this is the blog about eric collins' internship

fifteen.

2008-02-03T15:42:00.001-05:00

Wrapped up the "first draft" I guess you could call it of the book. I sort of crammed every direction I'd like the thing to take into now close to 40 spreads - 80 pages. It's much more of an in depth "proposal" then is probably ideal. The disadvantage to this sort of thing being that depending on WK's reaction the last 2 weeks could have largely been a miscalculation. The upside, though, is that assuming things go well We'll have given our ideas for the work out best shot possible.

Will let you know how things go after the weekend.

GO PATRIGIANTS!

fourteen.

2008-02-03T15:09:00.001-05:00

Today Tim Knox came by again. He had some revisions in mind for his site and also talked to us about recently shooting the Wu-Tang Clan down in Florida. I feel like Musicians and celebrities like that only ever really show their TV side and so it's super interesting to hear someone interact with another person named Raekwon or Ghost Face Killah on a personal level.

It turns out they're not too smart.

More work on the book. Last day of revisions it tomorrow, meet with WK on Monday.

thirteen.

2008-02-03T15:02:00.000-05:00

Today we met with Adrian about the branding redesign he wants done. His background is in design among other things, and so he understands the language and is quick to recognize nice work. It's refreshing to work with a client who actually wants things to look good.

I continue to work on the book and have gotten into serious thinking about materials and non traditional printing procedures and the flow of the work throughout the book etc. I've hit around 30 full spreads, so that's 60 pages, which is quite a bit actually. At this point I'm finding the questions about where to go becoming a bit more abstract. I'm spending as much time designing things as just deciding whether these 3 or 4 pages feel smooth enough or gritty enough or do i want the transitions to be quiet or loud or what. A lot of art speak.

Also, WK called and said he couldn't meet until Monday. This was even later then I had expected or wanted, but it will guarantee two more days to get things polished.

twelve.

2008-02-03T14:46:00.001-05:00

Today at work we became a little sidetracked.

No doubt by now you've become acquainted with the Tom "I'm insane" Cruise scientology video. At work we came to find out in watching and discussing this viral last week that we are all independently private Scientology connoisseurs, ravenously devouring any little tidbit of the bizarre cult we can get our hands on. It wasn't until today though that we happened across the fully 4 hour long series of Steve Fishman Deposition Videos.

Good God.

At times the videos were simply playing in the background, a steady stream of batshit insanity that is an ideal backboard to bounce subconsciously against. At other times, though, we literally would stop everything we were doing and stare blankly at Steve's calm, indescribably surreal depiction of the Scientologist's landscape.

And I thought I knew how far down the rabbit hole goes.

eleven.

2008-02-03T14:42:00.000-05:00

More work on the book. We talked about when would be best to meet with WK for feedback, I had wanted to do it early this week but we decided to push the meeting back until Thursday. This will allow for a lot more time to flesh everything out and have more of a concrete direction rather than a sort of haphazard amalgamation of ideas. I'm increasingly more pleased with how things are going, though still a bit apprehensive about being completely shut down. Not that I would mind a harsh critique, but we are starting to have faith in the design direction and I'd like to see it through. We'll see.

ten.

2008-01-25T22:48:00.000-05:00

A few days in and things are beginning to feel like they might be going in the right direction. I've done about 20 sample spreads each in some way an example of different thoughts I have for the work. I'm going to continue to work this weekend, take what I have and comp it / build a deck, then meet with WK and cross my fingers. We'll see how things go, I've been pretty cavalier with his work, it's a gamble and we'll see if it pays off.

nine.

2008-01-25T22:42:00.000-05:00

Continue to concept for WK. I keep being encouraged to get crazier and crazier. The idea here is generally just do whatever is the craziest thing you can think of first, then show it to the client (they can always pull you back), but atleast you have a shot at getting something through really remarkable. My spreads are finally starting to look somewhat passable. I've switched from a horizontal layout to a tall vertical. Though most of WK's work is actually landscape I have always felt stronger composing on a vertical ground, and I've pretty much decided that each page and spread will be almost like a "poster" unto itself.

Rather than build a grid and float in the pretty images, the book is going to be a an ebb and flow of intricate compositions, each different from the next.

quite a challenge to give myself, and extremely time consuming for a 100+ page book, but shit will it be cool if somehow I can pull it off.

eight.

2008-01-25T22:36:00.000-05:00

Started to lay out concepts for the WK book today. I'm basically being told to do whatever I think is best. This seems like it would be great, as it turns out it's very difficult. I decided early on after talking things through that this does not want to be your traditional, gridded, clean swiss picture book. His last book was done this way and he hates it. Ned suggested making the book feel like his studio feels, turning the work into a holistic experience and not just a portfolio of his work. I've started to come up with format and layout options and am feeling pretty stumped. No brief is a tough brief, especially considering the caliber of the client.

seven.

2008-01-25T22:21:00.000-05:00

Ok.

So today I was supposed to tag along with Ned (Karlovich) to WK Interact's studio on Canal street to meet with him about the book. We were going to retrieve all of his materials and discuss what he was looking for / not looking for / and generally just get an idea about where to go with this book vs. where his last one ended up.

That's what was supposed to happen.

So I get a call at 8 am from work. Nike global (Holland) had called in the middle of the night (their day time) to say that they're crushed and need some last minute work done from S&K. They needed the work done by the end of that day, so that gave about 15 hours to finish everything that hadn't been started.

So they tell me all this, and finish with "so we need you to go and meet with WK yourself and discuss his brief / pick up all the material." Right.

So, scared shitless, I head toward WK's studio one on one about to meet one of my art world heroes. Turns out he's a great guy. His studio is incredible. It's this huge space with high ceilings and wood floors and splatters of graffiti everywhere. Paintings hang on the walls and skateboard sculptures and massive heavily textured collage. We talked for about an hour about the problems he saw in his last book.

The "assets" I retrieved was a giant red duffle bag with two boxes of manilla envelopes, stacks of cds with images, piles of photos (unsorted) and hundreds of pages of xerox scans. A mountain of material, not even vaguely sorted. So, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to make sense of the mess and try to decide what the book should be.

six.

2008-01-25T22:18:00.000-05:00

An unexpected day off for MLK. Worked on typefaces / gofilms branding.

WK Interact meeting tomorrow. Pretty stoked (nervous).

five.

2008-01-20T21:46:00.000-05:00

Today we wrapped up the early comps of the Erlend Oye covers and built them into a Deck with our typographic solutions / image solutions / various other things we played with for inspiration. On Monday after our meeting with Adrian Chernoff we are going to work steadily on the go films / ideation genesis rebrands as well as the W.K. book after we get access to his work on Tuesday. Should be a busy week, I'm not sure yet how we're going to space things out. It seems like their studio works holistically, I wouldn't be surprised if they were open to sporadically playing with all three projects simultaneously, at least at first. It's not how I'd typically work, but it might be a strategy to adopt in the future. 'Keeps you fresh.

four.

2008-01-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

Today Tim Knox came by the studio. He's a great photographer from Scotland that does a lot of work with S&K under the moniker "S&K+K." They would. You can see some of his work up at his site. Tim is working on a documentary currently revolving around some of the early NYC graffiti writers, sort of a 30 years later follow up to Style Wars. These guys are all around 60 now and the idea is to document how they feel about what's happened to the art form they created after it left their hands.

We continued to work on Go Films / Erlend Oye and have a meeting set up on Monday with Adrian Chernoff to discuss the Ideation Genesis rebrand. I'm pretty excited about that one actually. The idea that Adrian Chernoff's "job" is to just invent things for people like Nasa leaves a lot of room to work through.

three.

2008-01-20T21:20:00.001-05:00

W.K. called early this morning, we have a meeting set up with him Tuesday.

This will be his second book, and he seems pretty ambitious about it. He's supposedly very open to making things as non-traditional as we'd like. Alternative binding techniques, inserts, experimental layouts, whatever. We're going to meet with him at his studio and take some photos, retrieve the assets he has for us already, and talk through some early ideas for how the thing will look and feel. Jess and I recently saw a show he has up at the Espeis gallery, but somehow managed to leave our cameras behind. Not to fear, someone else on flikr had documented the show.

We took a break from Erlend Oye to watch Style Wars. You know, research. From there we started to talk about Go Films and where the rebrand should be taking things in terms of the tone the company would like to convey. I learned a bit about building a Deck, their term for in depth, exhaustive presentations on background research they give to clients when selling an idea for a job. The Deck for Go Films focused around the idea that the company's image should be subtle and mysterious while elegant yet edgy and harsh. Think Daft Punk.

two.

2008-01-20T21:15:00.000-05:00

Today we continued with the Erlend Oye work.

He has a fairly iconic look about him and we want to subtly play off his outward appearance / mixed with his personal motivations for writing. He's from Bergen Norway, which is a great excuse to slip in a Scandinavia reference. Not like I needed an excuse anyway.

A good bit of each day is spent just talking about the business of things and how S&K got where they are. They do a great job of letting me in on a lot of the inner dealings going on behind the scenes. Talking numbers and how to deal with clients isn't taboo (for a change). It's great to be around people who are pretty straight up about everything.

things.

2008-01-17T22:26:00.000-05:00

one.

2008-01-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

The first day was pretty killer.

On Monday we met up and went over some things I had been working on the previous week. Nothing formal as most of it was exercises with different aesthetics I've been toying with. Specifically, a type face I've been designing which is sort of a blocky / organic sinuous lines mixture was something he thought might work for an upcoming project.

From there we briefly went over a very general outline of how things would be going throughout the next couple weeks. The Erlend Oye project would be something we'd try to hammer out first, the WK Interact book would come later as he is still gathering assets for us to use. GO films is a production house that had asked S&K to fully rebrand, this would be the third project. Ideation Genesis, an innovation / invention firm, requested a similar rebrand and this would be project #4. Now, assuming this all gets wrapped up there is a fifth project, which is a rebrand for a fashion accessory / handbag line.

phew. So we'll see what gets done, ideally I'd like to take a stab at everything but the book is a massive undertaking and will probably take a lot of time.

The rest of the day was spent doing a lot of background research on Erlend Oye. Choosing a tone of voice, concept, imagery, typeface, etc. We're both going to try to come up with several solutions from different angles and see what works best.

After work I was invited to stay as a few friends were getting together for dinner. Ned Karlovich's fiance, brother, and brother's girlfriend are all animators / designers from the city, so it was nice to talk to a number of other designers about what's going on with their work also.

Brooklyn is gorgeous.

2008-01-13T19:07:00.000-05:00

backstory.

2008-01-13T14:27:00.000-05:00

After weeks of careful deliberation I had narrowed my search for an internship candidate down to just over one hobillion places. However, being limited by very real fiscal and geographic constraints, the number of plausible studios peaked out at just over three or so, these few studios fitting all my filtering criteria.

they being :

1. Located within New York City. This not for any reason past simple necessity. Jessica Harte, radiant angel that she is, had offered me a free place to stay in Manhattan. Being as I could not afford anything more expensive than free, this immediately telescoped the overall breadth of my search.

2. Small studio (read : less than a dozen or so employees). I have pretty strong aspirations to eventually branch out and start my own studio to produce my own work. The most apparent draw back to this plan, is of course, that I have no idea how to go about doing it. The hope was that if I were to score a gig at a small venue half the time could ideally be spent designing, the other half learning how to run a small studio. Who better to teach that sort of thing then sucessful small studio owners themselves ?

3. And this should really be criteria 1, because it goes without saying, but the studio must be really good. I mean real good.

From here went the slow, nerve racking process of sending template letters to various studios begging to be allowed to be accepted as their slave. I'll save you most of this it as it's not very entertaining, except to say that curiously the studio I eventually decided on was one I had initially ruled out, due to criteria 1.

Enter Santos&Karlovich, previously known as dzark, whom I had been erroneously informed was a British design studio. Way back in September, as I sped along various on ramps and intersections of the information super highway, I came across their site by chance, linked uneventfully from Design is Kinky. A related article mentioned the "London based duo" and so I gave up, but never stopped stalking their site, as I thought their work utterly amazing.

Fastforward a few months, and having had no luck with my initial bets, randomly returned to Santos&Karlovich, only to find another article about the "Brooklyn based duo."

Quite a few emails later I had begged my way into an interview, which far exceeded my widlest, most drug induced expectations. Not only was their work amazing, but these guys were cool. I walk in and Karlovich is listening to Aphex Twin. Come on. We talk for awhile hammering out the contours of the internship : when I can work, what they'd have to give me, etc. He mentions, among other things, that I'd be able to work on Erlend Oye's upcoming album design, who it turns out is one of my favorite musicians, as well as possibly designing WK Interact's upcoming book, who it turns out is one of my favorite artists.

who knew ?

The only catch of the deal would be that he'd be away till the 10th in Europe, and so I'd have to wait till shortly afterward to begin, as Santos was too busy to take an intern on himself and Karlovich is who I'd primarily be working under. A deal was negotiated where I'd continue to flesh out a few personal projects under his guidance until he returned, at which point I'd still be able to squeeze in the requisite 4 further weeks until classes opened again feb. 11th. Perfect, especially because it meant I had an extra week to spend with the lovely Jessica Harte.

the aforementioned pre-internship work can be seen in part on my website, under the "qualia" section, if you're curious.

backstory over.