MOVING!!!

to whom it may concern

I am moving my blog to word press

it has new features and stufff

http://bartenational.wordpress.com/

shiny cans

nothing better than the sheen on a nice set of cans. The light defines the shape and makes it look more dimensional. yes nothing this old boy like more than see a beautiful can or two..

make it worth getting up in the morning....

new work poster and hobo life

i was happy with how this guys face turned out,

I basically took his low res photo, and traced it with the pen and pencil tool in illustrator, then picked colors to go with it....

I usually never work on black....

I want to quit my job and become a hobo. ridin the rails with my guitar and a dog....

leave it all behind... like the song on my myspace page profile http://www.myspace.com/bartlaube

Once I was walking with my kids in Columbus ohio, my wife was at a lunch lady convention and we had time to kill. so we were walking around downtown, near the santa maria replica boat. we were going to go on it but when we got down there it was closed... so we walked under the bridge... it was starting to rain and we didn't want to get wet. for some reason we were talking about hobos. and my son said something about mastering the hobo arts. and made up a character named hobo jobo master of the hobo arts...

so we are laughing and walking anda talking about hobo's really loud... we turn the corner and there is a shirtless dirty looking guy standing by the river.... looking at us....

we were dumb struck (the opposite of star struck) and instantly stopped talking, we walked slowly by... I was fearfull of the hobo... if he was to attack I had to protect the kids... I always fell weak when I am with my kids... I couldn't fight with abandon because I would always want to protect the kids.... anyway we walked quietly past the hobo, him looking at us, us looking back... like a deer in a field... I said a quiet "hey, how's it going?"

it is always good to face hobo's because they are people like you and me, and if you show fear, they will get pissed off at you... like "why are you afraid?" "I am normal"

but we all know they aren't

adrift...

the day began like so many others, people milling about, chatting about various things. Some things about work, some things about play... the same old things, day after day. nothing specific was going on... somethings were do in the distant future, somethings had past, life was adrift this monday morning. 

THe usual thoughts creep into a persons mind, what am I doin here? why am I doing this?

but the day starts rolling and blanks out those random thought. but until that kicks in the clock ticks the seconds off, 5 seconds at a time, time stands still.

A person wonders if they are groggy because of the medication they are on.... the blood pressure is too high, you must reduce it. take these pills, then feel like a weight is put on you everyday to keep you from floating away. We all want to float away, there is something in human nature that makes it impossible to stay in one place all the time, unchallenged. That is why jail is such a problem, it is tourture to stay in one spot for too long. Your eyes constantly take in information, and search for new sites, your memory is built to capture and hold important information every day... your body is made to travel long distances... it can repair itself... automatically.. if only it had a reason to...

starting to feel squirmish one looks at the clock only to realize it has been a half an hour....

gasp...

mr. tinmouse thinks he broke the internets

"oh dear, I hope the internets doesn't find out about this!"

"although I shouldn't have been looking at sexy scrap metal web site again"

"the internets are indeed a source of evil, for the lonely robot"

hyde park pizzeria saga

once I designed a banner for my church,

they liked that so I designed some signs for their pizza place,

they liked that, but the other people sued them

so they changed their name

to Italiannati's

but that was too close

so they changed it to Hyde Park pizzeria

and I think it is done

whew!

card for sandi...

I worked at NCE like ten yrs ago, and people would come to the art department and request big cards, for everyone to sign. so we would make a 11 x 17 inch card and pass it around the company. I knew Sandi and said hi to her everyday, then she got sick, so I was tasked with making this card, So I wrote up this little poem, and drew these flowers. She ended up having brain cancer, and eventually lost the battle. at the funeral, her husband thanked me profusely, saying sandi loved the card and kept it with her until she past. 

I always felt like I did something good with that card, 

return to guache....

Once upon a time, graphic design was done using designers guaches... guaches are water based paints, that can be ran through an airbrush, painted thick like water colors, thinned out and used as water colors, they can go down super smooth or blotchy. you can wash them off of your board and reapply them... they were the standard for the graphics industry before the computer came along. if you wanted a color rendering, you used guache.... then maybe something else if they didn't do what you wanted... now guaches have a dull finish when they are layed down, they dont get thick like an oil painting, and the color isnt as rich. but they reproduce and photograph really well, they dry fast and you can blend the paint by using slight pressure and a moist brush, to achieve a really smooth gradient. they were used for quick layouts and color mock ups, type treatments, architactural reanderings, lettering, just a ton of stuff,

minutia about painting... sorry casey you are probably bored by this stuff...!

Creative Kill The Man

when I was in 7th grade the favorite game for boys was called "kill the man".

basically someone would throw a football up in the air and who ever caught it, got tackled.

This was a real alpha male proving ground. because if no one could catch you, or tackle you, you were the biggest baddest kid. So if you thought you were a bad ass, this was a chance for other kids to smash you down to size. If you underestimated yourself, this was were things became clear where you stood. Some kids who were timid found out they were just as tough as that other kid who pushed them around, because they felt intimidated. So nerds became cool, and cool kids became, not so cool. I remember being in 7th grade and some 8th graders thought they were bad asses, so they gave me the ball and were going to tackle me, so one grabbed me, then another, then anouther, it felt like I was carrying the whole class on my back, and I still wasn't going down, I was unstoppable. That was 7th and 8th grade before high school, so most of the kids hadn't had a growth spurt yet. but for the rest of the year I feared no one. If some guys were picking on a nerd, I was like "cut it out!" and they would. What were they going to do? they couldn't take me down.... for a brief moment in time I was the alpha male

I never played that game later in life, but to have a way to measure people's ability and brain power in a real way, would help organize our society, so the best people suited for a job, would be the person who got that job... things work out that way naturally for the most part, but sometimes I wonder....

football and sports are all about stats and measurement, if you hit a home run, you get credit, your team benefits but doesn' t get extra point on their stat cards...

this flight of the conchords logo was for a poster competition, I never finished it, becuase contests of art are sooo subjective, there is no real way to know if you have a chance without puttin a ton of work into it.

Lifesaver head

I am working on a color version of this but time has been of short supply lately... so I am putting this up in the meantime...

I had the flu or something on sat, my face hurt... so not much to blog about...

went camping for a day on thurs, up by lake erie...

nice spot to vacation, low cost, beach like atmosphere, only four hours away

most candy headed people tend to dress in business casual... that sort of wrinkled suit look that says, I am serious about looking sloppy... I spend lots of money on clothes then refuse to iron them because I am a rebel... take that garment industry! see if I care! 

now a little about branding...

Brands have equities... equities are anything you can relate to as "the brand"... touch, taste, sound, see, or hear. The touch of Harley Davidson is the rubber grips and the leather jacket. Taste doesn't apply to this brand soo much.. Sound is the distinctive rumble of the harley as it roars down the street. You can say they "own" that sound, so every time you hear that rumble you think "here comes a harley"....

so all the advertising and graphic design firms came up with this way to describe designs and why the coke can needs to be red, and have a script on it.  Other wise people will make bad decisions about packaging and tv commercials and product, i.e. New Coke...

these equities are usually assembled into a molecule graph, a chart of some sort, or a pyramid... the above illustration show the next step. The equity pyramid cake. 

orson wells sort of guy

why does cottage cheese feel soo cold in your mouth?

pecha cucha poster idea

this was a sketch for a pecha cucha poster. we had a series of presentations, for work. some people wanted to make presentations. this idea revolved around a robot with a speaker for a head standing at the edge of a cliff preparing to speak. it 12:20 on a sunday night. I usually go to sleep before this but I am waiting up for my wife, she is working at the church festival finishing up stuff. they rent out these giant tents and booths for all the activities. they spend all week building a tent city to house all the things to do. the big new thing was the dunking booth. All the old timers from the neighborhood were there. People that grew up there and have since moved on. some really old people who went to school there 70 years ago. The old neighborhood has changed since those days, the big  old families all turn out. with their children and grand children. It is hard to break into a neighborhood like this. you are hanging with people who all grew up together... but even though I have lived here 16 years I am not one of them... that is o.k. with me..  I am not tied to the place, but my wife and I got involved to make sure the school was open for my kids to go to...  I am sure some other people will come along after we leave to maintain the place. they all want a safe place for their kids to go to school. unless the city of cincinnati somehow gets its shit together and makes a school worth attending ... ha ha.. no way... anyway people grow up and want to move on from their parents.. so the places their parents built up end up being neglected and abandon. in Europe real estate is not like america. here we just move up the road and build a whole new city, because we have plenty of space.... it is odd to see places occupied for 50 years like an old school or church, built with the sweat and tears and sacrifice by hard working people trying to make a mark on this world... worn from years of use then left behind to rot... Bowling allys with nobody bowling on them, bars with cobwebs were no one will drink,  overgrown baseball diamonds... People expect these places to be preserved by someone, but the truth is there is no one left... kathy and I have inherited a lot of control of things in these parishes, we are strangers here but no one else will pick up the torch... it is somewhat sad... but america has a funny way of buying new vs quality... 

anyway I added three new songs I wrote on my myspace page  www.myspace.com/bartlaube  

somtimes people need a catsuit

inside people is a second person... 

that is the person they think they are... 

sometimes they don't like that person...

so they want to be someone else....

sometimes that inner person wants to wear a cat outfit....

what if instead of wearing the same clothes everyone buys at target...

people wore a costume of some sort...

a cat outfit... 

current fashion is very severe and angry looking

black and sharp, nothing to do with nature...

what if nature inspired the latest fads...

an owl look could be very popular....

or maybe it is more friendly like peoples pets...

the pet look...

you can dress like a cat or a dog...

then people would know what kind of person you are

and behave accordingly....