I'm working away from the computer today so I just thought I'd post a quick list of the books I'm reading now. When I'm looking for a new project I start to read anything and everything I can get my hands on until something starts to click.

So in no particular order heres what I have open right now.

Doyle Brunson's Super System
Dante's The Divine Comedy translated by Allen Mandelbaum
The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams
Cartoon Modern by Amid Amidi
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Speed Addicts by Mark Hughs
Raw Spirit by Iain Banks
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

There are some other books on my list as well but as I've not opened them yet I can't claim to be technically reading them yet. This is all part of the process for hunting out some ideas for where I want to go next.

Just finished watching qualifying for Monza, I'm fairly fuming. Doesn't matter what the stewards do, Scummy can't win the championship here no matter what happens and theres no Italian stewards anywhere near the last three races.

So fuck you scummy, ferrari and monza. Lets see what happens tomorrow.

Oh yeah, nice one Kimi.

This is a test, blogger is crapping out on me big time...

Check out the Casino Royale trailer.

Its got everything, fast women, poker, scarred pyschopaths and Aston Martins.

This is the label for the dog dvd. I used the same colors as for the insert and dvd cover and left the template visible to show you where the peel lines are.

And there it is, simple.

I had tried using a repeat pattern using dog illustrations and some other elements from the book but it was too complicated and it didn't really seem to suit the style of the project.

I'll do a test print of this to make sure it works.

The insert cards will be printed on a 12pt C2S (thats a 12 point coated 2 sides card stock) and trimmed to 5x7".

The way this would be abreviated when speccing a job like this would be 5"x7" (size) 4/4 (color, in this case CMYK) on a 12pt C2S. Easy eh?

5"x7"4/4 12pt C2S. The inverted comas (") are used to spec either feet or inches but for most work its assumed that inches are implied.

So I created a simple repeat pattern using the dog logo and I'm in the process of exporting a pdf to see how it hangs.

I'm working on the last dvd insert card. Its for 'The Crime of the Wandering Dog' and I have the front already done, just need to work on the back. Something with spots or dogs or crosses perhaps. I need to play around with it for a while to work something out.

PS Don't forget that its a GP weekend.

Not quite a bluff...

Here the standard 'Brothers' logo and portrait for the front on the card using the projects accent color.

And there it is, a handy little repeat pattern that I can throw down anywhere. In this case its for the back of the dvd insert card but it could go anywhere.

Once I have a large field of logo's laid out I grouped the lot and rotated it by 45degrees to splash it nicely across the cards back.

I started laying out a repeat pattern using the highway logo for the dvd insert. The front of the insert uses a standard 'Brothers Grim & Grimy' front with the logo and portrait on the accent color field.

I started here by arranging 2 logos top to bottom and then grouping, copying and pasting to build up the pattern.

Got to share this with you, its a site thats dedicated to the Advertising art of Dr. Suess and theres some top notch stuff in here.

I particularly like the NBC adds and also these ones for bearings of all things for New Departure.

Magic.

I'm going to quote this from the sites introduction to give a little background on where this treasure trove came from and its place in Dr. Suess history.

'The Dr. Seuss Collection, housed at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego, contains many examples of Dr. Seuss's advertising artwork. The library has scanned a selection of these advertisements for greater access. Besides promoting the Standard Oil companies Flit and Esso, Dr. Seuss's creations have hawked such diverse goods as ball bearings, radio promotional spots, beer, and sugar.'

So these are the exported pdf's of the 3 dvd sleeves. Each is different but the style is the same. You can see that I added the small dog illustration to the front of the red sleeve to make it stand out a little more, it just seemed plain with out it.

I took these screens by opening the documents in Acrobat and pressing Command L, which gives you a full screen preview without menu's and other crap in the way.

Just press ESC to jump back into program mode or Command W to close the file.

I have to go out and get some paying work done so I'll finish the dvd file tomorrow. I just need to do the interior cards which againg I'll pull out an existing template for.

Why go to all this bother? Two reasons really. The first is that I can use this same art to backup all the files for each project in a way thats easy to identify (a must when you have to deal with hundreds of files every year) and two becuase the first bite is with the eye and care should always be taken in how something is presented.

And again for the ape's dvd. The banana background was three or four bananas that I warped and duplicated again and again in Illustrator.

Using the same template I throw down a cover for the dog's dvd that I can print at the same time. Although each dvd is based on the same template they will all have a little something different.

I mostly like this, but it seems a little plain so I'm going to add a dog illustration to make the front cover more interesting.

With the background color in place I have to change some of the elements.

Theres no point in having an red stroke sitting on top of an identical red background so I just open the linked files in Illustrator and change the stroke from red to black to make it stand out. I'll save this off as a new Illustrator file and then place it instead of the existing one in Indesign.

Time to save and export a pdf.

All the major elements are in place, just need to add the background color and tweak until I'm ready to roll out a test pdf.