alan crissey
graphic + web designer

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To design is to solve
human problems.
And that's what I do.
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  • The Appeal of the Unexpected
  • Redesigning the Aging Newspaper
  • New Business Cards
  • Helvetica. It works.
  • A New Year, A New Beginning
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  • Starbucks + (Red)
  • Never Satisfied
  • Why Typography Matters
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posted on
January 1st, 2009
posted in
Website Building
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B.D. Andrews Photography

What I enjoy most about my projects is what I learn from them.

My friend Brandon is an excellent photographer. I built a simple website for him a while back but it proved to be very difficult to add his photography projects. All image sizing and uploading had to be handled manually through several complicated steps, as well as updating the code and navigation. So when we were discussing adding a blog to his site, I decided it was worth the extra effort to solve the photo handling problem, since displaying his photography was the purpose of the site to begin with.

B.D. Andrews Photography Site

We wanted to keep the design simple, clean and elegant. This was to show off his photography, and any textures or graphical flourishes seemed to take away from the impact of his images. The home page was where we wanted to showcase some of Brandon’s best work, and a slideshow, which can be edited any time by Brandon, does just that. Through a clever use of plugins and programming, I was able to put together a system where Brandon can upload a set of images and, through a few easy steps, thumbnails and resized images are generated along with an embedded watermark of his logo.

Brandon is also an iPhone user, and because the site is built on WordPress, he can update the site and even add photos from his iPhone from anywhere. This project turned out to be a great example of how far the Web has come in terms of usability and functionality. I can’t wait to use what I have learned in future projects. The site is now live and you can visit at www.bdandrews.com.

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posted on
November 26th, 2008
posted in
Advertising
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Starbucks + (Red)

It’s very rare for a commercial on TV to catch my attention, let alone inspire me. I think most of them are lacking in focus and message, even if they do happen to be creative. But I saw this Starbucks commercial this morning and was just blown away. And it’s done almost completely with type, and just red and white. It’s very effective with its message, clever, and it flows to keep your attention. Not to mention it seems to be for a good cause, which it scores bonus points for.

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posted on
October 17th, 2008
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Uncategorized
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Never Satisfied

I know my friends hear me complain about this all the time.

For some reason I’m never happy with what I design for myself. It’s so much harder to assign a look to yourself and your own work than it is to do the same for a company or another individual. Really strange. So I’ve changed the look of the site again, but left the layout the same. And I still need to get the ‘Work’ section done, and redo the ‘About’ page. So I apologize that there still isn’t more content.

I’ll try to find some more entertaining stuff to post on here til then. Let me know if you love/hate the new look. I’ve got some sketchbooks I need to look through for some elements to add, I think I’m going for a sort of Sealab type theme…

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posted on
September 25th, 2008
posted in
Typography
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Why Typography Matters

Noone ever wants to be the one that makes this mistake.

My non-graphic designer friends laugh at me when I mention typography – the study of type. They think it’s ridiculous. I thought it was ridiculous as well, when I was in college and saw that there were two required typography courses that I had to take. However, I quickly learned not only how important good use of typography is, but also how much fun it can be and how powerful a tool it is. I came across this horrible typographical mistake today, which might cause you to have a little laugh and maybe have a bit more appreciation for us geeks who study typography and actually know how to use it.

If you haven’t caught it yet, I’ll point out the blunder – look at the ‘REGISTRATION’ line. It’s intended to say ‘FINAL REGISTRATION’, and either a ligature (which is a special character within a font set where two letters are sort of merged) was used for the FI, or, it was just kerned too closely (kerning is the space between the letters) causing it to look like an ‘A’, resulting in a very embarrassing, but funny, mistake. But what fun would the world be without mistakes like these?

Failblog.org is hilarious, by the way.

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posted on
September 11th, 2008
posted in
Music
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Grandaddy

My friends are probably about sick of me talking about this band. But I recently discovered ‘Grandaddy’, a great band with a not so great name that broke up about two years ago. They put out five albums during their fifteen years together, and four of them are solid, in my opinion. They had a song in a car commercial, ‘AM 180′, which I vaguely recognized (it turns out it was used in the movie ‘28 Days Later’ and that’s where I had heard it) and so I did some investigative work and discovered the band that recorded it – and I can’t stop listening to them. They have a few songs that say things that I can really identify with, and lead singer Jason Lytle says them better than I think I ever could. As a musician, it sort of makes me want to put up my guitar because what I have been trying to accomplish has already been accomplished by someone else. But when I think about it, I’m actually inspired more. I’ve got a song below for you to listen to if you want to check them out. Jason Lytle, the lead singer and primary songwriter of the band, is working on a solo album that should be out before too long, called ‘Sew Low Owl Bum’. Clever.

And just in case you’re thinking ‘This is a graphic designer’s blog, why’s he talking about music?!’ I find all creative outlets inspiring and music as well as graphic design are two of mine. They’re intermingled in a way. The same goes for movies. My taste in both music and movies follows a much more personal route than a popular one. Ideas and inspiration from one area affects the others.

Listen to ‘The Crystal Lake’ off of ‘The Sophtware Slump’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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© 2007 - 2010 Alan Crissey.
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