Category Archives: Design Concept/Ideas

Line and Shape in Nature

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Photo of the Moment, Photography
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These photos are a result of a photo exercise I took on. I recently read on a blog that at some point, photographers should try this:

Go to a location, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, and spend 15 minutes there. Spend the first 10 minutes observing your surroundings. Don’t put the camera to your eye or take photos. Look for interesting subject matter, composition, line, shape, etc that can be photographed. Then spend the next 5 minutes shooting photos of what you just observed.

I went to my backyard and tried it. It was amazing the things I saw. I pushed to focus on interesting lines and shapes and their relationships.

This one shows the fence sort of extending on via it’s shadow. I liked how you see all fence, and not shadow. I like that sort of illusion.

This one is all about intersections and line… and of course rule of thirds.

My favorite – where there is a strong relationship between the 3 flower pots and the 3 circles on the concrete.  I love the design aesthetic of the 3 circles in the concrete paired with regular, old flower pots – but yet they relate because the concrete circles were created from the pots.

JazzFest Poster Design Process

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Drawing, Illustration, Jazz Music, Print Design, The Design Process
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This is the coolest project I’ve worked on in a while. It’s a poster to advertise the annual Jazz Festival at Mineral Area College, where my Creative Improv counter-part, Michael Goldsmith teaches music and leads the jazz ensemble.

Why did I love this project? I could combine my love for jazz music, art and design and create something that really embodied jazz.

A bit about my design process

I spent hours sketching Delfeayo and coming up with a really loose sketch that could be incorporated into the poster. I was try to re-live this style. After much tweaking, layering and coloring it just didn’t have the right feel. Failure… but that’s OK – because it made me think about other ways to bring the ‘hand-drawn’ feel to the poster. I decided to the make the text and background elements all have a hand-drawn feel and leave the photo pretty much as is.


The above sketches were all drawn with marker on tracing paper, then scanned and layered in Photoshop to create the final, colored illustration.

Inspired by the hand-drawn feel above, I took some of my own watercolor textures and layered them in the background and over the left side of the suit jacket (subtle, eh?). Then I added some hand-drawn typefaces in various angles. I wanted it to have a bit of a haphazard, hand-created, imperfect feel.

An expression of love and creativity

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Drawing, Illustration, My Life
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For a while now, I’ve wanted to experiment with watercolor and Photoshop work combined into one. So, I broke out the watercolors from my college illustration course and went crazy. This is a gift I gave to my fiancée, Rebecca for Christmas.

The process was to paint a nice background on 9×12 paper with watercolor, scan that into Photoshop. Then I went to work on cutting us out of an engagment photo and placing it over the watercolor – adding various overlay effects to it. The text was added last and is made of the date we met and lyrics to a song we both love and will probably dance to at our wedding.

A few zoomed in sections are below:

overlay effect added to our photo after I utilized the pen tool to cut us out of the original photograph

David Carson style type design

Filed under:
Bad design by design, Design Concept/Ideas, Graphic Design, Print Design, Typography
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A few years ago I had a course where we were encouraged to push the limit of what graphic design is and break the rules of design and typography to create something fresh… as fresh as sweet, sweet mountain dew. Here are a few pieces from that time period (which also draw much inspiration from designer, David Carson). I call this my ‘make the professor happy’ era of my design work. :-)

StephenEmlund.com through the years

Filed under:
Branding, Design Concept/Ideas, My Life, Redesign, The Design Process, Website Design
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It’s been almost 6 years since I originally launched StephenEmlund.com. This October, I redesigned my website for the first time ever. I have been surprised how well my website has held up to all the design trends in the last 6 years. Of course, it’s because I made the website very minimalistic. Although orange was so 2005.

This was 2005

Orange was sooo in!

In 2005, orange was sooo in! I featured printmaking on my site back in the day. Just for fun, I've uploaded the whole website as it was in 2005. Click the screenshot above to view it live!

This was 2008 ↓

Website launched in 2006

in 2008, I tweaked the color from orange to teal and added a sweet autograph! I also implemented the new 'border-radius' that only worked in certain browsers. This website was used for my senior portfolio in Visual Communication.

This is today ↓

Launched October 2010

Launched October 2010. Kept the same teal, but added live feed from blog and a sweet jQuery slider.

Dynamic portfolio page

Dynamic portfolio page - the left navigation dynamically loads all the projects that relate. Click the screenshot above to see the portfolio page.

Wedding Invitation Design

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Inspiration, Print Design, The Design Process, Typography
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I've known Kristina for probably 5 years and it was a pleasure to design her wedding invitations!

The script typeface is called 'Buttermilk' and I purchased it from a great illustrator/type designer named Jessica Hische.

The swirls were customized from an original set of 'swirls' I had. The secondary typeface used for body copy is Baskerville Old Face. It seemed to go well with the elegance of Buttermilk

Design is not about innovation

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Someone Once Said...
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Design is not about innovation. Design is about communication. Innovation in design is usually a wonderful byproduct or direct result of a particular need. Design that seeks to foremost be innovative will commonly fall apart under its own stylistic girth.

Jason Santa Maria

l’art pour l’art

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Someone Once Said..., The Design Process
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Leafing through an old magazine, I noticed a small ad about a design course by mail. The headline read, “Art for pleasure and profit!” I have never found a better definition to describe my profession. Of course, at times it is more the pleasure and less the profit, at times the contrary. But if one of the components were missing, design wouldn’t exist.

—Carlo Angelini

Definitely agree. The French phrase ‘l’art pour l’art’ which means ‘art for art’s sake’ does not apply to design. To design for design’s sake is really to not create design at all. Design is created for a specific audience with a specific goal in mind. Without an audience or goal, design is no longer design, but just art. Art doesn’t have to communicate to a specific audience like design does.

Your thoughts?

It’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page.

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Inspiration, Jobs
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I ran across this documentary on Hulu about a  month ago. Lemonade tells the story of laid-off folks (mostly in advertising and creative fields) who are taking full advantage of all their extra free time. They are pursuing their true passions and finding so much joy in it. You might say that they are making lemonade out of lemons they’ve been handed in life.

Now it’s your turn!

What’s your lemonade story? Comment and share!

Parallax View Band design process

Filed under:
Branding, Clients, Creative Improv, Design Concept/Ideas, Logo Design, Print Design, Redesign, The Design Process, Website Design
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A few months ago, when Creative Improv was in it’s infancy, the Parallax View project came our way at just the right time. I had wanted to work on this project since high school. I knew Ben & Seth in high school and thought it would be cool to do a website for them back then (before they were Parallax view).  I believe we even talked about me doing the website. I also received an email two years ago from the band asking if I would do some work – Sadly it got lost in my email and I never read it.

This time, everything seemed to work out. With Michael’s and my experience designing and marketing for the Church, this was a perfect project for us. Check out the Parallax View Band website that we launched a few weeks ago! Michael’s initial design ideas, sketches, endless creative direction, keeping me on task, writing skills and client relations is and always will be priceless to Creative Improv’s design process. This and every other project I’ve worked on with him always turns out a zillion times better because of what he brings to the table!

Check out our design process for this project. Interested in Creative Improv?? then become a fan on facebook or check us out on our official website.

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The first step in this project was to sketch out logo ideas.

We ended up deciding on this logo because it was the most memorable at a very small and very large scale.

We ended up deciding on this logo because it was the most memorable at a very small and large scale.

The website sketches came next, incorporating the logo's colors and style. This first sketch used a left narrow column and the header was a bit more crowded than what we ended up going with.

The website sketches came next, incorporating the logo's colors and style (for these, incorporation of color was in my head :-) ). This first sketch used a left narrow column and the header was a bit more crowded than what we ended up going with. These black/white pencil sketches help decide on layout without the distraction of color to give a false sense of completeness.

This sketch was the base for the final website, though still a bit different in the final implementation. We used the divine proportion to decide how wide each column should be. I know, how ironic, since this is a Christian band. :-)

This sketch was the base for the final website, though still a bit different in the final implementation. We used the divine proportion to decide how wide each column should be. I know, how ironic, since this is a Christian band. :-)

The final website: featuring content from various social media and a brand new blog for the band to keep in touch with their fans. The most dynamic aspect is the MySpace Music Player, the Flickr feed and YouTube feed.

The final website: featuring content from various social media and a brand new blog for the band to keep in touch with their fans. The most dynamic aspect is the MySpace Music Player, the Flickr feed and YouTube feed. Check it out now!

The CD was one of the funnest parts of this project. I've only designed one other CD in my life, unless you count the fake CD for portfolio purposes. The typography, textures, photos and illustrations just came together nicely. It did take some thinking to get the hierarchy just right between the title and logo for the cover.

The CD was one of the funnest parts of this project. I've only designed one other CD in my life (for Truman's Jazz Ensemble, which I performed with as well). The typography, textures, photos and illustrations just came together nicely. It did take some thinking to get the hierarchy just right between the title and logo for the cover.

The Poster was the very last piece to complete. It matched the website header nicely.

The poster was the very last piece to complete. It matched the website header nicely.