:: The visual work of Pete Lawton ::

2009-01-02T13:47:00.002-05:00

great image.

Bring on the Kool-Aid

2008-11-27T00:13:00.003-05:00

Gloria surprised me with an early birthday present this afternoon. She bought me an iPhone. After several months of watching me rewind every new iPhone commercial on tv I think she got the hint.

Now, I've messed with a few people's iPhones before and obviously I thought they were an impressive piece of technology. But after a full evening of really getting into the thing and seeing what seems to be only a fraction of what its capable of, I have to say - I'm thoroughly impressed and I'm proud to be a late adopter of the iPhone and the cult-esque hype that comes with it. Bring on the Kool-Aid.

At first I thought the "Apps" were a bit of a gimmick, but again, many of those have impressed me as well. My favorite so far is the Shazam app. This thing literally listens to a portion of a song and compares it to a database of what has to be hundreds of thousands of songs and can tell you the song, artist, and album in less than 10 seconds. Amazing.

Been a while...

2008-10-26T01:37:00.006-04:00

...and now its time to start putting my portfolio together. The plan is to shoot my own work. Tonight I thought I'd try some post production in photoshop with some old photos. The shadows and reflections still need work, but I like the overall look.

One can only dream...

2008-07-25T16:32:00.003-04:00

This is pretty much the level at which I aspire to design. This shirt and so much more goodness to be found here.

Googling

2008-07-01T17:37:00.003-04:00

Gotta love the ol' Google image search. Here's the number 1 result for Pete Lawton. The caption says I'm third from the right.

In the style of...

2008-06-14T13:23:00.005-04:00

I had a photo assignment to take a pictures in the style of another photographer. I was given Irving Penn, known mostly for his studio portraits. Many thanks and doggie treats go out to Mr. Willie Nelson for all of his cooperation.

Past, Present, and Futura

2008-05-29T14:36:00.002-04:00

Came across this little gem from first quarter today. The assignment was to make a poster displaying the history, weights, price, etc. of an assigned typeface.

Printed

2008-05-08T12:40:00.003-04:00

The other day, Gloria brought home this sweet t-shirt I designed for her school. Actually, I shouldn't say I designed it. More like assembled some other people's graphic elements in the style of some other people's design. Either way, the school sold over $1000 more worth of these than they did for last year's "I [heart] DE" shirt.

Self Portrait 3

2008-05-05T18:17:00.003-04:00

Shooters.

2008-04-30T17:55:00.005-04:00

Finally took some pics of some finished work. Here's my Shooters packaging from a couple qtrs. ago.

Self Portrait 2

2008-04-30T17:46:00.003-04:00

Nothing conceptual here. I just think its nice to have a simple visual record of what you look like from time to time. No fake smiles or goofy faces. Just me.

Self Portrait 1

2008-04-15T07:20:00.004-04:00

I'm taking a photo class at the Circus...figured I could really use the practice. We're going to have an ongoing self-portrait assignment. Two per week. One literally showing ourself, one as a representational. I don't know if I'll be putting up all of em, but here's the first.

Stuff white people like

2008-04-02T00:40:00.003-04:00

My wife just told me about a website she heard about on the radio this morning. I'm almost embarassed at how many of these I can identify with, minus things like standing still at concerts and veganism. >>Stuff White People Like<<

throwin bones

2008-03-15T01:22:00.004-04:00

i've been meaning to throw ol' Charlie a bone on here for a while. he did the same for me on his bloggidy blog this afternoon so i figured now would be a good time. anyway, theres quite a few blogs that i visit on a regular basis, but this one has made it past the bookmarks drop-down menu and into the ranks of the bookmarks toolbar. thats serious.

check ch check check check a check it out.

and he's totally into graffiti. such a major graffiti artist. he'll tag like anything. you should totally ask him to do some graffiti for you cause i bet he would do it in a heartbeat probably for free.

widgets are stupid.

2008-03-14T11:35:00.005-04:00

reworked my Landry Lounge widget to have that retro feel of a laundromat. i think i like the new one better.

blogged.

2008-03-10T07:59:00.002-04:00

Sent my Dories pdf to TheDieline and the guy that heads up the whole operation, Andrew Gibbs, was nice enough to post it for the whole internets to see.

HDR: first try

2008-03-09T22:45:00.009-04:00

After researching a little (ok, alot) I thought I'd give HDR a try when hanging out with my buddy Jonny the other night. I'm not gonna go into the details of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, but here's the basics: you put your digital camera on a tripod and take atleast 3 photos. One is at the correct exposure, one is over and one is underexposed. Using photoshop, you combine the photos in order to get the most detail possible out of your shadows, highlights, and everywhere in between. The top photo is my end product. The bottom is what my camera said was a correctly exposed image. Check out Flickr for some awesome, good, and really terrible examples of HDR photography.

Fetch!

2008-03-04T01:16:00.002-05:00

Fetch!

2008-02-29T11:40:00.005-05:00

Illustration for my publications class.

Deathmatch: weeks 5-6

2008-02-19T18:25:00.002-05:00

a 2 week challenge here. create a serif version of helvetica. barely and surprisingly took the W. check it.

Laundry Lounge continued

2008-02-12T12:22:00.000-05:00

I'm taking The Laundry Lounge digital. Designing a website, widget, and microsite. Website is pretty straight forward. The concept of the widget is for those who are doing laundry and using wifi at The Laundry Lounge. It serves as a timer/alarm/card refill/magical time machine. Still working out the kinks on the time machine. The microsite is for students, since The Laundry Lounge is usually found on or near college campuses. Users can make their own flash cards, add to a pool of cards when in a study group, create a quiz, write dirty words, whatever.

Deathmatch: week 4

2008-02-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

The assignment for this week was to create a t-shirt design for the school using their mission statement. The judges didn't like this one ( I dont remember what place I got but I think my final score was something like a 4.2 ). I dont mind it so much but thats probably cause its my design. Jeff also won this one. Oh, and Jeff was mysteriously attacked outside his home yesterday and I dont know anything about it. Weird.

Deathmatch: week 3

2008-02-05T12:30:00.000-05:00

2nd place. It ain't first, but I'll take it. Congrats to Mr. Jeff Krichmar for the win. All of the screen shots of the pdf can be found here.

lil' sump'm extra

2008-01-22T17:08:00.000-05:00

for those of you who requested a post, sara heres a painting of an armpit i did in college.

Deathmatch: week 2

2008-01-22T16:02:00.000-05:00

I win. All scores from the judges ranged from 8 to 10, with an avg. of 8.8
>>screen shots of the pdf here.

goodbyes aren't easy. but sometimes they are.

2008-01-18T10:18:00.000-05:00

my new phone came in the mail yesterday. which is nice and all, but that means saying goodbye to a 4 year relationship with my old one. jonny suggested i use it for the cornerstone if gloria and i ever build a house. for now it'll be a retired life of drinking whatever cell phones drink from a beer helmet.

Deathmatch: week 1 (part 2)

2008-01-14T23:39:00.000-05:00

results are in. 3rd place. apparently i left off lines for the 3 overnight winners, as did 3 or 4 other kids in class. one of the four judges gave everyone that forgot these lines a big fat zero. so, whatevs.

Deathmatch: week 1

2008-01-11T16:53:00.001-05:00

first challenge: create the poster for this quarter's class. the poster will hang up at school and the names of the winner and loser added after the end of each challenge. everyone was given 3 fortune cookies. we're allowed to use the words from the fortunes as our word bank to create a tag line for the class. we're also allowed to add 3 words if needed. poster must also include the words "design deathmatch", "winner/loser", along with lines for writing in people's names.

we had to come up with our tagline for the overnight challenge. i chose "have a nice week." didn't win. meh. poster design soon to follow....

time to make the dolphins

2008-01-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

my beautiful new wife told me last night that it was time to design her school's Field Day shirts and asked me if i would take the job. above, you'll find her crafty concepting skills and my copycat design work. apparently student council voted on it today and this was the winner. kind of exciting in its own little way, but im really hoping my i wasn't up against a bunch of elementary schoolers.

halfway there/livin on a prayer

2008-01-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

ok kids. 4 quarters down. 4 to go. here's what we're lookin at for 5th quarter....

Publication Design - concept a magazine start to finish -- cover, table o' contents, letter from the editor, several article layouts, etc. we're required to do the photography for atleast one of the articles so im looking forward to that.

Digital 2 - take a project from a previous quarter and adapt it for an interactive web based...thing. microsite, banner ad, email campaign, viral video

Advanced Branding - alot like Branding, but a little more advanced.

Design Deathmatch - as intense as it sounds. 10 weeks, 6 projects. once an assignment is given, we have either a week or two weeks to concept, design, print, craft, and photograph the project. our finished pdf is sent to a handful of senior designers around the country who critique the work and judge it from 1-10. the student with the highest score gets an A for the week. the lowest score gets an F. everyone else gets their respective grade depending on their placement. there will also be some overnight assignments, but there's only a winner for those. my sister, who is ahead of me at the Circus, took this last quarter and was the overall winner for the class. thank you, Sara, for giving me some nice big shoes that I can't fill.

2008-01-08T15:31:00.000-05:00

happy new year + one week everyone. time to start a new quarter of design shenannigans. but first i'd like to share wedding photos for anyone who might be interested.

http://www.imagesbyadrianne.com/
...its not a direct link, but you're smart. you can figure it out.

color me badd

2007-12-14T01:06:00.000-05:00

took a break from doing 'real' work to mess around with a photoshop coloring technique i learned about last quarter. i'd like to be able to claim the drawing, but sadly i cannot. im merely a fancy coloring book artist.

Shoot em up.

2007-12-11T01:21:00.000-05:00

Shooters: The gentleman's game of marbles. Not quite finished. I'll put up some final pics when that time comes.

i can see your lips moving

2007-12-05T02:08:00.001-05:00

final assignment for Illustration for Designers class. taught by the legendary Mr. Robert Lee - 1/2 of the duo that makes up Methane Studios.

up in smoke

2007-12-05T01:51:00.001-05:00

here's the newest and final project for my packaging class. we were first asked to pick a place outside of the U.S. that we'd like to visit -(i picked london)- then design packaging for either a 6-pack of beer, a pound of coffee beans, or a pack of cigarettes. the design premise is that these are products imported to the U.S. from said country. i'm already working on alcohol and coffee products this qtr. so i felt like cigarettes were the logical choice. the name is inspired (taken) from The Tube - the name for their subway system. they will be packaged inside a cardboard tube (clever, i know) for an overall tube theme. probably some sort of freudian thing there. anyway, after critique this morning, i'm going to try to mesh the mod designs of the top 4 with the vintage feel of the bottom 2.

2007-11-29T23:43:00.001-05:00

bearded.

2007-11-29T23:10:00.000-05:00

in addition to the Eco-Furniture site, im re-designing the World Beard and Mustache Championships site. HERE's the current site in all it's glory.

eco furniture

2007-11-15T20:44:00.001-05:00

web-design class. *farrrrrrt*

THIS is the original site.

Laundry Lounge

2007-11-13T23:47:00.001-05:00

A couple logo options for a rebranding of The Laundry Lounge - a laundromat and coffee shop combo.

The Ignored

2007-11-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

First mock up for a book cover: The Ignored by Bentley Little. The book is about a guy thats so extremely ordinary that eventually people forget about him the instant they see him. Hence the embossing. Peep that sweet photography too. Hooboy.

bulb packaging 2

2007-10-16T00:14:00.001-04:00

another super high-tech photo for ya.

blinded by the light. bulb.

2007-10-11T00:22:00.000-04:00

the first assignment of my new packaging class is to use a piece of 11x14 piece of posterboard to suspend/protect a lightbulb inside a 6"L x 4"W x 4"D cardboard box. we'll try 2 different designs and ship both to my teacher's studio in hopes that the bulbs dont break. here's a quick shot of my first design.

2007-10-02T16:02:00.001-04:00

im finished with my CD case project and thought y'all might want to see the end product. there are cards on the inside -- one side has lyrics, the other has a crop of a larger image that makes up the water cycle.

Personal Logo

2007-09-25T16:24:00.000-04:00

I totally forgot about this thing. I made it in my first quarter at the Circus as part of a "personal logo" assignment.

How much for da women?

2007-09-24T20:29:00.000-04:00

A while back I sold some of my ceramic stuff on etsy. Now that I no longer have access to that stuff, Ive decided to see what kind of response I get with other creations. As of now I have only posted one thing, but I'm gonna try to add some more while I've got a couple weeks off of school.

Taking out the garbage

2007-09-18T22:39:00.000-04:00

Here's a guy that recently changed his gallery style art/design site to a more update-friendly blog style. His life is devoted to ridding the earth of design garbage by flooding it with images of his own work. Check out his stuff here.

i love lamp

2007-09-18T22:24:00.000-04:00

i made a lamp. i was for my Design Concepts class. the official assignment was "a design free-for-all" - something that allowed us to show our own personality. i dont know how much this shows my personality, but it was fun to make.

the body is made of chicken wire under a layer of tissue paper under a layer of dried corn stalk leaves. the base is a baking sheet. yeah. a baking sheet. eat your heart out Marcel.

mo logos

2007-08-29T11:09:00.000-04:00

The Flying Loaf (?)
(i think i accidentally channeled Charlie's whiskey angels on this. sorry 'bout that.)

The Rolling Pin

Boxing Matches

songs about the weather

2007-08-28T10:08:00.001-04:00

workin on some CD packaging. here are the initial illustrations. the song lyrics will be mounted on cards that you can put together to make an image of the water cycle. i'll take pics of the final product once its finished.

books are for sissies

2007-08-24T08:55:00.001-04:00

just finished some final touches on this book cover assignment. they're all conceptual and stuff.

birds and the beers: two new logos

2007-08-23T01:59:00.000-04:00

im taking a logos class. Trademarks 2 to be exact. anyway, this is one of my first tries to vectorize a couple sketches. Darwin Records is an actual record label. the beer one is just somethin' i made up. still trying to figure out which version to go with. class is taught by Dac Austen. check out his site here.

2007-08-23T01:20:00.000-04:00

ok kids. i've avoided it long enough. its time for me to join the blogger club. i've been creating tons of work over the past 8 months and i'd like to have somewhere to show it off. i'd like to use this space to plug inspirational stuff also. we wont go countin' eggs here or anything. let's take it one blog at a time...