It’s your body. Pamper it.

The daily burdens of life weigh heavily on your body. Dryness. Cracking. Acne. Left uncared for your skin will rebel causing months of aging to turn into years. Yet life will not slow down.

It keeps hounding you from the moment you wake until your head hits the pillow in exhaustion. Demands at work and home sap the very life from your body, causing you to ask, When will it stop?

Today. Stop the clock. Give your skin the love it deserves. With Do Not Disturb body products you can finally restore your body, recharge your spirit and revitalize your life. Our promise to you  is this: We can help you become you again.

So lock the door

Get on something comfortable

Surrender to you

A Moroccan hillside whitewashed by homes literally built one on top of another. © 2002 Jeromy Johnson

Children playing in a courtyard in Estella, Spain. The girl is pealing off old posters from a wall while the boys wrestle in the background. © 2002 Jeromy Johnson

Restaurant in Tetuan, Morocco. © 2002 Jeromy Johnson

Spain, © 2002 Jeromy Johnson

So it just hit me while laying in bed tonight. Maybe graphic design is less about problem solving than it is about story telling. That maybe the question becomes less about the problem and more about the story. Instead of asking, What is the problem? Maybe we should be asking, What is the story? I hear and read a lot about providing design solutions for problems and not much about providing a design platform for the story.

An engaging design needs a strong story not a strong solution. That ultimately it is a well designed idea and story that causes people to have that ahh-hah moment and look deeper into the design. Without it, even good design is just fluff. I think that it is this very idea of designing around a story that helps make good design, great. And with that story, everything needs to support it. If it doesn’t, then it is at best un-needed, at worst, horribly distracting. Remove anything that does not serve the idea or story, regardless how “cool” it might be.

I feel this is an important aspect that I’d like to learn to ingrain into my design. What it the story? Is it engaging? Then design around the story. I think this might be a life-long journey exploring this idea.

Viewing her work, it is sometimes hard to see the difference from her floral and body shots. They share similar texture, form, and lighting. I want to highlight this as museums tend to be about form, shape, lines and comparing/contrasting works of art. I think the target audience will appreciate this unique look and juxtaposition of similar, yet different images side-by-side.

The typefaces I chose were Bickham Script, Mrs Eaves OT and Mr Eaves San. I feel these three help provide the softness and humanity that is evident in Cunningham’s work. I felt they were a perfect compliment to the photographer who was both masterful and a bit quirky.

You can view the full size Imogen Cunningham: Masters of the Camera PDF (recommended).  Or take a gander at the below images.

Then, using the exact same materials and content (no more, no less) we were to hand-design a new sign using form, balance, hierarchy, space and other graphic design skills. But we could not introduce anything new to the sign…only what existed. The main goal was to design it well and emphasize the intended message. So I got my 6×12 piece of cardboard and a thin black pen and set off to redesign this bland, but humorous sign.

My first thought was this sign’s primary message was about not disturbing Christie. I mean, she was serious about this. Even if a 3-alarm fire breaks out, leave me be; I am not to be disturbed. I set out with various sketches and ideas, laying out grids, experimenting with type. I new I had to get this right in the preliminary rounds because when inking cardboard, there is no command-z. Once a design, grid, typeface, and hierarchy was decided the tedious task of hand designing a sign commenced. After many hours with ruler, pencil and pen in hand, here is the final redesign and final replacement:

Remaking classics. A common task, but this time with a twist. The project was to take an existing poster and redesign it using the styles of three other unique designers. In other words, if the identical design task was given to three other prominent designers, how would they communicate and design the message?

The poster content I had to use was the above by Josef Müller-Brockmann from a series of posters he made entitled, Muica Viva. Brockmann’s ‘Musica viva’ poster series for the Zurich Tonhalle drew on the language of Constructivism to create a visual correlative to the structural harmonies of the music.

So here are my Musica Viva poster redesigns. The three designer’s styles I chose were Alexander Rodchenko, Stefan Sagmeister and Charles S. Anderson. Click to enlarge.

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