Hello,

Who doesn’t like to hear the words, “I am so proud of you!” For my friend Mallika’s birthday, I made her this self-affirming piece to read to herself everyday.

Here’s me bearing the gift at the Impressionist exhibit at the de Young Museum on her birthday (which was great!) and here it is the next day hanging at her desk at work.

Props to Have Gun, Will Travel on their award from American Songwriter and props to me for getting the presentation right. The article reads:

“This month’s winner in the Conceptualization category was a no-brainer: Bradenton, Florida’s very own Have Gun, Will Travel. Their handsome sophomore effort, Postcards From The Friendly City (Suburban Home) is almost as notable for its ingenious design and packaging as its organic, infectious brand of Americana pop. We here at UTR are big fans of bands that claim their hometowns with pride and, like the finest local produce, HGWT’s music has a refreshing immediacy to it that can only come from an innate connection with one’s native environment. Like a Sunshine State-sanctioned answer to New York’s Fountains of Wayne, the band expertly canonizes the displacement of suburban existence on such gems as “Land Of The Living” (We belong to the land of the living/ but we don’t live there anymore) and conjures up a disturbingly cheery dystopia in “Maritime Rag” and the aching “Salad Days.” And, really, in these days of managed expectations and digital-only releases, not enough can be said about the great lyric insert in the album package, cleverly reproduced to look like a folded miniature copy of the Bradenton Chronicle from 1955. Excellent work, fellows.”

Source: www.americansongwriter.com

For Virna.

New painting > PROCESS > 1, 2, 3!

My mother is one of the most talented artists I’ve ever known. When I was 7 or 8, she set me up in the basement and gave me a lesson in watercolor painting. As an Emmet Kelly collector and admirer, the subject she chose for my first painting was a hobo clown. It is still proudly on display in an overstated frame in the house I grew up in.

So did you guys hear about the stunt Fat Mike from NOFX pulled at this year’s SXSW? He played an acoustic show as this character called Cokie the Clown. If you want to peep this super controversial set, there is a video below. It’s more than a half hour investment, but if you happen to be a fan, it’s worth it. Spoiler alert: The prize at the end is where he reveals to the audience that they had taken shots of Patron cut with his urine.

Since my NOFX obsession hasn’t really subsided since I was 14, I was inspired to do a hobo clown painting V.2 which I then went ahead and made into a poster for a fun design exercise.

Here’s the show that inspired this painting:

(Thanks Ricky / theinternettoday.net for providing this video!!)

Has anyone else noticed that the new Vick’s motion logo is very similar to the logo Vimeo uses while the video loads? This seems like a great opportunity to share this Vimeo video of my #1 little pig having a good ol’ time (filmed by my brother-in-law, Andrew). Refresh the page to catch it quickly.

VIMEO:

VICKS:

I’m very excited to launch janellf.com v.4. New year, new work, new layout. Built with Indexhibit™, a great liaison to better my comprehension of css and php. Here is a sneak peek at the format while I iron out the final details. Happy twenty ten!

Here’s a logo I finished recently for local musician, Seth Jeremy, for his electronic project Rewind Stop Play. For some reason, it reminds me of watching Double Dare. His tunes aren’t released to the public yet, but if you want to see how it’s coming, you can check his site for updates.

Have Gun’s album is out now! They’ve gotten some good attention from their review in Tampa Bay’s alt-weekly newspaper, Creative Loafing. Read the album review.

Quality photos unfortunately don’t exist in my life right now, but here are a couple crummy pics of the final CD artwork.

Tampa Bay 10 morning crew loves my packaging designs!
Matt Burke, next time you call me your “layout person” at least give my URL a plug. ;]

And there’s 2 other videos of Have Gun, Will Travel from Studio 10 here.

Nothing beats designing the album artwork for one of your favorite bands. Hailig from Bradenton, Florida, I first worked with Have Gun, Will Travel back in 2008 for their release of “Casting Shadows Tall as Giants” and was lucky enough to be invited back to design their upcoming release “Postcards from the Friendly City.” We went with a 4 panel digipak and 8 panel insert, which was a really fun format to be able to work with to seamlessly show off the photography. And as always, front-man Matt Burke is truly a dream to collaborate with. Also, thanks to the dudes down at Imprint for taking such good care of the CD manufacturing. I LOVE IMPRINT(.com)!

I cannot wait to hear this album in it’s entirety.
HGWT, I love all you guys and miss your shows. West Coast Tour 2010!

COVER CONCEPT:

FINAL:

Photos will be in my portfolio section as soon as I get a copy.  :]

A tasting:

Listen to more Have Gun’s music on MySpace

I recently had the pleasure of working with Leslie and the Badgers on designing their September residency poster at The Echo. The music makes you smile and her voice just makes you fall in love.

I’d known Kelly since 2nd grade when she was secretly my creative rival in art class. Come 3rd grade, we got close when we were seated at the same desk pod with 2 other boys. We had these fantastic slumber parties at each others’ house. We used to make friendship bracelets that went all the way up our arms. She had embroidery floss in a special little case in every color you can imagine. I was bummed when Fall soccer started and I had to cut them all off. My whole forearm was bare and noticeably less tan than the rest of me.

We started writing a lot of notes to each other during class and the boys were always sneaking glances at what we were writing. I had a big crush on one of the boys for years through grade school, and it was crucial he not see what the notes said. So Kelly and I invented a secret code and wrote all our notes in it. I can still write in it fluently, and I’ll bet that she can too.

In September of 2007, I was Googling people I knew in elementary school and learned that Kelly also went on to do graphic designer. Neat.

I got this idea:

I made the font in Illustrator… and that was all. It turned out so Soviet. I always remember her birthday is Groundhog’s day, so this year when it rolled around, I lurked her again and found her mailing address. I sent her this.

She loved it. Now we’re friends on Facebook. Neat!

HAHAHAHAHA I HAVE A BILLBOARD. It’s behind the warehouse that I live in SoMa (the red one) and you can see it as you drive up the Highway 280 South on-ramp. Extreme times call for shameless self-promotion.

Tonight I made a flyer for my friend Garrett’s dance party and then went to an opening at Million Fishes and saw some of Ryan De La Hoz’s new work. Saw some of my old roommates and it’s always so rad there. Here is what the show and Garrett’s flyer looked like:

Garrett says “Avant Garde” is club kid slang for a fitted fashionable dress code. He’s 17 so I believe whatever he says. I made this logo in about 60 seconds for his new party-hosting endeavors in the OC. Gotta have branding!

Last, I think Lil Wayne’s new rock single is a complete joke– the lyrics, the auto-tune, the ending, the everything. The more I listen to it, the more I’m convinced. Weezy no fool; best rapper alive.

Listen to it here:

Amazing Love Joke

Look who’s blogging now!