)

Thank you Katz and everyone at Rogue!!! Also to the guys from URCC! See you in October. Looking forward to this!

Maybe I’m just biased cos I love Mad Men. January Jones’ look in the Emmys is amazeballs…is there even a name for that shade of blue? Different but definitely not boring noh?

How amazing is it that you would not have to carry a phone anymore? This is so beautiful. So so beautiful.