Gravitymachine

If you want to know what's on my mind...

2009-04-10T08:49:00.004-04:00

So I have three different blogs now, plus a twitter account. There's no point in updating all three...and I don't have time. So the blogger site is going to go dormant for awhile.

I'm working on my new web site, which will have a WP blog built in. Until then, here's how to keep up with me:

My One Lucky Guitar blog (that's the design agency I work for):
oneluckyguitar.com/us/blog/drew

My Publr blog:
drewkora.publr.com/

Or follow my on Twitter:
twitter.com/drewkora

My bookmarks on delicious (recently purged, so might not look like much there yet):
delicious.com/andrewkora

Cheers.

Modern Poster

2009-03-01T21:46:00.004-05:00

There's a great show coming up next week. The bands Husband & Wife and Everybody from Bloomington will be at the Tiger Room, along with Metavari. I go way back with Everybody. Front man Matt Bruns and I both grew up and went to the same high school in NE Indiana, we worked together at the same screenprinting shop, went to art school together, and started our pro-level design careers at the same agency. So it'll be great to have him here in my city.

I designed a poster for the show. I've been watching Gary Hustwit's Helvetica a lot recently, over and over, in fact. So inspired me to do a clean, modern-style poster...complete with grid system and Helvetica. OF course, I did end up distressing it a little for a slightly vintage, weathered look.

The Desert

2009-02-23T20:46:00.001-05:00

I've been creating some digital paintings lately. They are actually sketches for things I'd like to do with real paint, but I'm so busy I don't have time to experiment with colors and shapes in real life. So I'll start on screen like this, see the combo I want and then open up a tube of paint and put it on a wood panel.

I'm trying to come up with some cool art panels for my living room, so I'm thinking of a series of simple mod paintings like this one. I love hte desert, so maybe a series of desert paintings...

Down the Line 3

2009-02-07T14:37:00.003-05:00

It's time for the third annual Down The Line benefit concert for The Historic Embassy Theatre in Fort Wayne. It's a really gorgeous theatre; it even rivals some of Chicago's historic venues. So all these local bands get together and play cover the songs of their greatest inspirations. Artists and designers in town create graphic slideshows which are displayed behind the bands. I was given the privilege to do some graphics for Ty Causey's performance of classic Marvin Gaye tunes. Here's a few of the slides I created for the show.

Timber on the Way

2009-01-30T14:30:00.003-05:00

More good music coming to Fort Wayne. This one is right around the corner from my house at The Grind coffee house. Should be interesting to see a live harpist (is that what a harp player is called?) at a small coffee house. I hope it's LOUD.

Poster art compliments of Nate Utesch.

Deastro & Metavari at The Tiger Room

2009-01-26T20:19:00.006-05:00

Metavari & Deastro played a great show last night. I'm a big fan of Deastro, but the new tunes he played last night exceeded my expectation. Our fair city was sparkling in the cold. Can't wait for the new disk to come out.

Deastro & Metavari vids on my Vimeo
Deastro on Myspace
Metavari

Helvetica Mug

2009-01-24T08:32:00.002-05:00

Loving my new mug. Thanks be to my workmates who bought photos form Veer and scored some free merch.

Mod Numbers Project, 2: "HF&J" Style

2009-01-20T14:21:00.000-05:00

I have more if the numbers fleshed out. Still not sure all the shapes are correct, but I feel I'm pretty close. I was anxious to see the fonts with some color, so I mocked 'em up HF&J style.

Nice Vintage Chair

2009-01-18T14:19:00.000-05:00

Last fall I rescued a sweet vintage chair from certain doom. Fort Wayne's Philharmonic Orchestra was moving from their old offices and, as a result, were getting rid of all the furniture in the old building.

The building they moved out of was a really neat (though shabby) mid-century modern church on the south end of town. They had some real gems in there as far as furniture goes, so I gobbled up the brownish-orange chair you see here in my living room. I really love this thing. Probably early to mid-60s. It's in really nice shape, too.

Mod Numbers Project, 1.1: Typetool

2009-01-17T14:17:00.000-05:00

As an addendum to the last post, I am looking into purchasing some font creation software. Most google searches for the "best font creation software" point to FontLab's "FontLab Studio" or Fontographer. Both look like robust applicaitons and are pretty expensive. For my typogrphy enthusiast/hobbyist needs, their entry level "Typetool" software seems like a good alternative.

I've downloaded a trial and started to place my Adobe Illustrator-sketched numbers into it and it seems pretty intuitive with lots of control over kerning. I'd like to try it out more and research some other options before I make a purchase, but for $100 it seems like a good entry-level package.

Mod Numbers Project 1: 4 & 3

2009-01-17T14:15:00.001-05:00

I started work on a new font today. I'm trying to craft an elegant mid-century modern display face. The look of the font is inspired by a 60s mod era General Electric clock that belonged to my wife's grandmother. Natureally, then, the numbers are strongest in my mind so that's where I started.I worked on the 4 and the 3 this morning.

It's possible this little font will only be numbers, dashes, and misc. symbols with no alphabet. We'll see where my sketches end up. Even so, I'm loving the look of these numerals and it'll be fun to use them in some posters or infographics.

The font doesn't have a name so far, but given the direction of the work so far I'm called it the Mod Numbers Project. Stay tuned for more updates.

so far so good

2008-09-05T08:39:00.003-04:00

I started a new job no Tuesday at One Lucky Guitar in Fort Wayne. It's great being a part of the team...awesome people, great clients, and incredible work to sink into. And of course, the workspace is great...

cool old building with gallery on the first floor ✓

exposed brick ✓

modern IKEA furnishings ✓

e30 BMW hood hanging on the wall ✓

rockin' posters and design hanging around ✓

macs ✓

Looking forward to a lot of fun projects in the weeks / months / years ahead. I'll be blogging about design stuff on the OLG site, too. Read it here.

Doodling

2008-09-04T22:59:00.003-04:00

I spent a few minutes dabbling around in Illustrator and Photoshop and came up with this. Nothing spectacular, just an experiment with colors and simple shapes. I'd like to keep working on this concept and several others in the same vein in the coming weeks. I've been so busy lately (well, still am actually) that it's nice to steel away some time to work on some purely personal projects.

A hearty slice of America

2008-09-01T16:54:00.006-04:00

My wife and I spent Labor Day weekend camping with friends in Evart, Michigan, right on the Muskegon River. What a wonderfully lazy couple of days. We ate, drank, sat by the fire, set off fireworks, and floated down the river at about .75 miles per hour. It was the sort of laid back weekend spent with best friends and families where the rest of the world feels a million miles away and nary a trouble enters your mind.

Even the neighboring campers blasting their country music until 3am didn't bother me. It was obnoxious for sure, but also wonderfully authentic. I just soaked it up. All of it! The piles and piles of grilled meat, coolers of beer, rednecks next door...what a great slice of American culture. I wouldn't trade the memories for anything.

The icing on the cake: my wife's first time camping. She ~~loved it~~ thought it was OK.

It was perfect way to reboot before the start of the new week...tomorrow is a big day. I take a new step in my career as I start a new job.

Good news everybody...

2008-08-26T08:37:00.004-04:00

The laptop is fixed. The mac repair store, Signature Mac, had 250gig HDs in stock at a good price, so I picked up one of those. It's not a 7200rpm like I had hoped, but, the Tech said a 7200rpm would run hot and suck up the battery life anyway. I was never unhappy with the speed of the old 5400rpm HD, so I'm not disappointed. Install of the hardware was easy (too easy, actually). Software install took forever. Everything checks out.

That being said, big thanks to Signature Mac in Fort Wayne. I've known the owner, Mike Carper, for years. Very friendly and great to do business with. The tech who sold me the hard drive was very helpful, too.

Now all that remains to be seen is whether my friends in the computer forensics lab at Indiana Tech can salvage anything from the old HD.

Grey Screen of Death (and Ironman)

2008-08-25T09:23:00.004-04:00

Well, I spent half of Sunday troubleshooting my MacBook. The hard drive crashed during a back up. So not only did I lose what was on my hard drive, the back up drive went with it and I lost that, too. Now my screen boots up with a blank grey screen...not even a friendly apple logo like you see above. NOTHING. Grrr. So, I have to replace the hard drive, reinstall OSX, and hopefully that'll do the trick. The upside is that I now have an excuse to get a larger 7200rpm HD and I may as well upgrade to 10.5 while I'm at it. The downside...a modest expense I wasn't intending to make, tons of lost files, and lots of lost time.

In other news, my wife and I saw Ironman over the weekend at the 2nd-run theater...it was definitely worth the $1.50 and worth seeing on the big screen. RDjr played a great Stark. As long as you don't try to rationalize anything, it's a great flick. I enjoyed the character scenes more than any of the action, actually. Of course, it does suffer from one of the great sci-fi action movie cliches: The Reactor Core. Man, how many flicks must end with the bad guy being blown up with "the reactor core?"

Eno & Byrne

2008-08-21T11:17:00.002-04:00

Brian Eno and David Byrne released a new album on Tuesday...two of my favorite musicians of all time. I haven't had a chance to listen to the music in depth yet, but so far so good. Linkage below.

Project Wrap-Up: A few More Brochures

2008-08-15T22:32:00.006-04:00

A few more brochures were delivered from the printer today. These are part of a series I wrapped up a few weeks ago, posted about a few days ago. I'm happy with the outcome, though I made a mistake...I specified a gloss aqueous coating over a spot. I've put gloss aqueous on an uncoated sheet before with great results. It's not exactly "glossy," bit it gives the ink a nice deep color and a good sheen. However, once in awhile the ink comes out mottled. I've determined this is the result of a single hit of a spot ink topped with aqueous. Anyplace where it's a CMYK build the ink looks fine. Lesson learned.

Here the brochures together with the old ones. It's nice to see them all together.

Project Wrap-Up: Collier Financial Logo & Stationery

2008-08-15T12:25:00.004-04:00

Last week I wrapped up the first of a few projects for my friends at Collier Financial. They asked me to develop a more fresh, modern looking mark for their new business venture. The business cards and letterhead will serve as the flagship for their new look and feel. Hopefully more incredible work for these folks is on its way.

Production Notes
paper: Domtar Solutions, Carrera White, Vellum finish, 100# Cover (cards), 70# text (letterhead)
printing: spot pms colors for green, grey, and red-orange
printer: Parrot Press, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Project Wrap-Up

2008-08-13T08:14:00.005-04:00

Here's one I finished up a few months ago but never got around to taking photos of until recently. I developed a pretty tight grid for the layout on this one...the squarish shapes help make the grid a little more visible, too, once you know to look for it. Prior to developing these, I art directed a photo shoot that I felt went really well. Those photos, taken by Neal Bruns at Capture Photography in Fort Wayne, really made this piece come together.

Production Notes
paper: Mohawk Via Sating, Natural White, 80# Cover
printing: 4-color process + Second Black* + Flood Gloss Aqueous
printing by: Parrot Press, Fort Wayne, Indiana

*The second black helps the large black area look nice and deep. It also allows me to separate the black used in the text from the black used in the images. So pre-press and the pressman have a little more flexibility adjusting the levels of the image without screwing around with the clarity of the text.

YouTube of the week: Electric Feel

2008-08-13T08:08:00.004-04:00

a random take on the sub-mariner

2008-08-12T10:22:00.006-04:00

A much-admired artist-filmmaker-surfer-drifter friend of mine, Jeremy Rumas, has started a blog to catalog the development of his Namor the Sub-Mariner comic. So far he's only showing glimpses of the art direction and style as it gets fleshed out. I'm really excited to see where he goes with this concept. Check it out.

Far Below: a random take on Namor the Sub-Mariner

Eef Barzelay ftw

2008-08-10T10:49:00.005-04:00

Last night I saw Eef Barzelay, front man from the now defunct (but still excellent) Clem Snide, play a show in Fort Wayne at Calhoun Soups & Spirit's front room. It was tons of fun. Very intimate setting...Sara and I watched him and the band play from a distance of abotu 5 feet. The guy is hilarious and his alt-country tunes are top notch. I even got to shake his hand and thank him for the show afterward.

Years ago, when we first came to Fort Wayne from Chicagoland, I knew that the music would be what I missed the most from Chicago. But it seems like this little city of Fort Wayne is really coming around. Eef this month, Ben Folds in October, and hopefully Wilco in the near future.

TWIST poster

2008-08-10T10:17:00.001-04:00

On Friday I whipped up a poster for the university's office of institutional advancement. They have an annual golf outing called TWIST. I decided to go for a 60s mod look for the poster. I'm pretty happy with the results, considering I only had a few hours to figure it out.

Work in Progress

2008-08-10T10:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a sneak peed at a little big project I'm working on for the City of Fort Wayne:

Project Wrap Up: FW Philharmonic 2008/09 Season Catalog

2008-08-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

Back in May I designed the 200/09 season catalog for the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a ton of fun. I got to do a lot of typesetting, I used my favorite font (Trade Gothic Extended), and I specified a spot gloss varnish to accomplish some wicked effects throughout the booklet. Big thanks to Samantha and Book at the FW Phil for letting me work on this project for then and Steve Gardt and the gang at Keefer printing for a great job on the production.

Presently I'm doing a littel bit more work for them on the side. Stay tuned.

Return of blogger

2008-08-09T01:35:00.000-04:00

My site was sorely needing a revamp and my Moveable Type blogs weren't really accomplishing what I wanted them to, so I've returned to blogger until I can get a new site and bog figured out. If you're hear because you're looking for my old Recreation Deck or Education Deck blogs...sorry, they are no more. I couldn't keep up with them and some of the subject matter is no irrelavant.

At any rate, some exciting things are happening for my design career. Plus, I have some juicy projects in the pipeline. I have lots to dump into this blog in the very near future.