Good times, noodle salad

I've bet you've been thinking, "hey he was posting like every day for a while there, and then it stopped. I wonder what happened." Well maybe you weren't thinking that, but if so let me give you a couple updates:

The Boy Scout jamboree patches are going through their third round of changes, which I pray for my sake is the last round. The good news is the National Park Service Historian approved the patches for historical accuracy, and offered some constructive suggestions that won't set me back too much time. Pretty soon I'll be getting proofs done, which is where the fun really begins.

I am applying for an industrial design job. Although this is a little out of my area, I know I am capable of the job and I know the software they need. In applying for this job I am quickly making a custom portfolio to show that I can render concept designs both in hand sketching, photoshop, and 3D/autocad. I am on a tight schedule but I'm hoping to have the application out the door in a week. I'll posts some of the snazzy concept designs I've been doing soon.

That's all for now. I'll keep you guys posted as things develop.

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments

For months now I've been working on the patch set for the Baltimore Area Council contingent to the 2010 National Boy Scout Jamboree, which will be the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the scouting movement. This Jamboree, Baltimore Area Council has decided to feature Fort McHenry and the battle that inspired the national anthem in our 16 patch set. The patches are designed to tell the story of the battle visually. They are split into 3 groups of 5, the first group being prior to the battle, the second being during, and the third being afterward. The third set includes a special trader patch that will use special thread that changes color in sunlight. the groups form a circle around a unified square patch which features Fort McHenry's flag as it hangs in the Smithsonian. Because I'd be putting up a heck of a lot of images to show you all of them, I'll just give you a taste. This is group two or "during" the battle:


Once these are embroidered there will be added depth created by thicker and thinner areas of thread. Trust me when I say these will be off the hook as far as scout patches go. More to come...

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments

This is a poster I did for residence life when I was an RA some years back. I had no time to do it originally and basically threw it together, so here is the original:


This poster is all sorts of ugly, but I did like the original concept of the shuttle and the lion at the watering hole, so I tweaked the image, gave it some more depth, and took away the harsh 1 pixel black outlines on everything. I didn't mind the futura font, so I kept that but engaged it with the image. Here is the revamp:


I think this will be the last poster I redo for a bit, since I really want to move on to my first identity project from sophomore year, which was an epic bust. This one is gonna take more than a day so be patient. More to come...

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments

Sophomore year another student and myself were asked to make a poster for the annual raw art sale, where students sell unframed and unfinished artwork. The catch was we could not use meat or animals of any kind as previous posters had offended the mica vegan community. My fellow student and I created this:


I very much enjoyed our macaroni type, but the rest of the typography was...shit. No use of grid, no consideration of value, and frankly using the default font in illustrator is a no no. So here we are, today's typographic revamp of this poster:


Firstly, I wanted the subtitle to punch, and the font to reflect the curls of the noodles, so Bauhaus is a perfect fit. Secondly, this desperately needed a grid, and more care in what information was important and needed to be more prominent. Thirdly, if this was a current MICA poster, it would need to be branded, so adding the logo just made sense. I probably could have punched up the color in the image in photoshop, but this felt more like a type exercise than photo editing practice. I am pretty pleased with it. more to come...

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments

Just as you were about to remove me from your RSS feed I swoop in with a long awaited blog post.

I am not one to make new years resolutions, not because I think I'm perfect, but simply because I don't think a new year should be the only excuse for change. I have many things coming on the horizon, most notably a possible move to Boston, which as someone who has lived in Baltimore his entire life, would be a big deal. With this move comes new opportunities but also new challenges. One of these challenges is finally moving to design as my main profession, which up until this point, has taken a back burner while I have the safety and security of my job at Geek Squad. One thing I have been frequently reminded by my friend and colleague Tim is that I may be a bit out of practice since I haven't been doing much freelance work, and thus brings me to my goal.

If I am going to be job hunting I have to freshen my portfolio. This means punching up old work and even creating new work. To start the juices flowing, I plan to go back to the beginning. I am going to start with some of my work that is hitting the five year old mark, and apply what I know now. I don't see it being as productive as a project a day, but every few days I want to produce something, even if it doesn't work. I envy artists who can fill a sketchbook with ideas both visual and contextual. This will be my sketchbook of sorts, and hopefully something really beatiful will happen.

To start us off, a business card I made in 2003:


And a simple but elegant revamp of it:


more to come...

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

My roommate Mark's birthday is on thanksgiving, so to celebrate it I gifted him with the Art of Wall-E book to add to his collection of Pixar books.


After I wrapped it in my usual non-descript butcher paper wrapping, I decided to whip out the old white charcoal pencil and give him some handmade typography, based on the font Mutlu, a calligraphic favorite of mine. Happy Birthday Mark!

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

So it finally happened. A company created what is currently classified as a spyware trojan called MacGuard. Like many PC spyware files, it pretends to be a legit anti-virus, claiming to you it has found many infections and you need to buy it to remove them. The company that created it is actually a known front for identity theft and is trying to get credit card numbers. I only heard about it after a customer brought in their infected macbook to Geek Squad today. From my research, there is currently no known way to remove it other than restoring your computer (if you have time machine, restore to an earlier date.)

Alas there is not much in the way of virus and spyware protection for the mac out there other than norton for $49.99, however there is one open source virus scanner called ClamXav that seems to be well reviewed. The one thing to note is it is only a scanner and will not remove anything(it will quarentine,) it is still on you to delete the infected file if neccesary.

I knew this day would come as apple's market share has increased, but alas I hoped it would not be this soon. The best way to protect yourself is to be internet safe and use time machine to backup so you can simply restore to a point prior to the infection. I guaruntee that as we will see more of this, other companies than norton will get into the Anti-Virus game for mac and we'll have adequate protection.

Posted by Justin Lloyd at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments