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I was thinking about some newer style photography yesterday and thought it’d be fun to make a triptych of myself. I could never quite get into it though, I kept doing things like try to go to sleep and watch Will & Grace.

I just lost my train of thought.

It’s recently come to my attention that I might benefit from having a business card. I’ve been working on some designs, but haven’t quite gotten anything I liked. (Assume that relevant information would be on the back of cards that don’t show it, also borders are only to separate from the background and not in the final design.)

The thing is, I always find myself going back to something super simple. Like this.

This photo started out as a picture for my MySpace and Facebook profiles, I wanted to create an interesting image to represent me. I didn’t want to have a photo of me taken in the bathroom with my phone.

My grandma had given me a wooden T for Christmas and I thought it would be interesting to incorporate it into a photo of me, serving a subtle representation of me.
So I put the camera on timer and stood in front of a white wall.
When faced with a camera and the inevitable release of the shutter most people don’t know what to do. I am one of them.
This is why I am puckering my mouth. (At least I’m not doing that “suprised” look.)
I loaded the photo on the computer and start playing with it.


Eventually I came to this photo. Took my head out.

The bh4j on my shirt is distracting, so I took it out.

And added my name.

So this was an assignment for a graphics class in high school. We were supposed to create a superhero.

There was a caption on the left that read:
“Sig and Ned,
The Half Dead,
Inbred,
Newly Wed,
Under Fed,
Crime Fighting,
Differently Abled Twins.”
I’d like to say two things about this.
1. I’ve gotten better at drawing. Much better.
2. All color was done in Photoshop.

Back when I was into being punk and into being a Sophomore I emailed the owner of a locally run clothing company about how to become a designer.

After a month or so he emailed me back asking if I wanted to meet with him to propose some shirt designs.

We met at a skatepark and talked about xok for about an hour while I showed him some designs.

He said he liked my stuff and after the interview I emailed him the designs.

After that our correspondence fell apart and I figured that was the end of it.

Well today I decided to check out xokclothing.com for kicks and if you click on “store” you’ll see a splash screen featuring a cartoon I used to draw that I called Anarchy Bot.

A little more investigation lead me to they’re myspace page’s blog which features a new list of shirts, one of them featuring xok bot.

So that’s what’s new.

It’s sort of funny that they changed the pages background color to blue, because it looks like real shit that way.

The last post was brief because I was in a hurry, so now I will explain the details as I understand them.

The designs on this and the latest post are for the upcoming Fantastic Floor cassette ep release show. About 20 cassettes will be given away, on them will be 3-5 tracks (I’m not sure at all how many, but this is a good guess for an ep). The music will be recorded onto previously owned cassettes with some of the audio intact at the end, thus making each ep individual.

To keep with the theme of every cassette being different the idea was proposed that each case be different, which is what your seeing here.

The designs are in three sections.
1. The general feeling is that there will be text on the back, so in the designing process I’ve kept the backs a simple color.
2. The spine. Displays the name of the band and will often be colored different then the front or back.
3. Mostly minimalist in design the front (farthest to the right, and the biggest area) is what the rest of each ep design revolves around. Many of the designs center around the boy (Danny H.) with the guitar on his back (which is the unofficial F.F. theme).

Bruce correct me on anything that I missed, or got wrong.

Fantastic Floor is playing at Nate’s house on Friday and we’re trying to get out an EP for the show. I’m designing the cover(s) for the cassettes.

For my graphics class I had to do a self-portrait involving Photoshop is some way. The original picture is on the left (Im in the stripes in that one).

It’s interesting to note that Trace seems to go from mildly angry tall fellow, to a short person with a wild Napoleon complex.