Since summer is in full swing, and two of the major snowboard summer camps are on Mt. Hood, right outside Portland (there is snow there year round), we wanted to do a special Yobeat shirt for the summer that had a kitchy tourist sort of feel… A souvenir of sorts for some of the campers and staff up there to take home. We ended up with a nice clean vector illustration of Mt. Hood’s silhouette, with a two-color print.

Rather than just design them and hand off a disk to someone else, I printed a ton of them myself right here on our press. One of the things I like about design and photography is the hands on part… the process of making shit. That hands on process is easy to lose when you pass off a computer file to a printer. I try to get as much hand done process in as I can, when I can, which is part of the reason I like screen printing. Now that we have a set-up in house, I get to do more experimenting, and keep myself sane and off the computer at times.

These are sort of a “locals only edition.” We’re not selling them in our online store. We gave away one free to each of the snowboard campers at the first week of camp at Windell’s (it was “YoBeat Week” at camp) and they’ll be for sale exclusively through Exit Real World’s Government Camp location throughout the summer. I just shipped up a batch yesterday for those guys so keep your eyes peeled in their shop if you want to get your hands on one. After the jump I’ve posted a few detail shots, and some images I poached from the Yobeat Facebook Page of kids wearing them around snowboard camp last week. Turned out to be a great promo, and kids like free stuff.

I’ve been doing design work for Woodward Camp since 2006-ish. I do the catalogs every year, as well as a lot of the advertising, collateral, shirts, etc. They’re growing constantly, even expanding internationally, and there’s always something new going on, so it’s fun stuff. We work with a number of different brands in our office, both big and small, but Woodward is one of the most consistent. This year’s print and web look started with a sheet of steel in my garage, a few stencils, and some muriatic acid. The resulting rusty steel textures got used as subtle elements in the catalogs this year, but they take on more of a roll in the ads. Essentially, I quick-rusted the area around the stencil with the acid and water, then shot photos of the result to use in the designs. The textures got worked in with some provided action photography (I shot the BMX ad of Morgan Wade) and we were off and running. We also worked QR codes into the print campaign this year, to direct readers to the various Woodward web portals by simply scanning them with their smart phone. See the ads after the jump.

Woodward did a larger online marketing push this year than in previous years. We used the tagline “Come Ride With Us” and “Come Skate With Us” throughout the online campaign. Here’s a small sampling of those ads, which are currently running in a number of sizes and iterations.

At some point last year I started helping design more apparel for the snowboard site YoBeat, trying to take things beyond its basic logo t’s. At some point in the process we got the bug to take things one step further, and make more of an apparel line, sell it on the site, and hopefully get it into some shops. In recent years, part of brand marketing has become creating content around a brand, hopefully getting that content played as editorial content. It’s advertorial. Or advertising disguised as editorial. We went the opposite direction, and started creating a brand out of an existing editorial voice and content stream. There was a built in audience, so why not. So far it’s worked out well. A number of shops around the country have already signed on to carry the goods, and we’ve been selling the stuff through Yobeat’s online store. The products market the site, the site markets the products. One can go without the other, and the gear can stand on its own. We set up an in-house screen printing shop so we could streamline producing samples, and also keep things within the realm of the DIY approach YoBeat has taken throughout the years. So far so good.

Above are a couple of the new shirts in the line, to which we’ve added sewn on woven tags to the lower left front. The new “Snowboarding is Super Fun” shirt is a play on the ironic hipster type shirts you see at streetwear shops. The only YoBeat branding being the small woven tag. Hipsters rejoice. It’s even got swashes on the type. After the jump you’ll find some more details, larger views, and some new embroidered patches we’ve created as well. This stuff is a nice break from doing commercial work for clients. On that stuff there’s always compromise. With this stuff we get to do what we like, and even produce most of it in-house, keeping it fun and hands-on. The new shirts should be on the online store later this week, and you can also find some other designs over there are up in the Yobeat store now. This is just the beginning of the new stuff for 2011.

To find YoBeat apparel at a shop near you, click here or click here to order online.

BMX riders are no stranger to injury. Just watch the documentary “Birth of Big Air” on Mat Hoffman to see the tests rider’s bodies are put to on a daily basis. In 2007, Stephen Murray became the first high-profile Professional to be paralyzed during competition. When Stephen crashed a double backflip at a Dew Tour in Baltimore, MD, his life changed forever.

Stephen wasn’t the first to sustain this sort of injury, many years back an influential New Jersey rider named Jeff Crawn crashed during a magazine shoot in Chicago, resulting in the loss of movement in his legs. At the time, BMX was in its lean years, and hadn’t yet gained the public attention of televised events like the Extreme Games. In comparison to Stephen’s injury, the incident remained under the radar.

Despite the television coverage and corporate sponsorships behind BMX in the last few years, until recently there was no sort of support system in place for this type of long term injury. As a result, the Athlete Recovery Fund was set up to provide help to some of these injured riders and families. USA Today posted a story online today about Stephen and the Athlete recovery fund, which you should check out here. I donated some photos of Stephen to ARF, one of which is featured in the story. It was shot a few months prior to his injury at his old house in California. Check out the feature here, and more photos of Stephen after the jump.

I was at my studio earlier changing light bulbs and cleaning up the place, when a visitor with a British accent popped by  to do a somewhat irresistable trade for a Yobeat Sweatshirt. Dave Allen is the Director of Insights and Digital Media over at North, a creative agency here in Portland. Like many people in the creative field, Dave has an interesting background: amongst other things, he was the founding bassist in the highly influential British post-punk band Gang of Four. He was also a founding member of Shriekback, and currently runs the music blog Pampelmoose. Dave hooked up some awesome limited-edition Gang of Four releases. Much appreciated. And for the hip-hop fans, Dave’s son Dylan is following in the musical footsteps, and just posted up this track you should check out.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how the iPad is going to save the publishing industry. It’s an amazing device, and surfing the web on it is pretty incredible. Some of the new magazine apps, like Wired, are neat, but they haven’t quite tapped the potential of where these devices can go with content. They’re still print migrating one media to another.

I’ve been on the hunt for a case that fit my needs. Then it occurred to me. I could reuse some of the old media from my desk, and solve my new media case dilema in the process. So Green.

ReadyMade Magazine is a fitting candidate for a DIY undertaking of this magnitude, as it’s the very sort of thing they write about on their website, and in the magazine (and I assume soon on the iPad in the form of an App). It’s also sized very nicely in relation to the device: A bit of extra all the way around. It’s perfect bound, so no unsightly staple scratches down the road, either.

I surveyed the situation and gathered my supplies. Who would have thunk it? In a design office it would be hard to find an elastic? This slowed down my fabrication process, but over the weekend I was able to salvage a hefty blue band from some produce. Again, reusing. So Green. I sketched a few things on paper (recycled) , and made the decision to forgo any sort of detailed AutoCAD drawing before starting the process. I wore safety glasses.

The most important factors in my case design are finding a magazine that’s not too big (and not too small) and a rubber band that will hold up to the task (hint: celery). For god sakes, no saddle stitched magazines, please. Staples and modern technology do not mix. With those objects in tow, you’re half-way home.

After a few minutes of careful consideration, and staring, I started the process by opening up the magazine. I suggest roughly half-way open, allowing for optimum impact resistance on both sides of the device. I like to choose an editorial spread, so there’s no chance I’ll accidentally click on one of the ads. Breathe. Next step.

Here’s where it gets risky. Slide your iPad into the magazine, being EXTREMELY careful to avoid paper cuts. Once you’ve got it positioned adequately, close the pages. Be sure to note which page you left your iPad on. It will help you find it later.

Now comes the important part. Restraint. We need to insure this thing doesn’t fly back open. You’ll need two hands for this, and safety glasses, should the band rupture.  The [former] celery elastic gets stretched around the pages (being careful not to create dog-ears… you’ll confuse future readers). Position the band equidistant from the top and bottom. Breathe again.

That’s it. You’re done. Remember that you’ve just helped save landfills from the nearly 2 billion magazines that end up in them each year. And what’s more, you’ve got a bunch of celery to eat for dinner while catching up on the news, or reading a novel on your iPad.

The iPad does have more to offer than become the saving grace the book and magazine publishing industries are hoping for. My initial impression, and what held me back from picking one up at first, was that it is just a bigger version of my iPhone. A lot of what I use a computer for can’t be done on the iPad (it runs on a slimmed-down OS like the iPhone). No Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Word, Excel, etc. But there are a lot of handy apps for achieving utilitarian tasks. Taking notes, creating contacts, managing time, checking the weather, blogging, social networking etc., etc. Again, you can do those on your iPhone. If I didn’t have a computer, it would fill in some gaps, however to get most of the functionality from the iPad it must be synced to a computer. The internet usability alone is a much different experience on the iPad than the iPhone. You can quickly go blind and frustrated on your phone trying to read the web, but the iPad is much more readable due to it’s heftier size. The functionality is the same as the iPhone in the browsing regard, it’s just more accordingly sized. The publication apps (including Wired) are neat, but I don’t think they’ve quite yet lived up to their interactive experience potential. It remains to be seen if people will pay for them beyond the first issue release novelty (as of this morning Wired had sold more than 24,00 copies of its first iPad issue).

From a photographer and media person standpoint, one of the main selling points for me was the idea of being able to use it in place of a traditional printed portfolio. A nice portfolio book in itself can run well over a hundred dollars, then add in the custom prints, and the constant wear from page flipping/use, and suddenly $500 doesn’t seem to bad. A printed portfolio can approach that neighborhood quickly, and that’s just one book. On the iPad, photographers can create multiple books on the same device, which for someone like myself is necessary. I just dragged my images into an iPhoto gallery, organized them how I wanted, and synced it to my iPad. Done. The photos look amazing on the glossy screen, and users can flip from one to the next at the swipe of a finger. And for the time being, aside from being functional, there’s still a bit of a “that’s neat” feel to it.

One of, if not the most important asset to the portfolio usage for me, is the ability to also carry video reels as well as photographs. With the introduction of video into DSLR’s, and the ability to deliver motion on the internet, more and more photographers shoot video as well as still photos. You can’t put video in a printed book. Video works beautifully on the iPad. Much like I can with multiple photo albums (portfolios), I can have multiple video projects for different presentation purposes. It’s perfect.

I’ve begun stuffing my iPad full of photo, video and design work. I’ll keep a printed book handy for the purposes of mailing around, but other than that the iPad is a much better solution. I can swap out photos at the click of a button, and it doesn’t cost me any more out of pocket like prints would. The iPad can also be plugged into a projector, making slideshow presentations easy (another thing m printed book couldn’t do). What’s more is that now I can surf the internet and check my email from my portfolio. Could you do all those things from a laptop? Of course, but it’s a bit more cumbersome, especially when passing around, and it’s just not as streamlined of a presentation. I wouldn’t want my work presented that way.

One great unadvertised use that’s neat for photographers is that the iPad actually works fairly well as a lightbox. There is an app called flashlight for the iPhone, and when used on the iPad, you end up with a fully lit white-light surface, which works well when you need a lightbox in a pinch. In addition, photographers also have the ability to download digital photos directly from a card to the device via an accessory card reader. I don’t have a need for that, but it’s nice to know it’s a possibility.

If that’s not enough, it’s pretty handy for surfing the web on the couch, and watching movies on Netflix. Let’s call it “Portfolio +.”

In 1995, Designer David Carson published a book titled “The End of Print.” Print wasn’t really over, David had just significantly stirred the pot, at least graphically. Print itself had a few years left. But the internet had arrived.

It’s 2010, and print publishers would like you to believe that print isn’t dying, but it is. A recent report from mediaIDEAS says ” “Over the next 10 years, the magazine industry will experience deep-rooted change from primarily a print-oriented business to one where digital products will represent the largest share of a smaller periodical industry. We expect digital to be the primary source of revenue for magazines past the 2016-2017 time frame.”

Digital is expected to increase from making up 1/3 of the periodical industry in 2009, to roughly 75% in the coming years. Death doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can represent a positive evolution. This is post isn’t about re-hashing a tired subject — it’s about the other side of the coin. The Digital side.

I started as a magazine guy. I don’t think print is at it’s at it’s point of extinction, but let’s face it, we’re in a time of drastic change, and save for a few in-denial print editors, it’s no secret.. What used to be a high frequency news medium will need to evolve into low frequency (semi-annual or annual) feature based publications (more akin to a coffee table books) if print is to survive. Some have already gone this route. Others have gone out of business. Others are grasping at straws.

Print-on-demand might be a great way to go about this. Solutions for this already exist — MagCloud is one example. With this model, ad buyers could quantify impressions much like they do online. Print circulations have long been fudged/inflated (they are online as well). I’ve personally seen them inflated more than 200% and sold as such, but print-on-demand could lead to actual readership data that would be more valuable to marketers than inflated, confusing guestimates. And more importantly waste would be drastically reduced.

We ceased publishing the last magazine I was involved with in 2007, upon the realization that the time had come that we weren’t doing anything we couldn’t do more effectively online. It was cheaper, more timely, and created less landfill. Design on the web was more consistent with CSS, content management systems made updates instant, and more importantly high-speed internet was no longer a rarity.

Each year in America, 2 billion magazines (62 percent what gets printed), ends up unsold and in landfills. If you’re not a mathematician, that’s nearly 3 out of 4 printed. That doesn’t count the waste created by units people actually buy (yes, sometimes that still happens). The number of magazines saved by collectors and libraries aren’t significant in the scheme of things. The best estimates by experts of all-things-Green say that only 60% of paper gets recycled. I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, or an overly Green individual, but it doesn’t take a scientist to see that all that paper might be unnecessary.

Magazine Publishers are in scramble mode. They aren’t quite sure how to monetize the digital age. As a last gasp, they’ve taken out a print ad campaign, touting the virtues of print (to people that still read print). Brilliant. They note that print still has 300 million paid subscribers (so if you adjust for inflation it’s likely more like 150 million). What they fail to point out is that the Internet has 1.8 Billion users. Latin America has as many Internet users as print has paid subscribers. And Internet numbers are quantifiable. The Internet is a much larger audience, and if they would accept it, they could do great things with it.

Publishers like Bonnier have recently been hyping up statistics / print numbers that on the surface look really great. Transworld Business, a Bonnier-owned publication actually just posted some of these numbers today under the title “Magazines Aren’t Dying; Read the Truth.” Again, on the surface you’d think wow, things are on the up and up. While they didn’t take it out and try to hide it, they also didn’t exactly point out that those numbers are from 2008. A lot has changed since 2008 in the digital world. Unfortunately the Magazine Publishers of America, the organization that generated the data Transworld highlights hasn’t updated their numbers since releasing its 2009 kit (thus 2008 data). Oops. In fact, TransWorld quietly killed off one of it’s own publications (Quad) in 2009. I guess there is some fitting irony that a print publisher would publish these numbers on the internet to save print, roughly a year and a half after the numbers were released.

2008 this is not. The Magazine Publishers of America, in fact, just added a Digital section to its Web Site to help transitioning Publishers adjust to the coming digital age. They clearly understand the change. Hopefully their members will soon.

In Honor of Festivus, a holiday dedicated to and created by the prophet Frank Costanza, a donation has been made in your name to the Human Fund.

Click to see larger. It’s a Festivus Miracle!

I miss the era when magazines pushed the limits. In general, that time is gone. A newsstand (albeit a very thin newsstand) full of grid driven formulaic publications. No fluidity. No experimentation. All based on formulas. Maybe it’s a bit of nostalgia, but the print publications of today just don’t push the boundaries on the visual and editorial concept end.

There are magazine formulas. Countless meetings on sales driving cover-lines, theories about placing numbers on the cover to draw female buyers, logo placement for newsstand position. The result is a see of the same. Gone are the days of Raygun, Bikini, Speak, The Face, Plazm, Emigre, and others.

There are some great, clean designs on the newstand. Magazines doing nice things. But there is no wonder going into the next spread. The grid throughout is forced, and typography is predictable. We need a new breed to push the limits. I’m not hoping for another grunge era, or another David Carson. I’m hoping for something that creates an edge. There are still a (very small) handful that fill that void.

One of my current favorites that continues to draw me in is Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story. I hesitate to call Zoetrope a magazine as it breaks the mold and contrasts the formulas. This publication of short stories features up-and-coming writers as well as established legends like Coppola, Woody Allen, David Foster Wallace, along Anthony Bourdain. Each issue features a guest designers —and that doesn’t always mean a graphic designer — like Chip Kidd, Lou Reed, Julian Schnabel, Mike Mills, Wim Wenders, David Bowie, Tom Waits, Gus Van Sant. Filmmakers, musicians, artists, designers, the publication has a different visual voice with each issue.

In a stand full of formulas… full of grid driven Helvetica headlines, Zoetrope: All-story is a great departure into a more experimental realm of publication design. You can subscribe online for $24 or pick them up at better news stands and bookstores. I came across Zoetrope for the first time a couple years back, and since then I’ve found each issue to be a refreshing departure from the norm. If you’re looking for a magazine the follows the rules of publication design to a T, you won’t enjoy this, but if you’re looking for something outside the box, pick it up now.

You can check out my previous post on magazines of a another era here.

You can see some of the magazines I’ve designed in the past here.