Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last Creative Post This Year

So this is probably the last post with my work this year. I'm heading back to Brazil for the remaining of the year, and I'll only be coming back in Jan 1st. My laptop will be staying here, so I probably won't be doing to much work during the time being. I might create a logo or two for some competitions, but it'll depend. If they look any good, I'll definitely post. But worry not, I will continue posting. I'll probably post some articles, and most definitely I'll post some videos and critiques on work. So stay tuned.

As for this week's work, it's more design-based. It's the cover of an experimental book that I created for my typography class titled "The Earth is Round". The conceptual part of it is stronger if you see the whole book, but this wont be happening since I leave tomorrow early in the afternoon to go to Brazil. But I like the cover. The font I used is "Olho de Boi" and it's a pretty cool font that has a lot of personality. The texture was done with a lot of overlaying, dodging and burning in Photoshop.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Cars, cars, and more cars.

Lately seems like people are drinking from the same pond when creating advertising. I mean, I understand that some ideas can happen at the same time in different places, but come on, at least research what's out there. So I was questioned about what I thought about the similarity between these two ads. They're both ads for car companies, Toyota and Audi, and both have the car being built, and feature time passing faster than normal, and the camera surrounds the car in both ads.





Could it be that someone is ripping someone off? Honestly, The shots and the time passage thing, I believe, are just film techniques. The essence of the ads isn't that similar. Much more similar, would be the Audi concept to the Mercedes Benz C-Class concept (below). Both deal with taking their time to build a good car, of course, they both go about it in different ways though.



But if you want to see a car commercial that runs from the ordinary, and that still cracks me up every time I see it. God Bless CP+B.

More Green Express

I wasn't able to post last Sunday for a very good reason... finals. It was crazy, and I haven't slept too many hours since then, but it's all done now. And as I sit with my eyes bloodshot red at work, trying to stop myself from sleeping, I figured, why not post?

What I'm posting now is the actual advertising part of the Green Express campaign. Also, I changed their logo around a bit since last time, but the design is still the same for the stationary and all that good stuff. So without further ado:



Sunday, November 4, 2007

Make my logo bigger

This will definitely give designers and art directors a good laugh. Who never did work for a client that had little or no aesthetic sense or taste at all?

For some reason, it reminded me a bit of this video.



Back in the web

I started getting into web design when I was in high school. The internet was just starting to become popular in the late 90s, and I was interested in finding out more about building sites. A friend taught me html coding and introduced me to Adobe Photoshop. I created a few sites back then, and that experience along with a few others that I wont comment on now, led me to decide to pursue a Graphic Design degree in College.

However, when I did get to college, I realized that Print was so much more fun than Web Design. I fell in love with Print Design and posteriorly, Advertising, and began loathing Web Design. That was mainly due to the coding part of it, which I just didn't want to deal with. In the last 4 years I haven't done much web design at all, but, there's a time for everything...

On my last project for my Creative Strategies class, I picked a great client for whom I would create an ad campaign. However, upon visiting their site and finding out more about them, I realized that the Web has had a great impact on there business, and that if this were a real client, there is no way that the agency would ignore that. So, to make this whole thing more difficult for myself, and to enter some more pieces in the school's Awards competition, I decided to go ahead and not only do the campaign, but also to do the website, logo, and their whole visual identity... Yeah, I know, I might have gone a bit overboard here, but what the hey.

So the client is GreenExpress, a courier company in Atlanta that was the first in the country to switch their whole fleet to only Hybrid cars. Not only that, but they changed their office around to be more environment friendly, using recycled supplies and all. So here goes what I have and where it's at so far:



Friday, November 2, 2007

New Photoshop logo

I know you guys probably have seen it already, but I decided to post it here anyways. Adobe decided to, all of a sudden, change the logo for Photoshop. Now wait, that doesn't mean that they're gonna change the icon of the program in CS3, but probably from CS4 on, as well as in all the marketing material that is done for Photoshop specifically.

The logic behind it is fairly simple. Photoshop has now gone beyond being a simple photo-manipulation software, and has ventured into web, and video editing. It's become an essential piece of software for so many different fields that Adobe felt it needed a logo that reflected that. So the design agency created a logo that would not only look good on your dock and on print, but also something that could be more interactive in video and in animations.

I think it was too early in the game for them to do this, specially after the harsh logo transition that they went through in CS3, with the squared color boxes. It was a bold move, that ticked some people off, but that ultimately, was accepted. Not to say that the new logo won't soon be embraced by the design industry, but right now it seems to me like a step back in Adobe's market positioning.


Tolleson Design was the agency responsible for the redesign. Click here to view more images of it.

Friday, October 26, 2007

A Blast from the (not-so-distant) Past

I might post some old work time and again here. I know, that's not what this blog is about, but with this particular piece, I feel that it's right. So once upon a time I worked on a campaign for a Brazilian nightclub. I worked hard and long on creating digital mockups with low rez files that we wanted to present to the client before they approved the budget for the photo shoot. The work was long, but the campaign was good, and the work was noble, and was looking good. In the middle of the process, we sent a jpeg to the photographer, so he could see more or less what we were going for. I continued working at it, and stayed late at the agency to finish the campaign since the presentation was the very next day. Upon my arrival the next morning, I wanted to tweak a few things before the presentation. My jaw dropped when I was told by the owner of the agency that the hard drive where the campaign was stored had failed. For the rest of the days and the coming weeks, we tried to restore it through a bunch of different companies specialized in it, and nada. All that was left was this crummy unfinished digital rough of a postcard...

And that, it a tale to tell for anyone who doesn't back-up daily.


Thursday, October 25, 2007

Feeling inappropriate

I'm starting to get the feeling that my portfolio blog (www.mikealbuquerque.blogspot.com) is an inappropriate way to show my portfolio. Sure, it's easy to update and all, but with my portfolio now increasing its size, mainly due to larger campaigns that are coming in, I feel that maybe a website would be better.

Yes. I said it... a website.


I think its about time I get my hands dirty again and start messing with some of that lousy html coding that'll make me so unproductive :P I'm going to try to keep it simple, but who knows what could happen. I'm trying to look at some good references for portfolio sites, so if anyone has any hidden gems, let me know.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Tim Hortons unfinished

Well, there's a reason that this blog is called Rough Drafts and not Finished Works :P (Disclaimer: If you want to see my portfolio, with all my finished pieces, some of which were presented in this blog, head over to www.mikealbuquerque.blogspot.com. For all you folks who chose to stay here, I'll treat you to my latest work. I had this whole thing planned out where I was going to show you step by step of my process for this project, but I haven't found the time to scan in stuff yet, so for now, I'll just show you where I'm at right now.

This is a project for Tim Hortons, which is basically a Canadian "Dunkin Donuts meets Starbucks" They're famous for their coffee and donuts. This place is dominant up there, handling up to 78% of all the coffee sold and 56% of the pastry (in restaurants). Crazy huh? Well, they haven't yet managed to reach anywhere near that level of success in the US, which is what this campaign is about, awareness. I wanted to focus on the fact that Tim Hortons has combos and different kinds of foods, as well as their well-known (though not in America) coffee. Without further ado (sorry, this was a long post).





Thursday, October 11, 2007

Memento Poster

The following poster was created for my Typography Studio I class:




This is a conceptual poster for the movie Memento. I created the typeface for the movie title which is used in this poster as a separate project. For the poster I wanted to use type to express the chaotic nature of Leonard's memory. The big block of layered type represents his memory, and how he begins to mix up his story with his memory of Sammy Jankins. The eroding background is used to represent the fading and decaying aspect of his mind.

The project in itself was very different than what I'm used to. Basically because it was very conceptual, and instead of looking for literal or visual interpretations of what happens in the movies, I had to dig deeper and look into what made the movie stand out and decide on a way of portraying that.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Dr. Scholl's

This is an ad campaign that I created for my Advertising Design Studio I: Creative Strategies class (what a mouthful!).



The idea here was to reach out to the target audience, which is composed of people who don't necessarily use the product (Dr. Scholl's Massaging Gel Insoles) already, and let them know that the product provides them not only with protection to their feet, but also with comfort. I chose to show them that through images that have people wearing shoes in situations where they typically wouldn't be. This visual exaggeration gets the message across in a humorous and peculiar way.

First Post

Hey guys, for anyone that's keeping track, this is the first ever of this new blog, and I'll use it to explain what's the idea behind this new blog.

As many of you know, I already have a portfolio blog, but this here is something different. The idea of this blog is to be somewhere where I can post regularly, and not only pieces that I think are portfolio pieces. I want this to be a space where I'll be able to post what I'm currently working on, be it finished or not. I might have some tutorials down the line, link to work that inspires me or whatever, I'm very open-ended as to what exactly the purpose of this blog will be. The only thing I guarantee is that there'll be at least one post a week with artwork.

Enjoy!