woof

The job I have right now comprises of me sitting at a front desk and signing out keys to various rooms. To say the least not much happens during a shift. So I doodle on scraps of recycled paper from old flyers and paper work.

no poles about it

NEMO is a young company, being founded in 2002 and they have already caught the attention of the camping/backpacking industry. Their "Air Support Technology", or AST, has revolutionized the tent. Instead of adding extra weight with poles that traditionally frame out the tent, air poles are inflated and used to support the tent's shell instead. Their AST system can actually handle twice the downward force that traditional aluminum poles can handle and they don't break when bent. I'm hoping to have a shot to work for this group because camping and backpacking are something I'll always have a passion for.

Burton would be awesome

So I'm finding it to be more and more true that you really just need to go after what you want. What I want is a job where I am excited to be doing what I do and that is design. A lot of the job postings I've found though say they would like 2+ years experience in the field. Well I don't quite have that much yet but I know I have the skills they want now. So I'm going for those jobs, because if I don't I won't even get my foot in the door and that would be a shame. Especially if the company is Burton Snowboards. A company that I have been trying to find a way to work for for the past year and a half. I hope they like what I've sent them and that I'll hear back from them even if I don't get the position. Fingers crossed and my best foot forward!

Biafra in Blacksburg

I took this pic a while back and have been doing some surfing to figure out what it's all about. Turns out Biafra Inc. is an international street art movement that primarily uses stickers and posters, and the occasional stencil. You can check out more photos of Biafra's stuff here or check out the myspace page. I'm really impressed by the amount of ground this guy has covered and the different methods he's used to push Biafra into the lime light of the underground culture. As a side note, the master-mind behind all this is only 19 years old. I expect I'll see a lot more stuff like this over in Europe.

square one

So when I originally started this blog I had originally intended to just post things I made or drew. Well I have certainly posted on much more than that, but since it's the summer and I'm not in a studio I figured I'd get back to my roots and start posting the sketches that have leaked out of me lately. Thought this one was a good one to start off with. I added some extra color in photoshop. Just some basic greys to help flesh the guy out, and of course you can always click on the image to see it larger.

gotta get me one of these

So there's this thing called the Pacemaker. It's a 120GB pocket sized DJ system (that's all your music, your effects board, and whatever else you use) and I love it. I especially love the support on their site where you can listen to mixes people have made with it as well as upload your own. The only thing holding me back is the $800 price tag haha! but still, it is incredibly designed and I'd love to see one in action in the flesh.

Pacemaker - this is how it works from ljudbilden on Vimeo.

print houses

So even though I have a bachelor's in Industrial Design I have a passion for t-shirts and printing. That got me, and some other people, thinking "hey why not try to work for a screen printing company?" I thought about it and now I'm going for it. So far I have contacted three print houses along with all the other design jobs I've been sending out. High Peak is a regional print business based out of Lynchburg VA, Press Press is a smaller but awesome shop out of Roanoke VA who's work has shown up in stores like Hot Topic, and Print House is a giant out in California that prints for tons of major companies like Rebok, Disney, Paul Frank, Oakley, etc. I feel that I have a pretty good shot for these. Don't you?

orange jobs

Ammunition Group and SKD are two more really great design firms that I'm gunning for. It would be incredible to get to work for either of these groups and you guessed it, they're both out in southern California. In other news though I have heard been hearing back from a couple of the other companies I've sent my work to. Everyone so far has given me positive feedback about my work but they've already filled the job or the job posting was from a while back and they can't take anyone right now. But still on the upside, a couple of places stated that they would like to keep in touch if something does come up in the future. So I'd say all in all I'm making some killer progress. As for right now I'm just biding my time in Blacksburg working part time as an information assistant at the student center, working on planning a trip to Europe and researching/applying to more design jobs.

summer is go

So today is really the first day of summer for me. It didn't really hit me until I went grocery shopping and bought some hot dogs, the ultimate summer time food, then it began to sink in. That and I just got my hands on the Flobots album Fight with Tools. The artwork on for the cover is great. America, bandannas, sunglasses and line art that and they have a great sound. They really mix it up well using rock, acoustic guitar, speech clips, violins, acapella and even some reggae flare. iTunes puts them under Hip-Hop and I guess that works too. Right now their track Handlebars is getting a lot of notice. No two tracks feel the same but I could listen to them all. This is one of those groups that have merged a lot of styles together and done it well. This is definitely going to be part of my regular summer rotation. You can check them out at www.flobots.com or listen up over at purevolume.

job hunt day 2 cont.

So here are three more companies I've gotten work together for today. The Motorola job is in Libertyville Illinois while the T-Mobile and Chef'n jobs are in Seattle Washington. I think working for Chef'n would be really cool and did you know they had a kids division? I sure didn't, but it makes me happy that they do!

job hunt day 2

Yesterday I woke up sick and didn't get much of anything done except drinking 6 liters of water and sleeping. Today though I woke up and I'm feeling better. Not 100% but loads better over yesterday. So that means time to apply to more design jobs. So far these are the places I'm applying to this morning. Astro Studios in San Francisco, Karim Rashid's design office in NYC, and M-Audio out in Los Angeles. All three of these look like great places to work, especially Astro Studios. I really liked what they said in their coroflot posting.

Again and Again

Music video of the moment. The band is the Birds and the Bees. Something about it, it just makes me want to watch it .... again.

get a job!

So Ashley and I have created quite the list of places to look for work. And not just any work. Awesome work and I'm not limiting myself to any certain local either. Today I sent out my first round of replying to design job postings. Two of these are actually located in southern California and I am totally cool with that. Moving is exciting and I've never lived on the west coast so I would like to check it out while I'm still young and energetic.

dashdot studios is a brand new ID consulting firm in Longbeach but it has roots in other large firms like Continuum which I also applied too. If I'm correct, Continuum is one of the largest ID consulting firms in the country and the office I'm applying to is in Boston. The last one I'm sure everyone knows of, but it's Mattel, but more specifically it's their boys toys devision which includes the world famous Hot Wheels brand. So this is the start of my job hunt and I'll continue to post my progress throughout the upcoming days and weeks.

wow, that happened fast

So it's been a few days since I've posted anything but it's for a good reason. I've been busy haha. Well if you call graduation, graduating and Mother's day being busy. Graduation went really well and the event itself was pretty nice. The best part though was having my family there, especially my mom and dad, and of course my girlfriend. I have to say though the whole thing is kind of a blur, all except the woman who gave the speech. She was not a very engaging or uplifting speaker and my friend Andy (he was seated on stage) told me later he had a difficult time trying not to nod off during this woman's speech. I'm not sure what it really had to do with us but she just kept droning on about major disasters that happened in the past 5 years and didn't really have much anything positive to say.

Besides all that finally graduation was a breath of fresh air for me. The guy in the picture up top is my friend Tom and he's been in the program as long as I have and you know he's glad to finally get that diploma. Thanks to everyone that made graduation special and those who couldn't be there thanks for supporting me. Oh and thanks for all the great phone calls throughout the day :)

Next step: find a job. Maybe something in Cali?

T minus 2 days

So graduation ceremonies start tomorrow and I finally get my BS in Industrial Design. My college's graduation is Saturday early in the morning and my family is coming in to see me in my square hat getting that piece of paper I've worked for for the last 4.5 years. I have to say I am really excited to be graduating but I just hope I can land some good work sooner than later.

About that I thought it looked like I was going to be interning at KidsII but as it ended up turning out they literally don't have any desk space left to have me there. That doesn't mean they don't want me or that I won't get to intern or work for them some time in the future but as of right now I haven't gotten a definite yes or no from them. And since I graduate this weekend I am a little anxious about working.... anywhere. As for now I'm just going to keep plugging away at the job hunt and enjoy the time off from things like Pete.

stencil love in roanoke

So classes are done but I'm still working the t-shirt game. Yesterday I drove out to Roanoke to pick up my latest set of shirts from my friend Greg who owns the print shop Press Press Merch. When I was there I noticed on the side of his building these two stencil pieces. I really like the scuba one, mostly because it has bubbles.

XYZ

So the giant squid I made got a little bit of attention from some people and it was asked to be on display in the XYZ for the HandMade show. Sounds cool right? Well I thought it sounded like it would be an interesting show. They told me they were going to suspend the squid from the ceiling and that it would have half of a room to itself, again that sounded really cool. So the squid was put in the show. It took me a couple of days before I was able to get out to see the exhibit because the gallery has really restrictive hours being open only 2 hours a day usually.

Once I did see the exhibit however I was really disappointed with what I saw. Most the stuff on display looked like crap. I would be ashamed to have my name associated with the so called "art pieces" they had put up. I mean it just looked bad. Lots of the pieces where these collages made out of magazine cut outs and the cut outs were falling off the canvass and peeling and wrinkly. You get the idea. As you can probably tell from the picture my squid was never hung they just left it on the floor with no write up or anything. Sigh.

On the other hand though, there was one other really nice thing in the exhibit. It was this grouping of felt cube animals that were really cute and really well done. Not only were they good but they were one of the few things that didn't have some rediculous price tag on them. But yeah, I really liked them and I think the artist did a great job with them.

hardcore to the max

My friend Jon just bought his first motorcycle and is loving it. This weekend his dad and brother are coming in town and they both have bikes as well but they wear the German style bike helmets while Jon wears a full bike helmet with a visor. Anyways Jon wanted to make some sweet skull bandanas for his brother and dad to wear to help keep the bugs out of their faces. I have to say these came out looking really good. I helped make the prints since I have the silkscreen equipment and I still have the screen burned if any body feels like getting one. I'd like to make myself a white one with a black skull print. I thin that would be awesome. What ended up making the print look really good was instead of just printing the image on a transparency, Jon traced and colored the image onto the transparency with a sharpie so it got this kind of textured scratchy look that ended up printing really nicely.

landshark illustration

I've decided to try and do some basic illustrating so I thought I'd take a crack at doing a cartoon of the landshark.

how it went

In case you were wondering how things went for soundfest I'll tell you. I know this is a couple of days after the fact, but that's how it goes sometimes. Well, the day went really well. There were six bands and the two largest acts were the RX Bandits and As Tall As Lions (who were great live, probably my favorite of the day). There were old school arcade games brought in to play for free like Donkey Kong, Mrs. Pac Man and pinball, to name a few. There was also free cotton candy for everyone! I ended up making cotton candy for about 3-4 hours and when I was done my hair was the same consistency as the the candy, and from what I was told, rather sparkly. It took two showers to get rid of that.

As for the shirts and banners they went over really well. The bands even told the show manager how much they liked them. In all there ended up being three large 3'x6' banners and I made a handfull of the monster prints on 11x17s for the bands to sign as well. The shirts ended up coming in two different colors. The teal ones were for sale why all the workers got purple shirts with a big staff logo on the back. Everybody loved the shirt, especially since I went with American Apparel brand shirts.