Sneak Peek

I have too many ideas in my head. This is something I'm playing with now:

Very preliminary, but also very excited...

That is all. Thanks for reading :)

Holy Wedding, Batman!

It's been an exciting time around here the last little bit.

Two of my very good friends, Darren and Robyn, finally got married! Their wedding was a huge success, and being that they were friends of mine, naturally their wedding was impressively geeky.

Apart from Darren (accenting his suit as Batman) and Robyn (accenting her dress as Catwoman), the wedding party also had geeky accents (I wore green and white ala Green Lantern!). The set ups for the table were all hand crafted, comic book themed accents created by Robyn and the wedding party. The cake was Lego themed, and the hall even had large screens playing in the background with various superhero themed musical interludes :)

So aside from being in the wedding party, and this being the creative blog of a graphic design, many of you must be asking how these two things relate. As it turns out, there were two things the couple needed. First, they wanted the stage to look like a Gotham City rooftop, with the 'heroes' and 'villains' sitting around, chatting and eating for the night. To achieve this effect, they had both a bat signal shining overhead the whole night, as well as a faux cityscape arranged along the front of the head table:

If you can imagine, the second thing was even cooler. For their give aways to the guests, the couple commissioned a local comic artist to create a graphical version of the story of how they met! They provided the concept, and the artist fleshed it out. We even had the final version printed on comic book stock, and inserted some fake ads to tie the whole thing together. While I can't take much of the credit in terms of the art, I did handle the colouring and layout to the final cover (which is Darren as Superman and Robyn as Batman):

 

Congratulations you guys!

Client Spotlight - Ontario Office Works

This is a long overdue client spotlight for some wonderful people that without whom there might not be an Intelligent Designs! First, some background:

Way back when, yours truly worked in the design department of a large company. This was my first job out of school, and boy did I need it to help me take all this amazing, raw talent and hone it into a more marketable and business-oriented thing. A few years into a wonderful learning experience, I was laid off.

This part next is a little harder. I looked around for a long while for a decent job in my field, but was unable to find one. Eventually, I went on Employment Insurance, but with the end looming I made the decision to take a risk and start working for myself. That involved a lot of discussions with government offices, second career employers, etc., but because we were in the process of moving, everything waited until we were here in Niagara region. That was when I was put in contact with Ontario Office Works.

From their website:

Ontario Office Works Inc. is a dynamic service oriented company focused on providing small businesses with the information and support needed to grow and prosper in today's business environment.

We help people to understand... and take action!

So what does that mean? It means it's a group of caring professionals, men and women who are experts in their field that really care about your success and well being, that use their resources to help you grow. And that's the key there: the staff at OOW help grow YOU just as much as growing your business. They take your idea and nurture it, help you understand it and build on it, and when you're secure there (or more often at the same time), then they relate it to growing your business.

 
I picked up a lot of knowledge about best practices, accounting, bookkeeping... all of the things a small business owner needs to know to get their feet on the ground. All the while, I knew that I could pop in any time with a question, attend one of their free classes, and even have a great conversation with the staff pretty much any time. Over the years we've done a great deal of work, and I can guarantee that their marketing materials are always updating ;)

If you're a small business owner in the Niagara Region and unsure about how to take your living room hobby and make it a functioning, profitable business, then give the good people at Ontario Office Works a call.

Back From Another Dimension

First, a super congratulations to Mel and Pete, wonderful new couple and commissioners of all things fantasy and strange.

Way back when, there was an idea of a wedding. A nerdy wedding. One that would have certain overtones that few would appreciate and many would question. But there was a hope there, and the fact that if you didn't understand why you were at the "12th Doctor Table" versus "The Dalek Table" then you probably stumbled into the wrong hall anyway. Of these geeky sprinklings, one things stood out - it stood very loud, and very tall...


Let's start with a bit of explanation as to what a wedding arch is. Mel and Pete felt they needed to mix a bit of the traditional with the bit of fun, so they asked me to create a wedding arch that resembled a Stargate (for more info, click here).

I immediately thought that to get the ten foot tall size in the best arts and crafts way was to use sheets of 20 x 30 foamcore from either the dollar store or Michaels. I used some high resolution images of the original Stargate I found online to create some vector art, and then borrowed a projector from another client (the fine OOW) and recreated it at full-ish size:

From there, I traced / cut out all the details for a proper, 3D look:

Once all 11 (ELEVEN!) pieces were created and assembled, I painted it all with a nice silver acrylic to give it a weathered metal look, then spray painted it with a Krylon stone textured paint to give it some extra pop:

Originally I was only going to have a single chevron up top, but looking at all the pictures there were 8 to correspond to the dial code to lock, so I kept the top one super detailed but added the others in a more simplified fashion. Oh, and did I mention that I made it so that when you inserted glow sticks it looked like it was lit up and active? This was just a test, the final had two sticks on the sides that fit in perfectly:

From there, I put it all together:

And delivered it to the happy couple to display at their wedding. Naturally, we had to test the thing prior to delivery, and since time moves differently on the other side, you'll have to forgive my long absence. There was a lot of positive feedback though, so that's awesome!

As always, thanks for reading!