posters sketches

Just some quick poster experiments. Courtesy of InDesign

*A teacher once told me to never out-kern lowercase. Whatever.

**The Déscartes mis-quote is intentional. 

Whenever I get too excited, I just tell myself:

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), directed by Alain Resnais, is my personal favorite of ALL of the proto-New-Wave films, and I also might say, of all movies ever.

Although the film takes place after the bombings, I felt like the image of nuclear war was a strong metaphor for the experiences and mental suffering the main character goes through. The film is intensely emotional and psychological, and I wanted a visual catharsis in the poster that reflected the emotional chaos and trauma that is dealt with in the film.

The explosions were made with acrylic, charcoal, white chalk, and Photoshop (posters made on InDesign).

This quote/mini-monologue by the main character (in the book) sums up the general sentiment of the whole film: “I meet you. I remember you. Who are you? You’re destroying me. You’re good for me...I like you. How unlikely. I like you. How slow all of a sudden. How sweet. You cannot know. You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. I have time. Please, devour me. Deform me to the point of ugliness. Why not you?”

Self Portrait

As part of my final for VAILL450 (Painting the Human Head) I did a set of portraits, culminating in my final self portrait.

Lighting with a incandescent bulb and a green reflection source, and it's been painted right over a Sargent study that I did, hated, and sanded off.

12x12", oil on gessoed board.

And I just checked my grades and it turns out I got an A in the class.

Breathless

À Bout de Souffle (1960) poster design; Adobe Illustrator

Breathless (English title) is one of the best French New Wave films out there and if you haven't seen it, see it.

While you're at it, watch everything by Jean-Luc Goddard and then watch everything by Truffaut, and then never be happy with anything made in the 21st century again.

I heard a rabbi say it

No way, you don't say

"You do graphic design?? Ohmygawsh I love fonts too!"

More Edwardian Experiments

Still experimenting with type as image.

^if Transformers were designed by Alphonse Mucha

Also, my name.

I distinctly remember my second grade teacher having us write our names in cursive on a folded piece of construction paper, and then cutting it out to make this surreal typographic form; and so, Mrs. Penton, I have to credit you with the conception of this image. 

Le voilà: Matthew Thomas Brown

Return from hiatus / Edwardian Script / Karenina

Well, after a month of silence, I return.
A matter of hours ago I turned in my BFA application for BYU's graphic design program (and I can't wait to write out BYUVAGDBFA and have people pronounce it as "by-you-vag-deb-fa"). Strangely, without dozens of pieces to rework and reprint, I'm feeling sort of empty.

I got onto InDesign and Illustrator and —for some strange borderline-sado-masochistic reason— started designing again.

The script font experiments more or less failed, but I got some cool shapes regardless. Here's a T and a G. I feel like the entire architecture of the elves from Lord of the Rings was designed this way...

Also, I'm in love with: books, book designing, and Russian everything. 

I tried out some redesigns of Anna Karenina in the original Russian format. The first is stolen directly from the Russian Constructivist look, which is awesome-looking albeit completely inappropriate as far as subject matter and chronology are concerned.  

So I changed directions to go in a more illustrative route, built up some designs on Illustrator, and came up with these: 

And yes. I made that by hand with cross-stitch marks.

The illustration is a call-out to a previous project that I did, that was posted on my first entry. 

I'm serious hoping that I can legitimately use the Russian embroidery somewhere in my class work again; I'm dying to use it for a Petrouchka poster.