Carter Isonhart Graphics

"Have you ever seen a cheerful elephant?"

2012-03-06T12:29:00.000-06:00

Today I overheard some of my co-workers (freelancers on a discussion board) debating copyright and protection of new creations. The idea of owning an idea, phrase, image or sound has interested me since I started studying photography and art theory. Photography was one of the first mediums that is considered an original artwork that is also reproducible by nature. It was the forerunner of digital media and formats like mp3, wav and jpeg.

Those early thoughts about copyright and originality brought me to this short story written in 1983 by Spider Robinson. It changed the way I thought about originality and put obvious limits on the whole idea of copyright.

"There are eighty-eight notes. One hundred and seventy-six, if your ear is good enough to pick out quarter tones. Add in rests and so forth, different time signatures. Pick a figure for maximum number of notes a melody can contain. I do not know the figure for the maximum possible number of melodies—too many variables—but I am sure it is quite high.

"I am certain that it is not infinity.

"For one thing, a great many of those possible arrays of eighty-eight notes will not be perceived as music, as melody, by the human ear. Perhaps more than half. They will not be hummable, whistleable, listenable—some will be actively unpleasant to hear. Another large fraction will be so similar to each other as to be effectively identical: if you change three notes of the Moonlight Sonata, you have not created something new.

"I do not know the figure for the maximum number of discretely appreciable melodies, and again I'm certain it is quite high, and again I am certain that it is not infinity. . .

"As for visual artists—well, once a man demonstrated in the laboratory an ability to distinguish between eighty-one distinct shades of color accurately. I think that's an upper limit. There is a maximum amount of information that the eye is capable of absorbing, and much of that will be the equivalent of noise—"

You can find the entire story here: Melancholy Elephants.

Can't take it anymore.

2012-02-20T22:09:00.002-06:00

You've done it again, Hugh MacLeod.

At least have the freedom.

2012-02-19T15:51:00.000-06:00

"When I was 25 years old, I wanted to change the world and I said to myself, "I cannot change the world." When I was 30 years old, I said to myself, "I definitely will change the world." At the age of 35, I realized that the world was changing me, and I didn't like that at all. And now I'm 40. I've decided it's on me to change, and maybe by my own change, I can change the small world around me."

"Because creation, you know, it means that you don't have any salary, you don't have any retirement, all of that. So if you don't have the security, at least have the freedom. I go for the freedom."

Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-born French contemporary graphic novelist, illustrator, animated film director, and children's book author. Apart from her native language Persian, she speaks English, Swedish, German, French and Italian.

Read the interview "Marjane Satrapi: On Artistic Freedom, Fame, and Finishing No Matter What" on the 99 percent.

T-shirt designs

2012-02-14T12:10:00.000-06:00

Check my portfolio on Behance for more graphics.

STEP BY STEP: Making a Seamless Composite Image in Photoshop

2012-02-10T18:48:00.000-06:00

I found the perfect stock image while starting a recent project but as usual it was the wrong proportions. I needed this vertical image to be horizontal and cropping it was not going to work. The best solution was to fill in the bottom of the image so that it would have enough length to cover the entire canvas area I was working on.

The best thing about this method is that it is non-destructive. The only change we are making to the actual pixels in the original images is a perspective transformation on the sidewalk texture. I can open this file in a week or a year and make subtle changes to any of the mask areas or layer effects. I can even go back and strip everything off to leave the original unmodified city street image.

Here are my original files: a city street at night with light trails and a plain old snapshot of the sidewalk. All we really need here is the concrete texture so anything that comes close to matching the pavement in the foreground of the first image should work.

I started by creating the canvas, in this case it was a 11x17" vertical composition so the client can print posters from the final image. With all three documents open I used the move tool (v) to drag the stock photos into my new document. I arranged them so that the sidewalk texture was beneath the city photo.

Transform the sidewalk layer's shape (cmd-t). Right-click anywhere inside the transformation box to bring up the dialogue menu and select 'perspective.'

Try to visualize the vanishing point and perspective grid and match the boundary box to it while keeping the lower half of the canvas covered. It doesn't need to be exact, we're just giving the illusion that the sidewalk is receding from the viewer instead of being painted flat onto the canvas.

Now the biggest problem for my eyes has been the color of the sidewalk compared to the orange streetlights in the city photo. Double click to the right of the sidewalk layer's name in the layers palette to open the layer styles window and click on 'color overlay.' Set the blend mode to color burn and the opacity somewhere around 50-75%. Then change the color to a dark brown - something that matches the tone and saturation of the pavement in the city photo.

Now we need to blend the opacity of the top layer, so select the city street layer and click on the 'Add layer mask' button at the bottom of the layers palette. That creates a blank mask which allows you to paint out transparent areas (with black paint) and paint in opaque areas (anything white in the layer mask thumbnail).

Instead of going right in with a black brush, lets use the gradient tool (set with solid black and white) to create a transparent-to-opaque blend from the bottom edge of the layer up to the bottom of the light trails and the intersection in the background.

After we have that rough fade in place we can go in with a black brush (set to a medium size soft 20-50% opacity) and paint out even more of the layer. I also went in with the same brush and white paint (just hit (x) to switch between colors) to bring back some of the sidewalk detail on the far left of the image.

Now we're getting close but the lighting isn't right on the new sidewalk texture. We can add a gradient to the edges by going back into the layer styles (double click on the sidewalk layer in the layers palette) and choosing gradient overlay. I set the blend mode to multiply, checked 'reverse', selected radial instead of linear, unchecked 'align with layer' and bumped the scale up to 150%.

Then I clicked on the gradient image and set the opacity stop on the right to 0% (see above image) and moved the midpoint down to about 35% from the default 50% (see image below). This knocks out the white in the center of our gradient so we can see the sidewalk through it and widens the transparent center so that the shadows are pushed to the edges of the canvas away from the center.

And that leaves us with our final image without any destructive changes (except the perspective shift when we transformed the sidewalk image). At this point if the client wants more of the original image to show through we can paint more of it back in the layer mask. If they want the foreground pavement to be less orange we can go back to our color overlay layer style and change the opacity or hue in moments.

Please feel free to contact me via twitter (@carter_isonhart) or email (cartermke@gmail.com) if you have any questions or I missed something - it's been known to happen occasionally!

"You can use it for your portfolio..."

2012-02-09T23:23:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Mathew Eby for showing me this flowchart by Jessica Hische. I'm totally buying one to put above my desk.

New portfolio projects

2012-02-09T14:04:00.000-06:00

Too much communication

2012-02-08T09:18:00.003-06:00

Just one step in the process of "How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell" on theOatmeal.com

I've personally had clients that wanted to video conference through the whole design process. "Wouldn't it be easier if I could stand over your shoulder while you do everything?" Yeah, that would save me SO much time...

A couple new posters

2012-01-18T16:56:00.000-06:00

We've been a little busy lately so here are a couple of new graphics. Yes, I know it's just a stall tactic.

Survey says ...

2012-01-16T21:46:00.002-06:00

I recently saw this survey on one of the freelance designer websites I read. And yes, I work shoeless most of the time.

Kern this!

2011-12-16T15:07:00.002-06:00

by Martin Ekelund / Kidke Lab

Good design ...

2011-11-23T22:12:00.001-06:00

My new hero

2011-11-10T14:38:00.001-06:00

Message with a Bottle is a collection of post-it notes written by a freelance writer and stay at home dad. In his own words, "These are notes to remind myself what to do, and sometimes more importantly, what not to do when raising a child."

Artist Category Flowchart?

2011-11-08T18:16:00.000-06:00

$20 Off Holiday Discount!

2011-11-04T11:53:00.001-05:00

After four years of designing all kinds of graphics for print and the web I'm proud to offer our first promotion ever! That's right, get a custom designed Christmas card, club flyer or gig poster for just $40 instead of the normal $60!

I'm personally using this time of year to be thankful for all the great clients I've been able to work with over the last few years. But this promotion isn't just for returning customers, EVERYONE needs a break this year during all the holiday stress.

So just prepay for your graphics by Nov. 21st to get the $20 credit. You'll also be giving us a break from all the last minute rush orders that come in the last three weeks of December!

A body of work.

2011-11-02T17:05:00.000-05:00

Today's inspiration (focus, focus, focus):

courtesy of gapingvoid.com

You suck at photoshop.

2011-11-01T08:05:00.000-05:00

OK I know this is an old series - I think I first time I fell out of my chair laughing at this was around the time my three year old son was born. I also know it's been written up by Time and Wired magazines and is featured on My Damn Channel.

Seriously though, give me a break and check it out if you haven't heard of it. If you have then you'll smile remembering poor, angry, sarcastic, passive-agressive Donnie and his failed marriage. Absolute comedy supplemented by real photoshop techniques - or is it just nerdy comedy for graphic designers and photographers?

"We had both been in the agency business so long that after a while we'd seen every kind of person in the advertising world." One of those stereotypes, he says, was the "insane designer, basically. He has horrible social skills and horrible things going on in his life, and the only thing he has going for him is he can out-Photoshop the guy in the cube next to him." - co-creator Matt Bledsoe quoted by Time magazine.

Watch on My Damn Channel
Watch on YouTube

The Misconception of Multitasking

2011-10-31T14:35:00.000-05:00

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride, after one "Inconceivable!" too many from Vizzini.

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

Reasons NOT to multitask from Leo Babauta:

Multi-tasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task, and the switch back again.
Multi-tasking is more complicated, and thus more prone to stress and errors.
Multi-tasking can be crazy, and in this already chaotic world, we need to reign in the terror and find a little oasis of sanity and calm.

I love the contrasting sides of these two articles, "How to Multitask" by the experts at Lifehacker and "How NOT to Multitask" posted at Zen Habits. If you have too much work and not enough time I'd recommend reading both. I may not use the individual tips but Leo Babauta's article at Zen Habits especially changed the way I approach my work as a freelance artist and stay at home dad!

Size Does Matter.

2011-10-29T10:28:00.001-05:00

I've found that actually blocking out a few hours at a time on my calendar dedicated to design projects makes a big difference in my focus and creativity. Of course, just identifying your 'big rocks' is a big step for most of us (and yes, I do like talking about my big rocks anyway).

Francis Ford Coppola interview from the99percent

2011-10-27T11:18:00.006-05:00

I came across this excellent article that discusses the importance of separating art and business/work. Of course it's easy for Coppola to be a purist, he won't be using his last bit of change to buy groceries any time soon.

I very much agree with the vast majority of what he says, especially about art costing nothing to enjoy in the future. Digital cameras and digital printing make it very difficult to safeguard anything visual from being reproduced - everyone has a camera in their pocket or hand now! Filesharing makes it possible for anyone to download music and video and to distribute them to others who don't even own a computer. Artists (and the music and motion picture industries) need to adapt to the new model instead of clinging to empty box office repeats and million dollar special effects.

Here are some of my favorite thoughts from the interview, the entire original article is available at the99percent.com.

"The cinema language happened by experimentation – by people not knowing what to do. But unfortunately, after 15-20 years, it became a commercial industry. People made money in the cinema, and then they began to say to the pioneers, “Don’t experiment. We want to make money. We don’t want to take chances.” An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.You try to go to a producer today and say you want to make a film that hasn’t been made before; they will throw you out because they want the same film that works, that makes money. That tells me that although the cinema in the next 100 years is going to change a lot, it will slow down because they don’t want you to risk anymore. They don’t want you to take chances. So I feel like [I’m] part of the cinema as it was 100 years ago, when you didn't know how to make it. You have to discover how to make it.

There are three rules: 1) Write and direct original screenplays, 2) make them with the most modern technology available, and 3) self-finance them.

Do you feel like you’re more of a risk-taker now?

I was always a good adventurer. I was never afraid of risks. I always had a good philosophy about risks. The only risk is to waste your life, so that when you die, you say, “Oh, I wish I had done this.” I did everything I wanted to do, and I continue to.

What’s the most useful piece of advice you’d give a student?

The first thing you do when you take a piece of paper is always put the date on it, the month, the day, and where it is. Because every idea that you put on paper is useful to you. By putting the date on it as a habit, when you look for what you wrote down in your notes, you will be desperate to know that it happened in April in 1972 and it was in Paris and already it begins to be useful. One of the most important tools that a filmmaker has are his/her notes.

Is it important to veer away from the masters to develop one’s own style?

I once found a little excerpt from Balzac. He speaks about a young writer who stole some of his prose. The thing that almost made me weep, he said, “I was so happy when this young person took from me.” Because that’s what we want. We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice.

And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. And Balzac said that in his book: It makes me so happy because it makes me immortal because I know that 200 years from now there will be people doing things that somehow I am part of. So the answer to your question is: Don’t worry about whether it’s appropriate to borrow or to take or do something like someone you admire because that’s only the first step and you have to take the first step.

Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money?

How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?

We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.

Workflow Wednesdays

2011-10-26T14:48:00.002-05:00

Freelancing is tough. Time management, workflow, productivity and discipline used to be boring catchphrases until I started working for myself. Now they are my mantra and my weekly required reading. Yup. I'm officially getting old and ~~boring~~ distinguished.

Tuesdays are one of my weekly artwork deadlines and Wednesdays my three year old goes over to a friend's house so I'm almost always organizing a week's worth of graphics every Wednesday morning. Here's how I do it (after a couple years of testing and adjustments). Oh, by the way, you can find my desktop wallpaper here - I've been using it for three months (which is a crazy long time for me).

I find that it's important for me to have very specific systems for the things I have to do everyday, especially when it comes to creative work. Sure, I can't control, schedule or compartmentalize creativity. But I can schedule blocks of time to work with the phone, im and email off. I can set my keys and mobile phone down in the same place everytime I walk in the door. And I can begin the same process every time a new graphic design job comes in!

The key for me has been limiting the number of places new work requests come from. The Get Things Done (GTD) system calls these inboxes 'buckets.' I take new job specs from two places: my email and shared event calendars. I synched gmail's priority inbox and google calendar (online) and Apple's Mail and iCal applications (at home) for this.

Then I sort out work from other emails - google's built in important/not important tag is brilliant for this, so are filters like from:(client name) and contains:(graphic/ad/poster/flyer). The work emails get copied to my to do list which I used to put on paper but has been switched to Things.

Once I have a list of work scheduled with due dates all I have to do is pull up the first item and copy the details into a new Photoshop or Illustrator document and get to work!

Once I get to this step I feel like I'm almost halfway there. As they say in painting, the first mark is the hardest - that blank canvas makes it difficult to begin so throw some text on it!

As soon as I finish a graphic I send a low res proof to the client and add the job to my invoicing application - I've been using Billings for almost a year now and love it. My father uses Quickbooks for his business (it tracks his inventory too) and I know of several other applications that do a great job. The important thing for me is to do a regular sweep (weekly works best for me) to be sure that EVERYTHING that has been sent out to a client has also been logged and billed out as a completed job.

Of course everyone uses a different system but this one has kept me from looking like an unorganized, neglectful hobbyist. Plus, I always know where my car keys are (and what jobs are due next)!

STEP BY STEP: "Show Ya Tattoos" flyer design

2011-10-18T10:58:00.002-05:00

This isn't a step by step tutorial, just a few screenshots and the proofs sent to the client along with the finished image. Oh, and if you happen to be anywhere near Milwaukee don't miss the party!

This flyer is for a party sponsored by a local tattoo parlour, so we needed a model that was part Suicide Girl and part Video Vixen. The nightclub and sponsors might have a problem with her "Fuck You" tattoo though, so that had to be removed. The DJ mentioned that his crew's name would be a great replacement.

I began by airbrushing some cover up onto a new layer using a medium sized, soft brush set at around 80% opacity and switched over to 30% opacity to do final blending. This is a fairly small area on the flyer so I moved on as soon as possible (this tattoo cover up was already pushing the project a little above budget).

I switched to the text tool, selected a tattoo script font and began rotating and using text transformations to fit the "Record Breakers" text into the space between the birds. As a final touch I exported the text layer, shrunk it to 1/2 resolution, stretched it back to full size and imported it to a new layer in my working document. This gave a quick approximation of the fuzzy lack of focus and jpeg artifacts so that the new tattoo matched better and wasn't too crisp.

So here we are at the first layout! The client gave me all the text in order from top to bottom as it would appear on the final flyer (we've been working together for a while) so all I had to do was copy and paste the wording and separate each section into it's own layer. From there it was a matter of adding text effects, tweaking the fonts and text sizes, adding a background image and cleaning up the model's background selection.

Again, this is just a quick flyer for a local party so the resolution and blending aren't as good as they could be. The posters will look great from a few feet away though, and the postcard sized flyers and facebook invites will stand out from all the competition that weekend!

Retouching Practice

2011-10-04T22:05:00.001-05:00

Recently a photographer sent us a couple samples of his work so that we could do some basic retouching. Here are the before and after images followed by an overview of the steps I took.

The first image was shot with tungsten light (yellow cast), no fill (harsh shadows), and was slightly out of focus. There wasn't any major skin work apart from small wrinkles in the face and minor blemishes scattered throughout. The first step was cropping the image and color correcting it. I wanted to leave her entire right hand in the frame and fill flooring around her fingers, but the composition wasn't balanced with so much of her legs cut off on the opposite side.

The very next thing I noticed was . . . you guessed it - one nipple is showing.

This might have been the intention of the photographer and I certainly don't have anything against the naked body, but let's assume that this job is for a men's magazine cover or yearbook photo or something. To make it look less like a nipple slip and more like a well orchestrated photoshoot I rubber stamped a couple locks of hair from just above and to the right.

After that I used the heal tool to fix the few major flaws and marks I could find: a mole on her left side, wrinkles on her brow, smile lines & other small marks on her torso & legs. A quick airbrush smoothed out the rest of her skin while leaving some of the original texture. I also used the airbrush to soften the shadow on her belly cast by her left knee and minimized her belly button at the same time.Before I finished I sharpened the entire picture slightly and then again on her face alone. I finished by darkening the shadow on the wood on the left side to simplify the image and shift the focus back to the model.

The second photo required a little more airbrush work and had some distracting elements in the background. My first step was to straighten the photo by using the panels in the door as guides. Then I cropped the extra space from the top and moved in to the background.The electric cord, light stand and bounce card were all removed using some quick work with the rubber stamp tool. Then I moved to the door and roughed out the handle with the rubber stamp before following with a transparent black paintbrush for shadows. This is just the background so we can use broad strokes and move a little quicker, less detail will keep the viewer's eye in the foreground anyway!

As soon as I was happy with the background I started covering blemishes on the model's skin with the healing tool and an occasional rubber stamp. The glaring problem at this point was the little bit of extra fat near the model's bra. By copying the skin below the problem area into a new layer and using Photoshop's liquify filter on it I was able to shape a curved piece of skin that would cover most of the area below the bra. A little airbrushing blended the new area with the original skin seamlessly. I followed this up by using the liquify filter again on the space above the bra near the model's underarm and the area near her left ankle.

All that was left at this point was to thicken her hair up a bit (using the rubber stamp tool), darken and add a little makeup to her eyes, cheeks and lips, and then finish off with some all over airbrushing to blend her skin better and soften the lighting.

STEP BY STEP: Sarah's Birthday Invitation

2011-09-25T09:14:00.003-05:00

Sarah likes naive children's & fashion illustration so we used that style for her "Pink, Black & Gold" birthday party invitations. These were used mostly online but we also chopped it in half so that the top can print on the front of a flyer and the details would be on the flip side.