Dream Theater Album Cover

Dream Theater, an a American progressive rock band, just released the tracklisting and album art for "a Dramatic Turn of Events" which will hit stores in September. I believe Dream theater to be one of the most creative bands in the heavy metal/rock genre. They really try to push musical and creative boundaries with every song. Every phrase seems to somehow connect to another song or moment in Dream Theater history. The band seems to always have great album artwork also. I don't know the artist (or artists) who do the album art for Dream Theater, but I always enjoy the work. The artwork usually plays off of some sort of visual paradox or absurd situation. This cover is no different. Congrats to Dream Theater, Roadrunner Records and the artists who worked on this and every other Dream Theater album.

Design Literature

Here are some design books that have been extremely influential to my work. I recommend all of them to fellow designers. Anyone in the craive industry would enjoy (and learn a lot from) both "A Whole New Mind," by Pink and "Made to Stick," by Heath. "The Elements of Typographic Style" is basically my typography bible and refence guide for all thing typographic. "Chip Kidd: Book One" is a collection of Kidd's early work, which I find to be thoughtful and inspiring.

BP Handwriting

I am excited to anounce that my own handwriting is to be used in all the new menus for Boston's Pizza. All handwritten labels were actually created with ink and textured papers, not digitally. The new menus are scheduled to roll out in early August.

Bridge

In talking to fellow designers, I have been surprised to find out how few of them actually make frequent use of Adobe Bridge. It is software that is often ignored, but I have found it to be a major aid to my work process. I probably spent more time in bridge than I do in illustrator. Being a file browser, you wouldn't expect that it would be very powerful, but if you actually take a look at it you will see that it is incredibly powerful and very useful. You can view thumbnails and previews of every file type supported by Adobe. (which you cannot do in Finder, Preview, or Windows Explorer) You can also place files into any other Adobe CS program directly from bridge. This saves a lot of time and avoids the annoying issue of having to locate a file twice (First to view it, then to Place it) You can even output contact sheets and Flash galleries directly from Bridge. this program really helps my workflow, and I would encourage other designers to start using it, instead of being stuck in the OS.

Go Mavs!

Cheerin' for the Mavs tonight! To make this more relevant to design I will also mention how much I love the Mavs logo. Well, one of them that is. I can't stand the orignal logo (with the capital M and the basketball.) I am very surprised to see that the Mavericks continue to update and use this mark. The Horse logo is used much more often, but every once in a while the "M" logo slips through. (like on this year's Western Conference Champion's hats) The team's branding would be even stronger if they used only one logo and trashed the original, instead of confusing people with two very different marks. The horse logo is strong and aggressive as a sports logo shold be, but it also depicts a "Maverick" well without being too illustrative or too abstract.