Naked, Las Vegas

March 4th, 2010

On Monday my buddy Ryan, who’s got my old job as art director of Las Vegas Weekly, pointed me to the trailer for the movie Stripped, a documentary that follows photographer Greg Friedler as he compiles the fourth and final book in his “Naked” project — a series of before and after pictures of people clothed, then naked. The trailer includes a couple shots of Greg reading from the August 09, 2007 issue of Las Vegas Weekly:

Stripped -- LVW

Stripped -- LVW

Stripped -- LVW

Stripped -- LVW

Not one of my favorite Weekly covers. The brown paper band wasn’t part of the original concept; I just wound up using it because the original concept didn’t fly:

Unused concept

Unused concept (recreated)

I also hate how Photoshopped the girls are in that final cover. I was trying way too hard to imitate Jill Greenberg’s look back then.

I was thinking of that cover in December, when I was working on Seattle Met’s “Love & Lust” cover. I wanted another chance to do that brown paper band, this time with intent:

Tales of Love & Lust in Seattle

(I was also concerned about repeating myself with that device, but my editor told me not to sweat it too much.)

While I’m on the subject of one of my Las Vegas Weekly covers appearing in a movie, I thought I’d re-post my favorite known occurrence: My “Celebrity Stalker” cover (illustrated by Dan Sipple) –

I WAS A CELEBRITY STALKER!

– in a scene from the porno movie Big Tits at Work:

Big Tits at Work

Can you spot the magazine?

Can you spot the magazine?

It's right there on the table.

Found it! It was on the table!

Pizza Pizza

February 22nd, 2010

The March issue of Seattle Met’s about to hit the stands. Here are some highlights.

Hank Drew shot the cover:

Pizza cover

Pizza cover

Here’s a sketch I did back in January. Pretty close, except I ended up flipping the direction of the pizza and eliminating the cheese pull:

Pizza sketch

Pizza sketch

And here’s the opening spread:

Pizza Smackdown

Pizza Smackdown

Lia Cerizo, one of my art interns, did this collage for the Mudroom opener:

Mudroom opener

Mudroom opener

I had her reference this Rushmore poster for the layout:

Rushmore poster

Rushmore poster

For this article about the dangers of disastrous flooding in Downtown Seattle, I illustrated the Seattle Art Museum’s Hammering Man installation awash in the flood. First I did a vector version in Illustrator –

Vector Hammer Man

Vector Hammering Man

– then, referencing disaster movie posters like this one –

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow

– I added water, lighting and rain effects in Photoshop:

Mudroom Hammering Man

Mudroom Hammering Man

Amos Morgan shot the Dining Out opener:

Dining opener

Dining opener

Here’s my sketch for the opener of the ‘Sea Change” feature. I sent this off to Jesse Champlin for reference for his photo illustration:

Sea Change sketch

Sea Change sketch

And here’s how the opening spread turned out:

Sea Change

Sea Change

And finally: This Sunday I made my usual visit to the Ballard Farmer’s Market (it’s a couple block from my apartment), and was checking out some stand or other when I heard the unmistakable voice of Chris Ballew, lead singer of the Presidents of the United States of America, singing a few steps away from where I stood. I was shocked — I’d had a great time seeing the Presidents at the Huntridge in Vegas back in ‘97, and probably still have the flyer somewhere. And they just sold out two shows at the Showbox last week — so why’s he playing at the Farmer’s Market like any other street performer??

Chris Ballew

Chris Ballew

I gladly tipped him two bucks and asked him what he was doing there. He said his new wife keeps a stand at the market, and he just likes to accompany her. Isn’t that nice? We talked about Vegas for a minute (the Presidents had just played there again a week ago), and he told me he’ll probably be at the Ballard Farmer’s Market most Sundays. As soon as I got home I listened to II and had fond memories of creative writing class, Atlandia Design and my first solo apartment.

ChatRoulette experiment: “IWTTBT”

February 21st, 2010

Last week I heard about ChatRoulette, “a brand new service for one-on-one text-, webcam- and microphone-based chat with people around the world.” You can read all about it in this New York Magazine article, but here are some bullet points:

  • Most interactions between you and your randomly-selected partner last about a second. People tend to click past partners as though they’re flipping through TV channels they’re not interested in, as is evident in most of the faces in this collage accompanying the New York Magazine article:

NY Mag ChatRoulette collage

Click to enlarge

  • Most guys on there seem to think there’s a chance at getting girls to flash them — you see lots of signs asking girls to show their tits. About one in 10 partners I’ve encountered has some kind of tit-related sign up. But the reality is: You see lots and lots of guys masturbating. Although the connections are random, I seem to get a masturbating guy 10-20% of the time a new partner appears. Here’s another, sexier collage from that article:
NY Mag ChatRoulette collage

Click to enlarge

(Incidentally, I suspect that the shot of the girl’s butt is a video being looped to trick people.)

I was really intrigued by this whole thing — not as a social networking tool, but for its unintended uses. That video looped to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon a beautiful, half-naked girl is amusing — it’s fun to watch people realize they’ve been had — and it even inspired me to try a similar trick. I grabbed a YouTube video of a person sitting in front of a webcam and played it as my own webcam, and watched gleefully as strangers attempted to engage the decoy in conversation. That was fun for about an hour, but I had no punchline to my prank; it was just a recording of a person, with no surprise ending.

Seeing that New York Magazine collage of the bemused ChatRoulette users reminded me of a passionless version of Phillip Toledano’s photo series of people playing video games:

Gamers by Phillip Toledano

"Gamers" by Phillip Toledano

I really wanted to try something in that vein with my ChatRoulette experiment. But instead of pranking people, I decided I would see how they’d react to something I created. So I came up with a simple, six-word phrase and coupled it with an image of a cute little animal. I even animated it by having the animal blink every few seconds. I put it up on Thursday night and, like a fisherman, waited for someone to take the bait. All I needed was a user patient enough to pause for two seconds to actually read my note.

It was thrilling watching people flip past it without consideration, wondering if anyone would actually pause to look at it, and if they would actually find it funny. I haven’t made a movie since film school 10 years ago, and I didn’t make comedies when I was there. So I haven’t really heard an audience laugh at my work. And I’ve been in graphic design for 10 years, but I’ve never hidden in the bookstore to see how someone reacts to something in a magazine that I intended to be funny.

After a few minutes, I got my first response — from someone who didn’t have their camera turned on. It was “LOL!” A minute later came another response, from another user with no camera turned on: “That’s hilarious!” They were really encouraging, but what I really wanted was to see someone react to it. A couple minutes later, I finally got a visual of a person. With sound. They read it aloud and two other voices off camera started to laugh at it. The guy gave me a thumbs up into his camera and left smiling. It was exhilarating.

Here are 92 of my favorite photos of people reacting to my first ChatRoulette experiment, “IWTTBT”:

ChatRoulette: IWTTBT

"ChatRoulette: IWTTBT" by Benjamen Purvis

Love & Lust

February 4th, 2010

The February issue of Seattle Met is now on the stands, and with our steamiest cover yet:

Tales of Love & Lust in Seattle

Tales of Love & Lust in Seattle

If you’re interested in a peak behind the curtain, have a look at the original stock image I purchased before I had Jesse Champlin retouch it:

(Under cover)

(Under cover)

Here’s a sketch I sent to my buddy John Coulter as reference for his Asking Price illustration:

Condo sketch

Condo sketch

And here’s what he did with it:

Asking Price

Asking Price

My buddy Jerry Miller illustrated Seattle’s new mayor for this Mudroom piece:

The Wi-Fi of Oz

The Wi-Fi of Oz

I referenced score cards with this design:

Apolo Mission

Apolo Mission

I played up history in my design for 150 Years of Love & Lust:

Love & Lust spread

Love & Lust spread

Another page:

Love & Lust, page 36

Love & Lust, page 36

And another:

Love & Lust, page 37

Love & Lust, page 37

My design for The New Faces of Seattle Arts plays off “faces”:

The New Faces of Seattle Arts

The New Faces of Seattle Arts

Another page (photograph by José Mandojana):

Spring Arts, page 46

Spring Arts, page 46

And another (photograph by José Mandojana):

Spring Arts, page 48

Spring Arts, page 48

And still another (photograph by John Keatley):

Spring Arts, page 50

Spring Arts, page 50

Kurt

February 2nd, 2010

I’m really lucky to have my homeward bus stop right in front of the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). I love looking at the promotional material they come up with for their exhibitions — I’m assuming it’s done in-house. They use Gotham for their logo and for all of their collateral, and passing it everyday influenced my decision to bring Gotham into Seattle Met at the end of 2009. (I’d brought Gotham into Las Vegas Weekly back in 2004, but, frustrated by its width, replaced it in my 2007 redesign. But Gotham was modified with Narrow and Extra Narrow widths in 2009, which, along with Gotham Rounded, I also brought into Seattle Met.)

I left work late Monday night and was greeted with this captivating new poster for the upcoming Kurt Cobain-themed exhibit.

<urt

Kurt

I love the upside-down placement of that creepy statue, and the extreme left alignment of “Kurt” with the chopped K, and the overall starkness of this monochromatic design. This is my favorite SAM poster yet, and I can’t wait to see the exhibit.

Best Year Ever, Day One: Alone at the Office on a National Holiday.

January 1st, 2010

I thought I’d take a break from the February issue to share some stuff from Seattle Met’s January issue: Get Fit & Have Fun: 68 Ways to Make 2010 Your Best Year Ever.

Fit & Fun

Fit & Fun

I designed the Mudroom’s opening article to look like a missing pets flyer. First I used image boxes and rules in InDesign to set up the size of the paper and where the tears should be. Then I printed out that page, traced it onto a blank piece of paper, trimmed and tore that blank piece of paper according to my markers, photographed it, cleaned it up, colored it in Photoshop and brought it back into InDesign:

Missing Pets

Missing Pets

I hired my buddy Ryan Olbrysh to illustrate this article about Boeing leaving town. (Ryan has my old job art directing Las Vegas Weekly.) I asked him to reference the final scene in Casablanca for this:

Casablanca

Casablanca

Boeing

Boeing

I consider this a good example of making the most out of provided artwork. For this article about the elaborate Ivar’s billboard hoax, I used an old photo of Ivar and made it look like he was dreaming up the hoax himself. I added the surfacing drop cap as a final touch.

Ivars Hoax

Ivars Hoax

I redesigned our products page to give it more scale and energy:

spree

Made some modifications to the style page:

Style

Style

I commissioned David Plunkert to illustrate this Powerlines illustration. But first I sent him a sketch of my concept:

Sketch

Sketch

Powerlines

Powerlines

For the opening spread of the profile of Scott Macartney, an Alpine racer who nearly died in one of the worst crashes in World Cup history, I wanted something stark, cold and unsettling. I found this photo of him just after the crash and set it against an empty background:

Lucky Guy

Lucky Guy

Lucky Guy continued

Lucky Guy continued

I had fun working with these provided shots of knitted superhero costumes:

On the Town

On the Town

I hope to check out that exhibit during my best year ever. One last thing: I snapped this photo on Christmas Eve in Las Vegas, when I took my nephew to the shop where they film Pawn Stars, my current favorite TV show. It’s the Old Man hard at work:

Pawn Star

Pawn Star

Silver Ozzie Award

December 1st, 2009

Folio just announced the 2009 Ozzie Award winners. I won a silver award for my design of the feral cat feature in my first issue of Seattle Met:

Cats

Trap. Neuter. Return.

“Please make whatever creative direction changes necessary so that Seattle Met remains legible and enjoyable” (the December issue)

December 1st, 2009

Here’s some stuff from Seattle Met’s December issue. First, a letter to the editor (“Read This”) criticizing my design for last month’s traffic and WTO features, and for putting white type on black backgrounds. Coincidentally, Backpacker magazine creative director Matthew Bates sent a note saying how nice the issue looked (“Eye of the Beholder”):

Letters

Letters

For this Mudroom illustration, I brought in local artist Kelly J. Brownlee:

Green Christmas

Green Christmas

The cover package is about movies related to Seattle:

Home Movies

Home Movies

Home Movies

Home Movies

Home Movies

Home Movies

Home Movies

Home Movies

I modified this still in Photoshop by moving the falling man slightly in each frame:

The Stuntman

The Stuntman

Stunt Man

Stunt Man

Stunt Man

Stunt Man

This feature opens with a description of apes scribbling with crayons and scattering toys all about their play area, so I brought that into the design:

Chimps

Chimps

Chimps

Chimps

Another Nigel Buchanan illustration for Back Fence:

Back Fence

Back Fence

26 Perfect Saturdays (and 26 Unremarkable Ones)

November 1st, 2009

Seattle Met’s November cover package describes 26 perfect Saturdays — and not one of them takes place in my office (which is where I’ve spent almost half my Saturdays since moving here). We commissioned Alex Eben Meyer to illustrate the feature and cover:

26 Perfect Saturdays

26 Perfect Saturdays

Here’s a Mudroom page of fake news articles from the future:

Mudroom

Mudroom

This issue has the redesigned folios I mentioned in my last update. In the December issue, we’ll be swapping out one of the fonts.

I also redesigned the Dining Out and On the Town sections for this issue, from the opening page –

Dining opener

Dining opener

–to the listings pages –

Listings up close

Listings up close

My idea was to make the pages much simpler than they were before, and to use color with more restraint and punch.

Here are some pages from my very busy traffic feature — just the opposite of those sections I just redesigned. Adam Nickel handled the spot illustrations:

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

Traffic ...

I spent a couple perfect Saturdays in the office working on that sucker …

And finally, here are some pages from our feature reflecting on the WTO incident from 1999:

WTO

WTO

WTO

WTO

That shot of all those overturned newsstands gave me the idea to treat the design like a newspaper. Here’s a detail view:

WTO newspaper

WTO newspaper

Finishing up the November issue …

October 14th, 2009

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to update my blog. I’ve been working like crazy just to get the magazine out every month, and haven’t had the time to do much else.

Here’s some stuff from the September issue of Seattle Met:

I continue to experiment with the logo (it used to appear exclusively in white, with a heavy drop shadow), and the way in which secondary cover lines are presented (they used to appear exclusively in a black bar along the bottom of the page):

Wine Lover Weekends

Wine Lover Weekends

(This 2008 cover shows how the logo and cover lines were typically treated:)

100 Best Wines, 2008

100 Best Wines, 2008

I tried out a different way of opening the Mudroom in September:

The Mudroom

The Mudroom

I sketched out this opener idea for the bank heist feature and sent it to illustrator Justin Wood:

"Heist" sketch

"Heist" sketch

Heist

Heist

Heist

Heist

And here’s a Nigel Buchanan Back Fence illustration that I really love:

Back Fence

Back Fence

And now some stuff from the October issue, which is still on stands for another couple weeks. Lindsay Borden shot the cover and feature photos for Best Restaurants:

Best Restaurants

Best Restaurants

I threw in a little Norman Bates shadow at the bottom of this TOC page, whose design continues to evolve. I made Norman by tracing some guy’s Halloween costume in Illustrator, then blurring it in Photoshop.

Table of contents

Table of contents

For this article on Seattle’s departing mayor, I asked photographer John Keatley for candid outtakes from a portrait session he shot for Seattle Met a year ago. I thought this one seemed appropriate.

Power Lines

Power Lines

(We’ve been running a fake defaced campaign poster for the mayor ever since my first issue back in May. Here are a couple of my past illustrations:)

June Nickels illustration

June Nickels illustration

September Nickels illustration

September Nickels illustration

Some pages from the Best Restaurants feature:

Best Restaurants

Best Restaurants

Best Restaurants

Best Restaurants

Best Restaurants

Best Restaurants

I read an early draft of the feature on rival local weathermen, and took from it these facts: one guy favors snow in his forecasts, and the other guy is a troublemaker. I sketched out this idea for the opener and sent it off to John Keatley:

Atmospheric Disturbances sketch

Atmospheric Disturbances sketch

We couldn’t ask the guys to pose together, because their rivalry is bitter and real. But my idea was to have the guys dressed for totally different weather in response to the exact same environmental conditions. So Keatley set up the same shot at two different locations, and I lettered the headline by hand:

Atmostpheric Disturbances

Atmostpheric Disturbances

I’m really happy with the drastic difference in weather in these two shots. I love that about Seattle:

Atmospheric Disturbances

Atmospheric Disturbances

Atmospheric Disturbances

Atmospheric Disturbances

My designer Melissa and intern Anna collaborated with me on this one. They did the sketches in charcoal pencils, and I did the layout and compositing and chalkboard effect in Photoshop:

Adult Ed 101

Adult Ed 101

Another fun Nigel Buchanan Back Fence illustration:

Back Fence

Back Fence

Lots more design changes in the November issue, including more attractive folios, section openers and listings pages …