Gunnar Swanson Design Office

(I wish I weren’t so suspicious of slogans and taglines. It would be nice to have one to put here.)

annual crankiness

2012:

I suppose what really made me really cranky in 2012 were the several people who took the Obama signs on face value. Being a “birther” requires being indecent, stupid or naïve, and delusional. Wouldn’t William of Occam or Nate Silver (links appear in new windows) tell us that it’s at least slightly more likely that I’m just one or two of those?

(Thanks to Mannie Garcia and/or Sheppard Fairey, George K. Warren, Soyuzfoto, Alberto Korda and/or Jim Fitzpatrick, John Mayall, Helane Freeman, Roger Excoffon, the nation of Kenya, and the Masai tribe. Click here for larger image in a new window.)

2011:

See www.heritageoftreason.com (link appears in new window) if you want to read me kvetching about this one.

(Thanks to Craig Malmrose [link appears in new window] who printed this with me. [We put up with each others’ cranky tendencies.])

QOL Apps/ICD Coach

Sam Sears (links open in new tabs) is a psychologist at East Carolina University (where I teach graphic design.) Sam has pioneered the study of the emotional outfall of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs.) He lectures and consults widely. We’re putting Sam in a bottle with ICD Coach, an app for mobile devices, a website, etc. QOL-Apps (as in Quality of Life Applications) is the parent company. I designed trademarks (including custom lettering) and navigation icons. I worked with a great team (including Keon Pettiway and Brian Schroeder) that developed websites and the app.

It’s still evolving but the first version of the app looks like this:

In the end, the point is to change lives. (By the way, if you want a tattoo and a modeling job, let me know.)

new jerseys

The 2012 Cotton Country Century jerseyshave joined the EC Velo club jerseys in my world of stretchy fashion design. See more on the boll weevil below.

It was a struggle to keep the production people from “helping me out” on the EC Velo jerseys by adding type outlines and making sure that nothing bleeds. In the end, there are a couple of details I could quibble about but they did a better job than I could have hoped for.

Graphic designers love to tell you that we’re all about strategy not about mere surfaces. Designers who are Modern Boys (like me, for instance) especially disdain the appellation “decorator” but it doesn’t require a PhD in rhetoric to figure out that most of what you say is how you say it. I’m happy to talk business and communication strategy all day but surface decoration isn’t something separate. I don’t think that graphic design is all about fashion but I suspect that fashion design isn’t, either.

Joost Schmidt seemed confused with the graphic designer/fashion designer question when he designed this one for me. I’m going to need to do a lot of intervals on my stainless steel bicycle if I hope to pedal 88 mph and get back to ask him about it. (I printed the slightly less famous poster in the background with Craig Malmrose [website in new window.])

inordinate fondness for beetles

The Cotton Country Century has been an ongoing project. I’ve done posters and tee shirts for five years and jerseys for the last three. The feature that has persisted through the years is the illustration of the boll weevil on a bicycle. The bike started out as an old wood engraving. I removed parts and moved other parts in Photoshop, drew the beetle, and combined the pieces. (I don’t think of myself as an illustrator but the Society of Illustrators included it in their annual show and book in 2008.)

something other than bicycles

Speaking of Craig Malmrose and wood type posters—I was; under the photo of the Joost Schmidt jersey; pay attention—here ’s the typeface I designed that Craig has made into wood type for letterpress printing. It’s called Rosemary. It’s named after Richard Nixon ’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, rather than my wife (a Rosemary with better judgment in the company she keeps.)

It’s a bit like a Clarendon hung on the skeleton of Trade Gothic. (I did a bit of orthopedic surgery on the skeleton but a good forensics anthropologist with a former vampire/sniper FBI agent sidekick would identify it.) If you’re a lawyer from Mergenthaler Linotype or an heir of Jackson Burke, meet me out in the alley and we’ll duke it out; JB and Trade Gothic owed much to Morris Fuller Benton so maybe ATF Davidson will buy me a (low carb) beer when I win that fight.

(2' x 3' announcement poster designed by Gunnar Swanson and printed by Gunnar Swanson and Craig Malmrose, Craig’s pantographic mill at work, and Craig hand finishing a letter shown above. Detail of poster—text set in Trade Gothic—below.)