Green Design Magazine - December Issue

The December Issue of Green Design Magazine is here! 

I removed my mailing label for this post.

I think this is a great magazine cover.  The colors are so soothing, the text is sharp and simple.  This is a great example of 'text married to image'.  It is much easier on the eyes from the newstand.  Better than those 'forest of words' that pepper the outside of some magazines.  The poor model looks trapped underneath and completely unneccessary.  This cover is clean and well balanced.  I hope they tell how to create that arrangement of succulant plants.  I love the container, too. 
I think the whole thing would make a great gift.

Go ask Alice...

Alice looks a little green. 

Everything around her in encouraging her to try. 

Drink me. Drink me. 

No good can come of this.

This effect was achieved using clipping masks in Photoshop.  One must select a type font with some body.  After creating a duplicate layer, type the text ontop and create a quick mask.  Only the image inside of the text will show through.  Adjusting the color levels of the text and background image is tricky.  It is dificult to make the text readable as it overlaps the colors beneath.

Fun with dots!

I've always loved reading the Sunday comics.  There is something about these

pixelated color dots that just bring back those memories.

 These jumping kids come from a graphic on a birthday invitation.  As a fun detail, I added a green background and used the gradient function in Photoshop to transition the color from blue/grey to green.  By using and adjusting the dots on the halftone filter, we get this fun background effect.

Taking Root - Flying Free

This is the result of a Photoshop exercise in masking and refining masks.  The woman tossing her hair is superimposed onto the background image. 

Hair is difficult to capture in digitally.  One approach is to select the pixels based on color, then add it to the more easily selected areas and create a mask to block all the unwanted areas of the image.  I selected this background, because her thin arms echo the sculptural roots in the background.

It was a great pity to obscure the background image.  It is an actual art installation by Steve Tobin placed in "the Morton", a 1,700 acre site in Illinois devoted to the conservation of trees and plants. 

The sculptures are in steel.  The sky is so beautiful that one can wonder if it too was added behind the main object or if Illinois is just that beautiful!

Surrealism - The Enlightened Peacock

Surrealism is an art form that uses the element of surprise or juxtaposes the unexpected to create a provocative work.  It originated in the 1920s after the First World War.   Max Ernst, Salvidor Dali, Rene Magritte are just a few of the artist who created surrealistic art.

This composition is a proud peacock made from lamps, luminaires and decorative windows.  The body is Louis Poulson's Artichoke Lamp.  The tail feathers are an Art Nouveau window from a house is Nancy France and a repetition of an Arts and Crafts sconce.  The legs and neck are a desk lamp.  The face is an Edison bulb and the plume on the 'head' are fiber optic fibers.

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse Lautrec is known for his sketches, paintings and lithographs,
specifically from the dance halls of Montmartre, Paris at the turn of the
century.  He painted dancers, prostitutes and theatre goers with no ire,
cynicism or judgment.  He lived in two worlds, the bohemian and the
aristocratic, but did not treat either with scorn.

Orange Tree by William Morris

William Morris was credited to be the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement in England (that predates the Arts and Crafts movement in America)  The movement was sparked as a reaction to the heartless Industrial Revolution and mechanisation of fabric, furniture and architectural design.  It was also on the heals of the Victorian Era with its crowded, stuffy rooms of dark fabrics and furniture.  William Morris called for hand crafting and simple, thoughful designs based on nature.

This is a composition of his tapestry "Orange Tree" and his famous quote.  "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

freefallin'

           

The inspiration for this surrealistic composition was from some photos of two acrobats performing inside the foyer of a city building in Austin.  This one selected pose looked as if she were diving into a pool.  The second image, the splash, was downloaded from the Internet.  It is cover art to a piano music CD that was cropped and layered under the blue field.  The orange background was a psychedelic pattern that was transformed, stretched and adjusted in saturation.  The gradation in the blue below, was created by accident by trying to color stamp and/or paint with a large brush.  It was stretched and cropped to work in the area below.  

The choice of complimentary colors, blue and orange, add excitement and liveliness
to this freeze frame moment.  (Freeze Frame?  Free Fallin'?  Am I dating
myself?)

Duotones: Recapturing the Past?

Duotones recreate the feeling of photos from the past.  This image is a playful Photoshop combination of 17th century Chateau and 21st century VW Passat.

A duotone is a process of printing with 2 halftones, usually black and another
color, to evoke a feeling or mood.  Halftones are created in printing with a
series of small dots spaced to give the illusion of dark and light color. 
Halftones can be done with black, cyan, magenta, yellow and/or a specially
formulated color dots.   In researching duotones, many examples surfaced of how
images can be manipulated within photo imaging software, such as Photoshop, to
get this two tone effect.  Selecting yellow-orange or brown can give the effect
of a sepia image or an earlier daguerreotype. Selecting a blue can give the
appearance of early cyanotypes.  It is interesting to think, in this day of high
definition and high quality digital cameras, that these changes in coloration
were inspired by a time where achieving realistic colors in photography was not
possible. 

Welcome

Welcome to NRDesign Spot.  I look forward to sharing interesting design images and comments on the design world.  Thank you for visiting.