Presenting: UChicago Thinkers' Toys

Hewn from solid maple by patriotic American robots, this set of eight illustrated woodblocks feature "Places and spaces [old and new] where students play with ideas."

Sets are given as a thank-you to donors who give $50 or more to the University of Chicago Magazine, which I assure you is a worthwhile cause.

Make a gift today and receive your set!


Art direction: Guido Mendez
Print collateral design: Nicole Melton
Copy: Mary Ruth Yoe
Magazine ad & mailing photography: Nathan Keay
Vendor: Proform Technologies
Illustration: Tom Tian
Photography featured in this post: Tom Tian

WIP: Uncommon Fund

Cover from possible collateral piece for due diligence purposes.

Established in 2006 at the University of Chicago and entirely student-run, the Uncommon Fund finances a diverse range of student projects. I wondered what things would look like if the Fund was a national-level organization with a seven-figure endowment. Print pieces use Gotham throughout; website uses Gotham and Arial.

Funded Projects Report: First interior spread.

Funded Projects Report: Chapter opening.

Funded Projects Report: Typical primary project spread.

Funded Projects Report: Typical secondary projects spread and brief synopsis.

Website: Homepage.

The site is laid out on a 6 x 6 grid in Illustrator, and employs a horizontal navigation system laid out in columns, similar to the view found in Finder. Most of it pretty basic at the moment.

Website: "About" section, introduction.

Website: Application mockup.

Website: Project gallery.

Website: Project entry.

Lite of the Mind

India ink on bristol board; digital colors

An illustrated feature for my alma mater's alumni publication, The University of Chicago Magazine, which was recently redesigned by, wait for it, Pentagram partners Michael Beirut and Luke Hayman.

Fun fact: The illustration is actually a composite of five separate drawings. I worked out the overall layout on a single sheet of paper before separating and scaling the individual elements, as my scanner can only accommodate 8.5" x 11" stock.

Ex Lib.

Above: Menus (front cover and sample inside page)

Business card (obverse & reverse)

Note: You are not at liberty to borrow any of this content for your own purposes or for a third party without my permission.

Full Disclosure: I went to Ex Libris a whopping once during my four years at the University. The cafe itself was not particularly memorable, which is a darn shame when you think about its location (read: The bloody Reg). Given its context, I think that a visual identity overhaul that references its context/surrounding architecture will be part of any large-scale enterprise to improve said establishment's presence and prominence. The goal would be to make Ex Libris a more formal sit-down establishment, a cafe designed for extended stays that would also appeal to new customers who are more familiar with the Reg than its resident cafe.

Having said this, let's begin with the logo, which acknowledges the Reg's shape and texture, as well as the books housed therein and the name of the cafe itself through the thick "hatching" and a simple directional contrast that lends the impression of a cube/rectangular prism extruding out from a surface (the thick hatch marks were also designed to resemble books' spines). The logo can be extended through patterning, and can serve as the basis of a more elaborate but modular system. It can also be used to "frame" photos or other artwork, thereby making it dynamic.

Materials-wise, the business cards and the cover of the menu would be printed on heavy cover paper (or debossed with the logo foil-stamped or UV-coated if budget constraints permit). The menu covers would  form a heavy folder (heavy cover stock laminated over board stock?), which in turn serves as an affordance for the inside pages, printed on light satin A4, this time without varnishing or UV-coating.

I plan on extending this brand into a holistic system (always a fun exercise), so chances are you'll see some designs for signage/environmental work down the road.

Reappraisals: The Maroon

Quick new re-interpretation of the Maroon (top) and old re-design (bottom)
Note: This hypothetical redesign is the property of Tom Tian, and may not be used without his express permission.

Few things are as sobering and edifying as critiquing one's earlier work. I recall revamping the Chicago Maroon's print edition a few years back and thinking that it was the best thing since sliced bread. At the time, it did represent a pretty radical departure from precedent insofar as it attempted to be much more systematic in its type treatment, hierarchy, and layout. It was also more generous in its use of white space, which helped to punctuate and define the content.

Looking back, my runaway indulgence in systematism undermined its long-term reproducibility. Contrast is a good thing, but overuse leads to complex systems that cannot be easily duplicated. Moreover, excessive differentiation risks fragmenting the design into components that do not easily cohere into one product or idea.

With this in mind, if I were to redesign the Maroon again today I'd start with a modular grid and scale; without changing the size of the page, this means setting down a 5 x 8 grid and 3:4 scale, which roughly correspond to the page itself (11:17). Once determined, these relations would then inform my subsequent choices, such as spacing and type size.

Whereas the old redesign was a cacophony of various weights and types (Gotham and Adobe Caslon), the new one would use fewer weights from one family (Adobe Garamond Pro), set flush left to facilitate reading. The modular grid can be thought of as a chart or table of sorts, whereupon horizontal rules of varying weights can serve to divide/partition the page into portions that reflect the importance of whatever content it houses, thereby shifting the burden of differentiation from the type to spacing and layout.

On the non-design side, I would do away with bylines in favor of an expanded masthead; the "topic tags" would also go, as they belong online and have no place in print. The end product is a more modular, parsimonious system that retains the virtues of the older design while curbing its excesses.

A Fine Way to Spend a Friday Evening

Candid event photography is one of life's little pleasures--by which I mean it's a lot of effort for ultimately rewarding results--and one of the great perks of being a photographer. It's even better if the client is kind enough to let you backstage, where you enjoy considerable latitude to, well, get unflattering but honest shots of people.

The twelve photos below are drawn from forty-four strong selects (of roughly 1,200 candidate takes), and arranged in chronological order.

(~6:15 PM) Being the (inconsistently) punctual Asian that I am, I arrived a full hour early to MODA's fashion function, and was greeted by a very empty backstage room. On the plus side, I was also the first photographer there by a long shot, so I had ample opportunity to shoot the setup. I used my trusty Nikon D90 and a tethered flash unit (SB-600) for most of these. The process is similar to what Bruce Gilden does, except I'm just an amateur who's not nearly as quick with my composing and much, much worse when it comes to balancing flash output with the background (my Oriental-ness probably also makes me creepier, which is always a liability). As a consequence, subjects tend to notice me much more than I'd like, though sometimes that results in interesting reactions.

Anyhow, I was meandering about the show floor and saw these designers just sitting--or reclining, rather--on one of several couches by the entrance to the backstage area. I left my lens on manual focus so I won't have to worry about focus-hunting, closed down to a small aperture to give myself a deeper depth of field and therefore some wiggle room (something like f/11, probably), and sort of "dove" into the shot.

The predetermined working distance happens to be rather close (less than half a meter), so I guess she noticed me as I was getting the shot. Fortunately, interesting looking people tend to have commensurately amusing reactions, so I was pleased. Had a model done the same thing, I would have discarded the take.

(~6:35) Being there early also meant that I could grab shots of the (rather ad hoc) dry run. Apparently this was the first time any of the models had actually rehearsed in Harper Memorial, so I guess I should be pleasantly surprised given how well the rest of the show turned out--at least by comparison.

I left my flash on my camera for this one partly because I didn't want people to run into it, but also because it was just easier to grab panning shots with the speedlight sitting on the hot-shoe.

(~6:55) The organizers ushered/herded the models backstage for makeup shortly thereafter. The nice thing about shooting makeup is that the subjects are sitting still and in varying stages of ridiculousness. Said combinations of captive subjects and opportunities for photographic candor are rare and therefore that much more valuable.

Grabbing interesting shots is more difficult than one would expect, however, partly on account of the limited freedom of movement but also because it's tempting to simply shoot things from the "expected" perspective (i.e. eye-level, between the makeup artist and model). This doesn't mean that a heterodox vantage point is necessarily more compelling, but sometimes it produces interesting results. In any event, I was unhappy with how some of the earlier tethered shots were turning out, so I shot a bunch of takes with the flash sitting atop the camera. A diffuser was a must because the ceiling was (1) rather tall and (2) painted black. I cropped out the makeup artist's eyes in the first photo so as to focus attention on her tools, which I thought was much more interesting.

(~7:05) MODA hired a few entertainers and a live disc jockey for their event; I don't know who they are (and, quite frankly, I don't care), but the rappers they found were definitely big on posing for the photographers. They didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about the show, at least during the rehearsal, and their actual performance seemed a just tad bit lackadaisical.

(~7:22) Meanwhile, models were donning their dresses backstage, and some of the selections were definitely more...intriguing than others. I had been somewhat apprehensive about returning to a tethered flash setup mostly because it seemed unsettling to the subjects, but I guess they eventually got used to me running around like a loon, so I decided to reap the benefits of being not self-aware.

(~7:30) Schmoozing invariably attends fashion shows, and MODA's event was no exception. The "VIP" party started at seven thirty, and the most of the folks who showed up could best be described as a gaggle of hipsters, faux-hipsters, and aspiring bourgeoisie who read fashion magazines and took themselves way too seriously. Still, this translated into amusing situations, like the fellow above, who's sipping champagne while savoring his ego.

(~8:05) Twenty-five minutes to H-hour, and makeup's still at it. Personally, I really like the two takes above and the one directly below them; something about the lighting endears them to me. Incidentally, I also shot two of them from the hip--sort to speak; I held my camera upside-down over the subject in the one immediately above, and shot blindly from the chest/neck in the one below. Just goes to show the sort of perspectives you can obtain through heterodox methods (not to mention a touch of sheer dumb luck).

(~8:35) The show was supposed to start at 8:30, but was postponed until 9:15 owing to unforeseen contingencies backstage. Regardless, people were flooding into Harper, mostly, I surmise, for the cheap yet decadent-seeming food.

(~9:35) The actual show was an absolute pain to shoot. Not only did I make the mistake of sitting in the press pit, where my perspective was fixed, but the lighting was positively abysmal. You'd think that a well-funded fashion club would have the material wherewithal--not to mention the aesthetic sensibility--to at least install the lighting they purchased, but nope, they had to set up a bloody chocolate fountain instead. Little wonder why I discarded at least eighty percent of the takes from the end of the runway, including the entire finale.

Anyhow, I have to hand it to the models, most of whom were courageous enough to step reasonably close to the photographers and our wall of blinding speedlights. Anyone who doesn't blink in the face of that much illumination is clearly descended from a superior stock of man.

I spent about an hour and a half going through all 1,200 takes, whittling things down to forty-four promising candidates, which I post-processed in Photoshop CS3, and then these twelve personal selects; I then collapsed into a human-shaped heap of torpor, and fell asleep in my work clothes. All in all a very productive evening.

Deterrence Today

Camera: Nikon FE; lens: Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D; film: Ilford Delta 400 B&W; exposure: 1/125 at f/22; subject is flood-lit using high-power strobes
Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3 & edited in Photoshop CS3; font: Univers; dimensions: 7" x 11.75"

Disclaimer: "Deterrence Today" is a fake event--please do not show up at Pick 505 on November 7th.

The photograph is of a drop of food coloring diffusing into water, and is part of my intro to photography project on motion. Although I've no intention of printing said take for class (the original is far too small), its graininess lends it a graphite-like quality that commends it to serving as a photo illustration.

Stuck in Knots

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; font: Gotham;
dimensions: 24" x 36"

Disclaimer: "Stuck in Knots: Contemporary challenges in urban planning" is a fictitious event. Please do not show up at Social Sciences 102 on November 8th.

Incidentally, this flier describes my academic life pretty well, since it just occurred to me that the only thing my concentration (political science) will have imparted unto me will be a collection of cocktail party topics. A small but vociferous part of me wishes that I had just studied art from the get-go. Oh, well; at least I can be secure in the knowledge that Habermas et al. will make for good gallery opening party-talk.

Bombing to Win a New Design

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3;
fonts: Gotham (for the poster); Chaparral (for the book)
Dimensions: 6.125" x 9.75" x 1.5"

Sadly, most course readings at the University are not well-designed. Let this be an effort to rectify that. I wonder if the University of Chicago Press is willing to print an updated edition of Pape's book; if so, I might just actually volunteer this design (for a fee, of course).

Larger copies of the design of record can be found below.

Front cover

Spine

Back cover

For the Love of Univers

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; font: Univers

Something simple and straightforward for the Division of the Humanities, which I neglected to upload earlier owing to a combination of laziness and coursework.

The violin was constructed in Illustrator using simple geometries and a reference photo. I could have traced it, but decided against it so as to think through the design.

On a related note, I'm somewhat disappointed with the way I typeset the event title and fine text underneath it, though I suppose that it turned out fine.

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; Font: Univers

Again, something concise and to-the-point, this time for Doc U, a documentary film festival on campus. Univers has supplanted Futura as my favorite sans-serif typeface, by the way.

Just Add Copy!

Illustrated in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Illustrator CS3; font: Futura Standard

Say what you will, but I insist that this has been one of my more enjoyable projects in recent memory, with a minimal degree of disagreement from the client. With any luck, the addition of taglines and event titles won't destroy the layout.


I substituted the flag pattern with a modified [RAF] roundel, which preserved the functionality of the former in a more concise manner.

Freedom to Typeset

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; font: Helvetica Neue

More work for the Humanities Division. A flier with this much copy should probably be printed on something other than 11" x 17", but I think that it turned out alright considering the spacial constraints.

The real challenge, though, was to get the event title to display properly against the background image. After a bit of tinkering, I settled on an x-band pattern to wash out the otherwise dissonant cross-hatching of the original woodcut, a choice that I also think dovetailed neatly with the lecture's multidisciplinary character.

Outlined view showing guides, margins, etc. This took about three hours to make from conception to final product.

Now Available in Brilliant Technicolor

An update on the Intention flier, now colored. Note that I used soft returns on the catalogue of names on the bottom so as to improve section differentiation and space use. I've my own reservations regarding the Eadweard Muybridge photos, but unfortunately that's already been determined for me.


An ideal mockup of the flier of record. The additional white-space improves the proportionality and utility of the linear design up top.

Adventures in the Land of Excess Copy

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; font: Futura Standard

Flier for an upcoming lecture, presented in greyscale for value-mapping purposes. The dark grey background fill represents the boundaries of the artboard, which is 11" x 17". Typesetting and layout took much longer than I had expected, mostly due to my being unable to settle the placement and appearance of the abstract linear design on the top left, which will eventually be made into clipping masks for a series of photographs.

Despite my efforts, the margins I used (Van de Graaf canon) simply couldn't accommodate all the copy, which, as you can see, ended up spilling over the bottom. Fortunately, there's still plenty of space for various sponsors' logos.

Design on the Fly

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; font: Meta (an excellent "corporate" type family, but also commensurately expensive (~$400))

This has been a curious spring break, considering that I've spent four of the last five days on campus. Anyhow, here's some more recent publicity work for the Division of the Humanities, this time for a specific feature (free transportation) of a lecture. I was asked to do this out of the proverbial blue, and was provided another flier to use as a guide. The reference poster featured some curious color choices (including a rather garish green), two fonts (Didot for the title and some nondescript sans-serif typeface for the body) and used a regrettably low-resolution, poorly edited photograph of a mosaic. Overall, it was a safe, conservative design.

As you can see, I took a few liberties. I substituted Meta for the serif-sans-serif combination, and applied a consistent system of type treatment that I thought reflected the hierarchy suggested by the copy. Otherwise, I traced out a portion of the mosaic in vectors and tweaked the existing color scheme, adding a bright yet semi-subdued orange to highlight everything related to transportation.


The final task involved scaling everything down to fit on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper. This will be disseminated to students in-class as a mini-flier.

A [Verbose] Campaign in Progress

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; font: Anivers family (a very versatile, high-quality, and economic typeface; highly recommended)

Publicity materials for the Division of the Humanities' upcoming Spring Lecture Series. My employer was generous enough to allow me full control over the campaign's style, though I had no say over the copy, which was typically verbose. There was no predetermined motif; I interpreted the occasion as a part of a continuous dialogue, wherefore I settled on a more orthogonal variation of a Mobius strip. In hindsight, it's also a consciously concise counterpart to the weighty amount of text. Its parsimony also simplified any potential vignetting and formal direction.

The principal challenge came down to typesetting all that copy across various formats, including an unforgiving postcard with very, very little space.


Much cranium-scratching went into formatting this postcard, since I couldn't modify the copy itself to fit the space allotted. Still, I think that the typesetting managed to separate and distinguish each section in an intelligible fashion--achieved through a consistent hierarchy/system of weights, colors, leading, and paragraph spacing.


Transferring all that copy onto 11" x 17" presented its own challenges, mostly on account of the addition of four more lectures to the series. My original plan involved laying out the copy in rows with the date on the left and specific times on the right. The unexpected addition of four other lectures made that scheme untenable. Dividing the copy into three columns solved the problem. Though I preserved the basic hierarchy established in the postcard, my employer asked me to assign more prominence to the individual lecture titles instead of their respective series.


And finally, the 24" x 36" iteration of the flier (scaled down for web viewing), which was much, much easier to typeset.