I am happy to announce that there are now three new designs available in the growing family of Signalnoise t-shirts. Now for purchase in the Signalnoise Store are the Mask of Vulcan, the Signalnoise Chevrons and my black metal mascot shows up again in Lego form on the Metalego shirt. All orders are hand-packed by me on my coffee table, and includes a little swag bag full of Signalnoise buttons and stickers. Great for lockers and binders!

On top of that, I restocked a few of the previously sold out posters.

Back to School sale!

Along with the release of my new shirts, I will be having a Back to School sale to make it a bit more affordable for folks trying to get new posters for their dorm room or shirts for their backs. For the next week you can enjoy 15% off all orders, just use the code BACKTOSCHOOL when placing your order at the Signalnoise Store.

Welcome back to school, everyone!

• I'm pretty sure this is how Nick Campbell's broadcast went down.

Yesterday’s Five Hours of Power live event far surpassed all of my expectations with some great discussions and huge turnouts to see these guys in action. Justin Maller kicked things off at 2pm EST with Transmission II where he offered some great insight into his work, process, and the business side of things. Great broadcast with some great advice.

We then bounced over to Nick Campbell with his GSG Live Cast where he had a focus on design and design-related topics. Nick’s broadcasts are always great, well-spoken guy with very practical knowledge and advice in various fields which surely helps others in the creative community. Unfortunately we don’t have a recorded version of his broadcast, but the above image is a pretty accurate depiction of how Nick’s discussion went down. Helicopters and all. :)

Following Nick, it was my turn to kick off Signalnoise Broadcast 18. I didn’t have any specific topic so we had our typical Q and A period where I discussed t-shirts, my workflow, early design jobs and my favorite things about design in general.

The fourth hour brought us Fabio Sasso and his first live Abduzeedo Broadcast. It was wonderful to get so much insight into how Fabio started and runs his blog, the events leading to its conception, and the mechanics of how he keeps it fresh. He’s an ambitious guy and his broadcast is really inspiring, especially for those looking to start their own blog or design-related website.

And finally, at 9pm EST the crew at DesignChat finished off the 5 Hours of Power with a wonderful interview with Erin Loechner, freelance design blogger and editor of Design for Mankind. Erin offered up some wonderful advice about making it in the industry, how she did it, and how to use your confidence to achieve your goals. The talk isn’t online quite yet, but you can see all of the DesignChat discussions on iTunes.

In conclusion, I was floored by the amount of online support the creative community gave to this event. I’m a big fan of everyone who took part in the 5 Hours of Power and it was wonderful to catch so much inspiration and advice straight from these guys. I think we clocked an average of 400 viewers for each broadcast, peaking at about 550 at one point. It really felt like we had out own little television network made for designers like us, and that’s really cool. Thanks so much to the 4 guys who took part and made this thing happen and thanks to all of you who tuned in.

Will there be another event like this? Well, we all agreed it would be a lot of fun to do this again. Don’t change that channel, kids.

Today will be quite a special day when it comes to live broadcasts. After seeing Nick Campbell deliver his GSG Live Cast last year I thought it was such a wonderful idea for viewers and readers I decided to start my own Signalnoise Broadcast, which is now weekly. The live discussion format offers a wonderful, real connection to those who are interested in art and design and can provide some nice advice for those getting into the industry.

And now for the 5 Hours of Power! Not only are Nick and I going to be holding our own weekly broadcasts, but our good pals Justin Maller, Fabio Sasso and the Design Chat crew will all be broadcasting as well. We managed to combine all of these discussions into a schedule to provide a good 5 hours of industry talk. Here is the schedule:

• 2pm EST: Justin Maller – Transmission – Tune in
• 3pm EST: Nick Campbell – GSG Live Cast – Tune in
• 4pm EST: James White – Signalnoise Broadcast – Tune in
• 5pm EST: Fabio Sasso – Abduzeedo Broadcast - Tune in
• 9pm EST: Design Chat with Ryan McGovern – Tune in

I’m a big fan of these other three guys, so I’m super excited to kick back and watch them sequentially live. The best way to follow the happenings would probably be via Twitter, which I linked to each individual in the schedule above. And since this is such short notice, if you could offer a tweet or a blog post to get the word out that would be very much appreciated. Hope to see you there!

I’ve been a fan of Texan-based metal band The Sword for the better part of 5 years now, and I was surprised recently by the release of their new album, Warp Riders.

I picked up the album yesterday and, not only do the new tracks totally live up to The Sword’s talent but check out the album art and collateral. I really enjoyed the previous logo and artwork the guys put together for previous albums, but I was floored by this old school sci-fi direction. I thought the art looked strangely familiar, and as it turns out Dan McPharlin did all of the painting and design. You might remember his work from this post, or even this one.

I really enjoy seeing my favorite artists work with my favorite bands. You metal-heads might want to check this album out, pretty awesome.

• The Rockies from 30,000 feet up.

I met Fabio Sasso from Abduzeedo! Ain't nothing cooler then this guy right here.

Scott Hanson, ISO50 onstage dissecting one of his posters in Photoshop.

• Tycho performing at one of the FITC after parties.

• Part of Erik Natzke's work for Nokia

• 'Cymatic Ferrofluid, with Gray Scott Reaction Diffusion' by Robert Hodgin

• Kyle Cooper telling stories and showing us select title sequences from his library of over 150.

• Shot of Brendan Dawes' DoodleBuzz application

• Yugo Nakamura wowing the crowd with his portfolio work and upcoming releases.

• San Francisco fog, as captured from the window of a bus.

I returned from my big trip to FITC San Francisco 2010 this weekend, and after a short break from the blog and all things scheduled I’m ready to get back to work. San Francisco was wonderful, and it was great to meet some new creative folks and re-unite with some pals. After a short stint of lost luggage upon my arrival, the whole trip went real smooth. Please excuse the low quality of some of the presentation shots above, as I only had my handy iPhone available to snap pictures of people onstage. I’ll have to see if I can track down some more professional looking photos. However, here is a little wrap-up of the 3-day event as I wandered from talk, to party, to talk.

One of the highlights was certainly meeting my pal Fabio Sasso, creator of the mighty Abduzeedo. I’ve been in touch with Fabio for about 2 and a half years as we teamed up on a few giveaways and other fun blog collaborations, so it was awesome to finally hang out with the dude and shake his hand. He’s just as cool as you would think and we had a great time having a few drinks and talkin’ blogs.

I also got to see Scott Hansen, ISO50 speak for the second time. He made some adjustments to his presentation this time around, which included a breakdown and explanation of his art show poster in Photoshop. He opened up the source file and showed us how we went about creating the composition, effects and color treatments. Scott is great at explaining himself and the reasons he makes design choices along the way, so it was wonderful to see his layered work in action. To top it off, he performed as Tycho at one of the FITC after partys where I got to hang out backstage with Scott and Dusty Brown (whom I only knew through Scott’s posters). It was a great time.

Following their talks I had the pleasure of meeting a few of my other art & design heroes such as Erik Natzke and Robert Hodgin. Erik’s presentation was beautiful, where he took us through his progression as a code-driven artist chronologically, showing us how one idea led to another and how his he ended up being hired by big clients for the work he sees as “play”. Very inspiring and nice guy. Robert, or Flight404, has been one of my favorite visual artists for the past 10 years so it was awesome to finally shake his hand. His talk was excellent and he covered topics from video feedback, magnetic sculptures to building a universe. His work is always intricate, scientific and inspiring.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Brendan Dawes following his presentation as well. Brendan is always entertaining to watch and manages to get some really good advice into his delivery as well. He talked briefly about the products his company produces, and described it as “We wanted to be more in control of our own destinies, rather then at the whim of a budget.” A good point there. He showed us a few of the projects he and his company worked on over the past while, and previewed his new iPhone app, the Accidental News Explorer.

In conclusion, FITC always delivers on quality speakers and great networking opportunities to meet those you look up to and make new friends. This is the third even I have attended and have had a wonderful time at them all. If you are an artist, designer or developer and have the means to get to an FITC event, you won’t regret the trip. A big thanks to Shawn Pucknell and the FITC gang for making this latest event a fantastic time!

Hello everyone! I’m currently in San Francisco relaxing in the hotel after attending FITC for the past 3 days, had a wonderful time seeing inspiring presentations and meeting fellow creative folks. Once I’m back home and properly rested I will put together a proper post about all the fun.

But for now, here’s a real treat. I didn’t have a chance to do my weekly Signalnoise Broadcast because of the trip but my pal Justin Maller had his first official Transmission this afternoon, which is something you should be excited about. Justin is a wicked talented dude and I’ve been a fan of his work for quite some time, so it’s awesome to get some insight straight from him regarding his work, career, processes, etc. For those of you who don’t know his work, check out his website, Tumblr, online print shop and drop by to say hello on Twitter. His portfolio is mighty.

It’s great to see so many people jumping on services like UStream to have a much closer connection to those interested in their work, and to help out by offering advice to fledgling artists and designers. Community makes us all stronger, man.

I am off to FITC San Francisco today to see some great speakers and meet some wonderful creative folks along the way. As I mentioned in a previous post, I will have some Signalnoise t-shirts and goodies available during the event, be sure to follow my Twitter to see when I will be getting these into peoples’ hands.

Things might be a little slow on the blog this week, depending on how much time I have during the many fun events to keep things updating. If time is short, I will be sure to update everyone upon my return home.

So, if you will be attending FITC San Francisco, I look forward to seeing you there!

Last night while I was goofing around Facebook I stumbled across a link my buddy Ben sent to my buddy Dave. I don’t normally click on the conversations of others, but this link in particular dealt with one of my favorite comic illustrators, Frank Quitely (We3, All Star Superman). I was pleasantly surprised to find a 15-minute video (see above) where Quitely explains some of his workflow and processes while showing some behind-the-scenes progress shots on some of his illustrations. All of this was done using his giant Wacom Cintiq and Photoshop.

“Quitely demonstrates how he uses his Cintiq to improve his workflow with traditional media and takes us through some of the preliminary steps in creating a cover for the relaunch of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for DC Comics (see the finished version above).”

Man, sure would like to have one of those Cintiq’s. I’m a big dork when it comes to “making of” features so I adequately lost it seeing Quitely fire around a digital format with a tablet. This isn’t just for the comic fans out there, I highly recommend watching the full video to see Frank’s process at work. He shows some super rough sketches and thumbnails right up to the finished drawing and colors. He even sounds like a swell guy.

See the original post here.