Design | Basement Light Design

July 26, 2010July 16, 2013

Sanctuary screen printing in Austin

In a warehouse in South Austin, the talented artists of South Side Sanctuary toil away on their computers and at their presses creating fashion that comments on art, music and fashion itself. Leaders Jon Pattillo and Jed Taylor do this for fun, cranking out three to five thousand t-shirts per month of their own design. But their designs are anything but mass-produced. Services also include custom designed screen-printed t-shirts, letter press-printed posters and business cards, banners, murals, and stickers. The duo started out creating merch for a record label and its touring bands. Today the company is housed in a 5,000 square foot location on South Congress Avenue. In addition to the three screen printing presses, SSS operates a 1947 Kluge open-face letterpress.

During this past year’s SXSW festival, the SSS crew could be seen rolling around town in their super-rad 1979 El Camino “delivery vehicle” equipped with a working screenprinting press in the truck bed.

February 24, 2010July 16, 2013

“Off-the-shelf” logos

The recent concept of prêt-à-porter or “shelf” logos involves the online offering of pre-designed corporate logos with exclusive ownership (i.e., the logo design may not be resold). A few companies have cloned the online business model, but the geniuses at South Africa-based LogoAnts.com appear to have perfected it, offering clean, perhaps generic-looking logos for those with a small budget. The customer browses categories such as swoosh, Christian, building, 3D, etc., then adds its organization’s name to its choice. Clearly, target industries are small-time entrepreneurs, startups, builders, and churches. Despite claims made to the contrary by the manufacturer, most of these logos are forgettable. But it’s hard to fault business owners wanting to explore these options, as the prices are astonishingly low (shelf logos start at $99!).

Pundits will argue that one’s logo should be a unique symbol of the brand and the people behind it, and working one-on-one with a graphic designer is the only way to achieve superior results. Indeed, some sites do offer graphic design consultation, and LogoAnts.com offers custom logo design services from $179. Professional graphic design firms specializing in corporate branding should prepare to lose a share of its smaller clients tempted by these budget services. And maybe, it will spur professional designers to produce stronger creativity (and avoid clichés).

May 22, 2009July 16, 2013

Rebranding America

Branding matters. To countries just as much as they do to companies. Just ask former UK prime minister Tony Blair, whose mission in 1999, together with the Foreign Policy Centre, was to sell new model Britain to other countries. “The central message is that Britain’s reality has changed dramatically and that its image must be transformed to reflect this.” The “Cool Britannia” campaign was sniggered at by a nation of cynics, but many Americans today believe a powerful cleanser is needed to remove a very deep stain from the tarnished US image. So Paper magazine has summoned the leading lights in advertising and graphic arts to the task of “Rebranding America.” The results of which are available on its online magazine.

Kim Hastreiter, editor of Paper in New York, states, “If America were a company, it would be practically out of business. Our brand has been decimated.” Her magazine asked “creative communicators” to “re-present the United States to the global community.”

It may be merely a punning exercise, but perhaps the idea—that multiculturalism and diversity are not just an irreversible fact but a potentially invaluable asset—may catch fire.

April 27, 2009July 16, 2013

Life’s travails inspire art

Art, like life, isn’t always pretty. Nor should it be. Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote about the rustic, downtrodden everyday man, struggling with all of life’s messy bits, and from this suffering sprang great art. My first job as a teenager was as a busboy and dishwasher at a restaurant. Among my duties was scraping dirt off the kitchen floor with a spatula, and cleaning enormous stock pots whose bottoms had caked-on sauce. Some years later after completing art school, I worked as a graphic designer for a weekly newspaper, on the cusp of computer technology. The editorial and ads were laid out with Mac computers but still output the old fashioned way, to paper galleys with a Linotronic imagesetter. These galleys were later cut and pasted onto camera-ready master boards called “flats.” While my experiences were not quite as harrowing as Dostoyevsky’s (he was imprisoned for his radical beliefs), they did “butch me up,” providing a bedrock of balance and an appreciation for my craft.

As I reflect back on these difficult steps of my career ladder, I can honestly say I was glad to have experienced them. Not only do I have an insider’s empathy for those who toil in the food service industry, but today l am very handy with an X-Acto knife!