Background: The Norman Brothers are “an award winning turnkey production and post production company. Developing, writing, producing, directing, and editing for all facets of distribution, we collaborate with brands and agencies to create richly imagined, highly engaging commercial, documentary, and web media that is as entertaining as it is diverse.”

We’re currently working on their website, but you can see their latest reel here: http://thenormanbrothers.com/ Everything they do is brilliant, so check it out.

We always start on paper. Sometimes people want to jump straight to the computer, but it’s easy to miss out on the little nuances of actually picking up a pen and drawing first. When I start sketching I make sure to use different types of pens. I have brush pens, calligraphy-styled pens, fat pens, markers, actual brushes, all types of point sizes, etc. You’re going to get a different effect with each one and sometimes you may not have imagined a style until you actually write with a new pen.

Sketching hand-drawn scripts. When I sketch, I use large 18″ x 24″ sketch pads and I really go to town on them. It’s like practicing your personal signature. You’ve most likely spent some time when you were younger just signing your name over and over. Write the words at different speeds, you’ll connect words in new ways. Write large and small letters, don’t consistently write at the same size. Don’t steal other peoples styles, but make sure you have a good visual-vocabulary of different writing styles, ligatures and letter-shape variations.

Initial sketches: (this is like 1 of 8 giant sheets of paper)

This is the final logo. There are two formats depending on use and a small circular mark. What do you guys think?

For me it’s all about the adventure, not just the final image. The entire experience is fun. Finding new and unusual locations—off the beaten path. Connecting with creative and beautiful models. Styling and experimenting with light and shadow. Stumbling onto cool processes, methods or effects in post-production. It’s nice because it’s just something I do for myself, there’s no pressure and I can do exactly what I want. Experimenting outside of what I do on a daily basis is really important for my brain. Anytime you do the same thing over and over, you’re bound to get stale (no matter how much you love your job, and I really love my job), but when I mix in outside inspiration, or try new things, it really amps up my design work.

I stumbled onto this duotone process below, loved it and I’m now using it in a client project. Real world application!

Here’s the Christmas card we sent out. And be sure to watch our Christmas Gif(t) below!

Click the image if it isn’t doing anything awesome.

Currently working on the branding, website and all kinds of fun marketing materials for That Conference. Just wanted to share a little bit! Much more to come.

The first phase of the website is moving along quite nicely. You can check it out here: thatconference.com

That Conference will be in August of 2012 at the Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells, WI and will be a developer’s dream summer camp. It’s going to be pretty epic, so if you plan to attend one conference next year, make it one where you can learn about the geekiest stuff from top developers and then ride a giant water slide immediately after. Be sure to sign up on the site to stay up to date. Or follow them on twitter: @thatconference

It’s finally cold in Texas and my garden is now officially dead. I had about 50 tomatoes start growing just as it was starting to get cold. As you can see (above) none of them had a chance to ripen.

The type below was made from my basil plants. All the leaves had fallen and left these wonderful little branches. Hope everyone is having a delightful December!

I had a chance to spend some time in Cozumel, celebrating my grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Here are some photos I took while exploring the streets outside the main touristy area. The town of San Miguel in Cozumel is rich with hand painted typography, beautiful painted walls, vibrant colors, patterns and tons of inspiration. My eyeballs were happy. Check out the pics.

Lesson learned. If you’re going to create a templated letter, use a greeting like, “Dear Mighty Warrior”. If you forget to add the real person’s name, it still makes them feel awesome.

Oh and we even presented at the conference! We did a live critique of this website: developersmackdown.com. Clark Sell, the owner of the site, was part of the panel (along with Brandon Satrom, who moderated) and Martin and I just went to town on all the things we’d change to make the site more effective. We even had a fancy PowerPoint! I think about 100 people showed up for our session. I was really nervous and one of Martin’s jokes failed big time. Everything else went pretty smoothly though.

Below is a photo of one half of the room at our session. Just before we started I asked if I could photograph everyone doing the html5 gang sign. Yes. There is an html5 gang sign.

Below is a shot of one of the schedule posters.

Below is Clark Sell, the Developer Smackdown dude. Check out the shirt and water bottle he’s rocking.

Below is Brandon Satrom, mastermind behind the html5tx conference. See the sticker on the laptop?

Hey Look! It’s Martin.