Mike's Rough Drafts

24 HOUR MARATHON (GENERATE)

2008-10-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

ING Georgia Marathon Poster Competition (Graphic Design Challenge)

This weekend there was an event at SCAD called Generate, aka the 24-hour marathon. As part of this marathon, there was a 13 hour challenge to create a poster for the ING Georgia Marathon. Now, I was a part of this competition last year, and ended up winning it, but this year, something changed. I was asked to take a different approach, instead of doing a vector-based illustration like in the previous year, this year they were pushing to have a bitmap based poster. No stock photography was allowed, but I figured that I could take my own photos, it's too bad that it was a rainy day in Atlanta and I couldn't get a pic worth anything.

After being conscious of my technical limitations, I went on to sketch. After coming up with a few different concepts, I ultimately went for creating a mosaic of the photography that was provided by the Georgia Marathon organizers. The photos were carefully selected to reflect not only the competitive spirit but also the involvement that the community has with the event. The result you can view below:

Art Director's Night (Advertising Design Challenge)

After 13 hours designing against the clock, I was a bit tired, but there were still 11 hours left, what was I to do if not work some more? So I went on to do the Ad Design challenge, which was to create a poster, a post card, and a site for Art Director's Night. This event is a night in which graduate and senior students get a chance to meet and be interviewed by some of the top art directors in Atlanta.

It took me a while to get this one. I couldn't get a right look down, but after a couple of hours and a few different directions, I started "getting it". So I created a headline that treated the students as the future superstars of advertising. This hypes not only the college, but also helps bring up the expectations of the panelists that were coming to view the students' work. The visual was reminiscent of a rock poster, and I kept it consistently through the poster, post card, and website. Check it out:

POSTER

POST CARD (FRONT)

POST CARD (BACK)

WEBSITE

CNN

2008-10-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some posters I did for an ad campaign that I did for my Business Practices of Advertising. CNN is obviously a well-known and respected brand, but I felt like I had to bring in some elements that could be consistently used. So I created these red stripes that emulate the lines in their logo. These stripes create an interesting element that is dynamic and introduces movement to the page. The background is white but has some highlights that also relate to the reflective nature of the stripes.

The concept of the ad is to convey that CNN is the only network that can bring you the insight to understand the news. By presenting key words with the letter "n" doubled and the c,n,and n highlighted in red, it stands out and give the idea that CNN is intertwined with those words.

The other one is a print ad for the show Anderson Cooper 360, a show that comes on every night on CNN and that goes more in depth with the headline stories.

Adobe CS4

2008-09-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4 - Videos of the new features

Design Premium CS4

Web Premium CS4

Production Premium CS4

Photoshop CS4

Photoshop CS4 Extended

InDesign CS4

Flash CS4

Illustrator CS4

Dreamweaver CS4

Additional Videos

Content-Aware Scale

Spherical Panorama

3D Quick Look

3D Mesh from Grayscale

3D Eclipse Animation

Experience Wii

2008-09-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

I've gotta say that this actually caught me off-guard. Here I was expecting it to be a simple youtube video, but it was so much more. Do yourself a favor and check it out. It's a great use of the medium in a new way that will no doubt have an effect on the target audience. The movement and the overall feel of this is also completely consistent with the concept of Nintendo's console.

Experience Wii

As I watched this though, I remembered a project I did for New Media Art class in college. Our concept had to do with chaos, the second law of thermodynamics, and erosion. We designed a website that featured videos and content that related to that concept. After a minute or so, the website would start to fall apart. Paragraphs would disappear, images would turn into broken links, etc. It was a cool project, but not nearly as nicely executed as this one.

Green Magazines

2008-08-27T02:56:00.000-07:00

So I've been designing some websites for my Digital Studio I class. I figured I'd post it here. I enjoyed designing this site as I really went into depth regarding the style and the mindset of the target audience. This one is for a client that I've done some freelance for in the past, although the site was just done as a class project.

Here's the link for the full thing:
Green Magazines site

the one that's on the air right now I didn't design, but here it is for comparison's sake
Current Site

Motion Graphics DIN

2008-08-21T22:07:00.001-07:00

So I've been trying my hand in some Motion Graphics because of my Typography Studio II class. Here's my first attempt at messing around with After Effects. It was an animated version of a poster I made for the typeface DIN 1451.

And here's the poster that led to the animation:

Video Enhancing Technology

2008-08-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is truly amazing. It's funny because thinking about it, it almost seems obvious.

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.

Mike's Site

2008-08-15T03:32:00.001-07:00

Here's the Beta version of what's to come, my brand spankin' new site. so far only the main page and the advertising page are working.

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~malbuq20/mike/advertising.html

I plan to get a domain soon. ;-)

First ideas

2008-07-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

This is a really cool experiment done by the agency Taxi. I won't say anything more so that I won't spoil it, but it's definitely worth checking out.

World Cup Hype

2008-05-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

This piece was done for a campaign in which the objective was to brand Coke for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The challenge was how to incorporate elements that related to South African culture, football, and Coke. At the same time, it had to be visually exciting and uplifting. The result was layout that I had wanted to try for a while in my pieces. And I'm pretty happy with it.

Beatles

2008-05-20T02:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while. This quarter has been hectic. Taking three studio classes proved to be very tough. On top of that, I was preparing my portfolio because I was trying to find an internship. Which I did, by the way, at JWT Atlanta. My grad review also came up towards the end of the quarter, and that was a lot of work too.

But, all excuses aside, of course I've also been working hard this quarter, and I'll soon be posting here a few of the things that I've done this quarter, starting with a poster I did for the Beatles. There's also a cd packaging that goes along with it, but I have yet to take good pictures or create a digital mockup, so it'll have to wait a bit.

Roaches in NY

2008-04-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

Some wise guys from Zoo York, an urbanwear store geared towards skateboarders thought it'd be a good idea to spray paint their logos onto cockroaches and spread the said roaches throughout NY. Here's the result:

Illustrations

2008-04-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to go to art college to seek a degree in illustration. He built a whole portfolio with nothing but charcoal, pastel, and pencil illustrations. That boy got accepted, but decided to seek a major in Graphic Design when he got there. The rest, as they say, is history. As my computer skills increased, my drawing skills went down the drain.

But, during my years in the advertising and design fields I still kept illustrating every now and then. By no means do I mean to say I'm any good, and it usually takes me a really long time to come up with these, but I still have fun. I wish I were better, and I wish I could push myself to illustrate more often.

I ran into this file while cleaning up my design blog. It's a mascot I created for a some products from a supermarket in Recife.

Movie Posters

2008-04-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting bit about movie posters. The director of The Mist gives his take on what bugs him about some posters that are being made out there. I couldn't agree more with what he says. The interview starts at 2:10 and goes til 4:44

Pat/Mike Collaboration

2008-03-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

These were a series of spread ads for a campaign I had to do for tequila. the concept was to portray competing drinks as characters. Vodka was a russian guy, sake a sumo wrestler, etc. And to contrast their depressive characters with the hot, young, party-going tequila girl. The result was pretty good. I love the illustrations for this. Good job Pat!

Obs: Colors are a bit toned down by Photoshop's "save for web" feature. The tequila girl's page should have a more saturated tone, while the others should be as muted as they appear.

Process Book

2008-02-22T17:49:00.000-08:00

Well, I promised to post a process, so here we go. Today was the 13 hours 01 minute design marathon at SCAD. We were asked to design from scratch a poster for a marathon during 13 hours and 01 minute. As I had imagined, that's an awful lot of time to design one single poster. At least to me. So the marathon started at 9h30 am, and by 2pm I was pretty much done. So the next 8 hours were long as heck, but I spent them tweaking and perfecting little details in the design. Now, without further ado, the process.

1) Research. Since a poster is a very visual and not necessarily conceptual piece, the thing that was going to nail this was the right image. So I started out by going to stock photo sites to look for images. After that, I looked at google for posters designed for other marathons. With th at done, I went to step 2.

2) Sketching. I've gotta admit, I didn't do nearly as many sketches as I should. I did like 5, and I decided to try it out on the computer. But don't do this kids, you want at least 10-15 ideas under your belt before going to the computer.

3)Looking for the elements. I knew I was going to have arrows, and silhouettes, so I went to my huge personal file library, as well as the internet, and searched for that which served me the best. With that done, I started cranking out digital roughs:

1) This one had the idea of the arrows and the runners. The arrows give the idea of direction to the piece, it felt like a good start, but too bare.

2) This is when the piece started to take shape. I got all the right elements in here. I wanted to have a mixture of an urban setting with a little bit of nature, hence, the birds and tree. The larger building is the Bank of America building, which is the most prominent building in the Atlanta skyline.

3) There was very little contrast in the previous version, it almost felt like a computer wallpaper. I increased the size of the elements to create more tension and contrast. The runners became the focal point of the piece and hierarchy was established.

4) Then I played around with the elements a bit just to make sure of what I want is where I want. Tried a few different things, looked at them...

5) And finally, there's the last change that just makes the piece work. The final piece:

Outside the Box

2008-01-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

A new trend that arrived in the last 2-3 years is to create ads that will interact with the media they're in. We've seen it done brilliantly by Crispin, Porter & Bogusky on their Mini Cooper ads, where the Mini interacts with other print ads. It seems like the trend is starting to spread to TV Spots. In this one, for the upcoming movie Jumper, the trailer goes into an HP ad, and then returns to finish the trailer. It might seem like an interesting idea, but the end result looks goofy and forced. It also probably doesn't make too much sense in the concept of the movie here. So here's to hoping that future attempts of this kind are better thought through.

Censorship

2008-01-05T18:54:00.000-08:00

I don't want to get political here, because that's not what this blog is about, but when I heard about this, I just had to post it. Regardless of the fact that the poster that I'm going to show you is from a movie that probably has a clear political message, I still don't like to see a good idea shot down by censorship.

Here's the skinny:

The movie "Taxi to the Dark Side" is a so called documentary about torture practices of the US Army while in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo. Obviously the topic is controversial, and in times of war, that is more than enough to make people sensitive to the topic.

The poster depicts two soldiers carrying a prisoner with a hood over his head, and their shadows make the stripes of the American flag. MPAA argues that their problem with the poster is the hood and the insinuation of abuse, which isn't acceptable since the poster would be, theoretically seen by children as well.

I won't discuss the logic or validity of such argument, but it's a shame that such a beautiful design won't be seen by the general public.

Last Creative Post This Year

2007-11-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

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.

Cars, cars, and more cars.

2007-11-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

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:

Make my logo bigger

2007-11-04T23:28:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

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:

New Photoshop logo

2007-11-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2007-10-26T11:54:00.001-07:00

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.

Feeling inappropriate

2007-10-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Tim Hortons unfinished

2007-10-22T00:02:00.000-07:00

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).

Memento Poster

2007-10-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Dr. Scholl's

2007-10-06T23:22:00.002-07:00

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

2007-10-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

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!