Hello everyone, Larry (Owner of Adirondack Tire) has given me special permission to share the concept for our new logo. This is just a sneak preview, so stay tuned for more updates!
Categories
Sneak Preview: Company Logo
Category: Design
I recently took the e-commerce section of my site for purchasing the American Game decks down since I redesigned the deck to no longer have the city names of NFL teams. The cards arrived on Thursday, and I got positive reactions from my friends and co-workers at Adirondack. The image below is a scan of the cards with major changes from my original designs. I am currently deciding what kind of booklet to put with the cards and finalizing the packaging. A graphic designer’s work is never done, and once everything is nicely designed and organized – it is possible to start planning the next branding update. I have also added a copyright tag with my name on the Capricorn card since that is my zodiac sign.
I have always liked the example of the Pepsi logo, even though I do not like Pepsi or Coke. Pepsi uses a similar red/blue circle differently, as shown in the image below for each logo iteration. It is essential to make an existing logo recognizable so an old, loyal customer will still have a positive association. Thanks for everyone’s patience while I finalize the particulars of the new cards. If you want to buy a special edition deck from me, email me at mattszal@gmail.com. I will post another update when they are for sale on mattszal.com.
Categories
Biden
In honor of my presidential portrait series, I have decided to make the secret page of designs I created for President Biden – public!
I will not say if I liked him or Trump better, you will have to wait and see how I paint them at the end of the series. Also, check out my political designs on my portfolio here. I will post some process shots of my Washington portrait soon.
The above image is a highlight reel of the 13 cards encompassing the entire hearts suit. I have decided to go back to the original design for the suit symbols (the previous version had outlines for each symbol instead of solid-filled). I made my first deck more than five years ago, using a plain bicycle deck and spending a lot of time drawing and painting directly on each card. After the ink and watercolor dried, I laminated the cards so the colors/images would not deteriorate with excess shuffling.
It is refreshing to work on a large design project with such a fascinating concept for the entire deck. Yet, each card is designed one at a time and requires a lot of dancing with compositions and colors. I have been looking at different printing companies, yet since the deck has a spiritual/metaphysical component, it is essential to use the best materials. The use of such old emblems from 5 centuries ago was to give the deck a timeless and mystical quality that seems to contain some ancient, forgotten truth or wisdom. The images felt very familiar when I first looked at the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck. After reading ‘The Pictorial Key to the Tarot‘ by Waite, I started to appreciate how much deeper each card could be dissected and the deck’s use of symbols/visual metaphors. I am considering writing a booklet to include with each deck that explains which card represents which thing beyond the surface level place or zodiac sign.
Even if the decks take a while to sell, they have a long shelf life. The residual income will help support my creative projects and eventually fund my philanthropic aspirations. After the deck is sent to the printers, I plan to start a series of oil portraits of all the Presidents of the United States, from Trump to Washington.
L’Aurora (The Aurora) is a large Baroque ceiling fresco painted in 1614 by Guido Reni for the Casino, or garden house adjacent to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, in Rome. I created this gif to illustrate better the geometric structure underlining Reni’s beautiful sweeping forms of gods, goddesses and angels in the glorious gold-filled dawn.
The Baroque was known for dynamic movement and triangle compositions that seemed larger than life yet replaced the idealism of the renaissance with something more akin to the drama of an opera (which also became hugely popular around the same time in the 17th century). Below is another of my favorite Reni paintings, Susanna and the Elders (1620-25). The Susanna painting also uses a fantastic composition with powerful axial movements galore.
When I was in art school at Pratt, we had several assignments requiring us to select an Old Master painting to break down axially. Any significant curve, line, or other shapes that define the big moves of colors or a figure in the image can be broken down this way. Our professor had us take tracing paper and draw out the significant axial movements with different colored pens or markers directly over a printout of the original painting. These exercises helped me to understand the deeper essence of composition and our class looked at Baroque paintings in particular for their use of balancing diagonals with triangles for a dynamic yet balanced and compositionally strong image. I still make these from masterworks for inspiration and historical allusions in my artwork.
I found some old images of some paintings I was commissioned to do for a band from Dallas area named, “The Pajammas” way back in 2011. The album is actually still for sale on bandcamp. Check out the inside cover and back after the cover below.
This is a short video and grahpic I made, look for this launching on 0ct.31st! I used a mix of Mario and 8-bit influences to get the old school feel.
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