Spontaneity – and Tedium – in A Street Concert Broadside Design: A Dissection

by bruce colthart on October 2, 2009

A rather long post, it should be of interest to those in the business of creating art, but also illuminating for those who commission visual design and are interested in the process.

This is a story of how I created and produced a particular project, one that both delighted and challenged me; one that let me trust my instincts, benefit from my experiences and take some calculated risks. I’m happy with the results, yet it may or may not be some of my best work. Hopefully this story will be interesting, even instructional, to some.

Here’s an outline:

  • Contact
  • Prologue
  • Acceptance
  • Hello, anyone home?
  • What are the criteria?
  • Never mind the criteria
  • Trust me
  • This is fun
  • This is scary
  • This is tedious
  • This is done

[click to continue…]

{ 10 comments }

Spammed by my local colleagues

June 26, 2009

This is in reply to a blog post by Judy Dunn at Cat’s Eye Marketing regarding the folly of spam as a marketing tool for small business – or most businesses for that matter. You won’t find any controversy between us though; I agree with her. I’m just building on her position.
Spam in sheep’s clothing [...]

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Create or improve your avatar to better reflect your personal & business brand.

February 22, 2009

Regardless of which networking sites you frequent, your avatar or profile photo says something about you. We both know how you get when you choose your clothing prior to meeting a client or a heading out for a date – you may have pulled out the killer shirt or blouse, but if it’s been wrinkled [...]

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Free Twitter Background Donation for a “Deserving” Organization

December 31, 2008

Are you a non-profit, not-for-profit, charity, community organization or cause that desires more exposure, new outreach ideas and more networking opportunities? You may or may not be aware of so-called social media, where you have the opportunity to make your voice heard, reach new people, and learn from a larger community.
One such social media outlet, [...]

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Real Creativity, or My Wife’s Clever Christmas Idea

December 28, 2008

This year, this Christmas, cash flow is a problem. But that’s another story, and shortage of cash is just one aspect of a less-than-ideal Christmas for us. The other is that we never quite feel relaxed around the holidays. Speaking for myself, there’s always anxiety about gift-giving. An avid non-shopper (living in Paramus, NJ, the [...]

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Experimenting with another blog (gasp!)

October 16, 2008

Posterous.com is (from my lack of real research) a very new blogging-like platform that I can email into, and I like that. Perhaps something similar can be done with WordPress? I dunno. But there’s something about it I like, perhaps the spontaneity and simplicity and that I don’t have to host it and update it [...]

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Visual brand vigilance

July 20, 2008

You as a businessperson may speculate that only a designer would care about such [insignificant] details as the alignment of elements or the indents and paragraph spacing on the company’s letterhead. Maybe you’re right. If that’s true, I wonder what else are you not caring about? What other customer, industry and media touch points are you simply leaving to chance?

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Networking simplified and LinkedIn Answers

June 19, 2008

I’ve been quoted on this page (along with 25 other people) regarding networking advice. This results from a LinkedIn question for which I was one of many respondents. Julius at EventManagerBlog, who originally posted the question, then published his favorites pretty much all of them. Mine was one of the shortest, non-bulleted answers, and [...]

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What is this man doing?

June 10, 2008

If you know what he’s doing, I may be able to guess your profession and even your age…

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Animated Infographic Excellence

June 1, 2008

Thanks to a mention in Graphic Design USA, I just enjoyed a few short web films from the reel of production company Superfad. Turns out I’ve seen at least one of their 3D animated tv commercials, for Playstation, in the last year. These three are quite different, are for Sprint, and really have me [...]

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