SF Giants’ uniforms, part 1: GIA NTS

My dad and my girlfriend are as big of San Francisco Giants fans as I am. Maybe even bigger fans. But if there’s one problem they have with the Giants, it’s with their uniforms. Let me explain.

My dad, an illustrator, and my girlfriend, an up-and-coming hotshot designer, pay very close attention to typography (as do I). This happens everywhere. Television. The mall. Packages. Advertisements. Baseball games. So when it comes to watching our beloved Giants, my dad and my girlfriend notice one big thing:

Freddy Sanchez - San Francisco Giants (Image: Zuma Press)

‘GIA  NTS’

Oh, the kerning. The kerning! While I acknowledge that this kerning issue exists, I think it’s irrelevant. I know what you’re thinking. “Some weird typography thing, and this designer guy says it’s irreleveant? Some kind of designer. Sheesh.” I’ll explain, after some back story.

During the baseball season, I must hear something about the uniform gap every week. “It looks like a second grader sewed these numbers on,” my dad will say. “Why don’t they go back to the old uniforms? They didn’t used to look like that.”

He’s right, of course. The Giants’ home uniforms used to employ the block/chiseled serif front without the gap.

Chris Graythen/Getty Images (from bleacherreport.com)

(I want to add that it’s actually pretty odd the Giants moved away from this. Why?)

Take a look at this older production shot of former shortstop Rich Aurilia, circa ‘when he had graying facial hair’. The ‘A’ and the ‘N’ physically touch! Actually, physically touch! The ‘A’ splits the gap, and is (presumably) printed on both sides of the uniform, creating a gapless look. It looks good. And tight. Except …

This is baseball. Baseball isn’t necessarily about the looks. Baseball teams don’t need flashy uniforms, or Nike’s jersey ingenuity. Baseball teams need traditional uniforms. Classic looks. That’s why the league has moved away from the weird powder blue looks made popular (infamous?) by the Phillies. Away from the pullovers, and away from the myriad ‘alternate’ looks. Back to classic.

How’s this relate to the Giants’ kerning problems? I don’t think the kerning looks great, but I also think it would be strange to have the edge of the ‘A’ printed again, like on Aurilia’s jersey. But that’s my point: It doesn’t matter!

It doesn’t matter how the kerning is on the uniform. That’s the last thing I’m watching when I’m watching a game. Baseball is a game about getting dirty, playing with your heart, and hustling. They’re still my team, good kerning or bad.

So, ‘GIANTS’ or ‘GIA  NTS’? I’ll take ’em either way.

Packaging Project: Health Nut bars

(The final design. Read the post to find out how I got here!)

One of my favorite classes this semester (in fact, probably my favorite class) is Packaging. Taught by our esteemed professor, Gregg Berryman (who started the Chico State design program forty years ago), the class is a survey of package design: we look at basic package exterior design, structural design, package systems, and all the work that goes behind a design (like design briefs, client reactions, all that stuff).

Packaging is such a fun class because it’s very real. While the projects are school projects, in that we get to spend a lot of time on them and there are little restrictions, unlike the real world, Gregg does his best to provide us with real critique and real feedback, not to mention a down-to-earth product.

Gregg is a great guide through all this. He knows his packaging, and he’s refined his teaching method over years and years in this profession. (I’ll do a post sometime on the man himself, but not today).

Health Nut

Our first project of the semester: a candy/health bar crossover called Health Nut. We were asked to provide several examples, and create a system out of them. So when I got home, ready to work on the project, I got right to work. (Not really. I did some other homework and watched some television. Then I ate dinner, probably, and went online. Then I got right to work).

The basics were this:
• 2 package designs, both bar wrappers
• 1 was a dark chocolate & pistachio bar
• 1 was a milk chocolate & cashew bar
• both were ‘sweetened with honey’
• the two wrappers had to be closely related

First, I did some research. And by research I meant, I went to the store and bought candy bars. If you’re an avid reader of my blog, you’ll remember my WinCo grocery store post, where I claimed I bought candy for class. Well, here’s proof.

But the real first test was to try out six hundred and twelve different typefaces in Illustrator, and see which ones stuck. 

Here’s all 612 of them. Or something like that. It was a lot, okay?

The next step, in any class taught by Gregg Berryman, is to move to the markers. Great, big, expensive, Prismacolor markers, and specialized Bienfang brand marker paper. But it’s all for a purpose:

It produces these beautiful sketches. Beautiful might be a stretch. It produces these … sketches. (Ignore the sunstreak on the left). This is really the ideation part of the whole project. This is where the ideas flow, and where the design is really made or broken. If you can make the connection, the final design (at the top of the post) grew out of the yellow sketch on the far left with the big, bold, red type. Best part: that was just freehand. I didn’t sketch anything. (Why do those always end up being the idea?)

So what comes next? A move to the computer. And these guys:

Of course, the latter would eventually evolve into my final design. I didn’t know it yet, of course. I wasn’t even sold on it myself. But that’s the one that the class liked the best and that Gregg was drawn to. From there, it was a pretty easy decision. Another couple of tests, and I was left with my final product:

Complete with nutrition facts, a UPC, and ingredients! I’m pleased with how it all turned out in the end. This, of course, is ditto for the yellow version. I decided in the end to lose the stripes on the backside (for the sake of realism, it would be impossible to line those up with every produced candy bar) and re-do the type and the stripe so it looked a little more old-school.

The last step was creating the bar itself. Finally, the design is fully realized and it becomes three-dimensional. I used foam core as filler and wrapped the package around it! That’s what’s shown in the shot above.

There you have it! That’s how I produced my first package design. Oh, and it’s due today.

For any type nerds out there: 
• Filosofia, all small caps, is used for the ingredients list on the face.
• Bebas Neue (a stretched version) is the main word ‘Health’, as well as the net weight.
• Blackoak Std. is  used for ‘Nut’ and ‘King Size.’

My Last Christmas Present

The gift, its container, and all the additional material included

Every year, my roommate Larry and I exchange t-shirts as Christmas presents. By every year I mean “for the last two years”. This year we decided to have some more fun with it (because t-shirts are already incredibly fun) and use Hipstery.

The concept behind Hipstery is more or less genius. Basically, you’re purchasing a random t-shirt. It’s like playing Russian roulette, except you don’t die, and your gifts are usually pretty awesome (100% success rate so far!). Ok, so it’s not like Russian roulette. I was actually pretty pleased with this shirt! The above video describes it in better detail, but it’s the words “Everything will be ok” made up of different words in our world that disprove that point (race, tropical deforestation). The bottom of the shirt finishes the sentence with “, isn’t it?”

Hipstery is a German company, so the packages don’t exactly arrive on time (it’s January 20th), but it’s well worth the wait. Even the shipping confirmation emails are fun! Instead of your boring old, “We shipped it!” from most online retailers, Hipstery gets creative. The following is a quote from the shipping confirmation email:

After some serious head scratching, a team punch up, and many heated words, we finally all agreed on which shirt to send you. It’s our pleasure to inform you that your Hipstery mystery package Order ID: 5d0d5 has left our secret bunker here in the heart of East Germany.

“It was a proud moment for the team and we all crammed into the Hipstery Moped and Side Car for the trip down to the post office. We had trouble at first – Willem cried, Rikard tried to baptize the mail sack in milk for luck, Bjarni got confused and ate the postage, Budge just sort of wandered off. Still, eventually it was accepted by the lovingly stern people of Deutsche Post and began its long expedition to your doormat.

Awesome! The email had me cracking up. I love that the whole thing is shrouded in mystery — it makes the consumer feel like they’re in on a joke, or a secret message, etc. And I don’t have to choose my t-shirt. Certainly an awesome service! Larry’s present is still packaged, the secret shirt inside still a secret, awaiting his arrival.

Check out the rest of the photos below!

The gift, its container, and all the additional material included

Shirt detail

shirt detail

Included in the packaging.

The packaging material. Such a mystery.

A followup: My final essay/timeline for The Orion

The timeline I submitted to Dave to chart my progress as art director.

Our esteemed and now-retired adviser, Dave Waddell, always had everyone on staff submit a 750-word personal essay detailing our experiences on The Orion that semester. I always liked to have fun with them. Here’s the one from last semester that I think goes along well with my earlier post.

(NOTE: I think I accomplished this in all of 8 hours. It was a buttload to write and figure out how exactly I was going to display the whole thing. You’ll notice my writing seems to grow tired as time drags on).

Another semester at The Orion! (and why it’s such a wonderful place to work)

There are two things I worry about as a designer: the big picture, and the details. That might seem pretty obvious, but it’s important to keep those two concepts on the front of your mind. I focus on the details, but I always have to take a step back from anything I’m working on. This is a concept I developed at The Orion.

The Orion is the best decision I’ve ever made in my college career. Yesterday, we had orientation for what will be my fourth semester on staff. It’s amazing to me that it’s been less than two years, because it’s become such a huge part of my life and who I am as a designer and as a person. I spent all of 2011 as the paper’s art director, a wonderfully rewarding experience. I was in charge of the way each section of our five-section newspaper looked each week, and it was a blast.

But the best part of my experience on the paper has been the people I’m lucky enough to work with. The tight-knit community at The Orion is fostered by the work we do each week to produce such a great product. It’s a family, really, especially the editors. We care about each other’s problems and we try to find solutions. And like a family, we have our arguments and we have our drama. But in the end, we’re all better for it. More than a few of my favorite collegiate memories involve the friends I’ve made here.

The Orion is really a place where people grow up. Most of the staff is within a couple years of age twenty, which plays a big role. And we’re all in college, which says a lot as well. But it’s more than that. The Orion is the first job where I’ve made my own decisions. And big decisions. I don’t mean deciding which side of the store to start mopping. And I don’t mean deciding exactly what shade of blue to use on a project. Decisions that you will be fully responsible for. Decisions that will be your sole responsibility.

Before my stint as art director had officially begun, I had to hire my staff. I had six candidates for four open positions and had to break the bad news to two of them. I nearly misfired and didn’t hire the woman who is now our art director. Decisions, decisions. I had to make decisions each week that would cement any legacy I have as art director. Each week it was a different decision: one week it would be sizing the headlines correctly (pretty subtle) and the next week it would be a complete overhaul of a section cover (a pretty big task).

I realized that professionalism mattered the most. You can make a product look amazing all you want, but you can’t forget about the details. My first semester as art director was all about the big picture, but in my second I started to work in the details. That’s when I began to develop the theory I stated at the beginning of this post.

This power as a decision maker is really what makes The Orion such a transformative place to work. I suspect many of the editors I’ve had the pleasure to work with have felt similarly.

When you’re looking at the staff of our newspaper, the product you produce and the effort you make as a group is the “big picture.” But you can’t forget about the friends on staff and the people that make the paper as unique and successful as it is. That’s the detail.

A party all by myself

I returned home this week to an empty apartment, in Chico, CA. Both my roommates were gone (one won’t be back for a while). I was feeling kind of lonely but I realized it would be a fantastic time to try out a technique that I (and I’m sure most of you) have seen a few times before.

I got a remote for my camera for Christmas (!!!!) and I have been estatic to try it out. I did some long-exposure night shots but I hadn’t done too much for it yet. And I figured, with an empty apartment, why not? I had a party all by myself. Observe:

A party all by myself. From left to right: school Liam, black chess Liam, School Liam again, upset Newcastle fan Liam, glitter party Liam (notice the tie), white chess Liam, sleepy Liam

I set up the camera up in a corner of our living room, with the ISO at 400, aperture wide open at 3.2 and the shutter speed at 1/15. Kinda slow, but it was dark inside and I figured, why not.

I moved around and changed shirts, and hit the remote’s button whenever I was in position. I think I did about twice the number of poses and outfits that made it into the final product. Then I just layered them in photoshop and cut away all the unnecessary stuff.

It was a rambunctious good time. I won and lost a chess game, huddled under my giants blanket (thank you to my wonderful girlfriend Samantha for making it), noticed that I actually am going bald (thank you again, Samantha), and apparently left and returned from school. All in a days work.

This is something I have to try again. It was too much fun. In the future, I’m going to more carefully plan it out, though. And during the day time would be a little easier. More light, at least.

Why all my blogs fail, and why this one won’t.

See? A real photo of me? This blog IS for real.

In my 21 years of life, I’ve started 17 different journals, diaries, and blogs. They have all failed.

The physical ones I usually find whilst cleaning up my childhood room, and read through a month or so of my life at a time. Most of the journals are self-referencing (“I’m going to write in this journal every day!”) … aaand usually drop off to a couple days a week, then a month. The next entry is a year later, and it’s always an update on my life. (“Since my last entry, I’ve done this and this and this”).

In fact, I have a journal I started when I was 9. It follows this pattern perfectly. Every time I clean out my childhood room (which used to be about once a year, longer now), I add a little update about it. If I ever find it again I’ll show you.

And the blogs I only find when I decide to start another one. Like this one here. July 13, 2010. That’s a year and a half ago and I never actually posted anything.

Why do my blogs fail? I could say life gets in the way. That I get too busy. But that seems like a cop-out, doesn’t it? The real reason, I kid you not, that my blogs never get off the ground is that I get too caught up in the design of my blog.. WordPress has literally hundreds of themes! How is a designer supposed to choose? I can’t go putting words on a page before it looks good.

(UPDATE: I found a theme that works. It’s pretty sweet, actually).

So I guess that means I need to learn how to make my own themes. This is the beginning.

This blog is going to be a smörgåsbord of my life. The “ smörgåsblog” if you will. I’ll try to provide a little sample of everything I do: television and movies I think are must-sees, design projects I’m working on, how the San Francisco Giants are doing, the wonderful world of good alcohol, trips I’m taking, and the more interesting side of my day-to-day life.

So, here’s to attempt #18. It can only go up from here!