Portfolio — Matt Lehman
This week’s installment of Oh Great Yet Another Portfolio That’s Better Than Mine is brought to you by Matt Lehman, a ridiculously talented designer, illustrator, art director friend from Nashville. He’s spent the last three years making CMT/MTV Networks look good fulltime, and he’s open for other business.
Prom Night Fist Fight Lives Tumblrly Ever After
Allow me to tell you a little story…
Once upon a time, in a Chattanooga far, far away, a boy bought a domain because he saw a phrase in a dream that brought some measure of delight to his literary soul. Eventually the boy’s computer died in a fiery crash and with it went his swashbuckled copy of Corel Draw, his first app love/hate, the only vector graphics program he had ever known. Thus he began to wage war with that Adobian beast Illustrator, with the aforementioned domain serving as a battlefield. All manner of color, typography and wit was spilled in 200+ illustrative fist fights. And then he migrated the war over to Tumblr, to make it easier for you to follow along or RSS or favorite stuff. And everyone lived happily ever after. The end*.
So yeah, Prom Night Fist Fight is back. Here are a few personal favorites to hopefully whet your appetite: Hear!, Purple Explosion, Minimum Minded Meme, Dour Words for Cowards, Glory & Grace, The Art o’ Fist Fighting, Sum of Parts, this one, this one, Antoinette, Prog Rock, La Dolce Vita, Psalm 8, Thor!, Word, Booty, Speak Up, Mmm. Vector., this one, and Music to My Ears.
*OR IS IT?
Stefan Kjartansson needs some help naming all the adorable characters in his new typeface Cumulus+Foam. Go help out on Flickr.
It’s raining today in Brooklyn, so I’m playing catch-up to the happenings of the internet since vacation began. Most notably, Typedia launched. It bills itself as “A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces” and “a resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces.” Be sure to check out the blog post on the logo design process by incredible designer John Langdon.
Flickr set of some of my notes from the Echo ’09 Church Media Conference in Dallas July 29–31. Thanks to Mike Rohd for the idea. Scripture Typography Environmental Graphics
There’s a 30×10′ curved wall in the NewSpring student building that’s been blank and lonely for far too long. I can’t wait to see this thing come to life at full scale next month.
My hand hurts, the old scanner is tired, and I killed my fair share of Bic GripRollers in the last two weeks. I’ve never worked on a project where I said, “Oh, it’s almost done… just one more hour” so many times. Then again, I’ve also never gotten the chance to run amuck with 300 square feet of environmental graphics that will visually anchor a public space either, so who’s complaining? Not this guy.
GIGANTIC collection of Charley Harper art, including a treasure trove of original paintings. Harper’s style just slays me in the best possible way.
LetterCult’s Best Custom Lettering of the First Half of 2009 is from planet Hey Blankenship Your Typography Skills Are Still Severely Lacking Don’t Quit Your Day Job Quite Yet. (It’s an admittedly obscure planet.) Amazing work!
Just so you don’t start thinking I’m all thinking and no designing these days, here’s a little illustration I did this morning for a project. A big part of the ensuing redesign of this site will be a better, more frequently updated portfolio.
Frank Gonzales Bird Paintings
I’m completely enamored with these bird paintings by Frank Gonzales. It’s like JPG artifacts or satellite TV glitches. I’d love to see that style applied to editorial illustration portraits.
Soon-to-launch foodie site Culinary Culture has an absolutely gorgeous illustrated splashpage thanks to the extremely talented Jessica Hische.
Married to the Sea‘s pitch-perfect comics often veer into brilliantly simple social commentary like this. Also, Wu-Tang references. But that is a story for another post.
I dig the illustration style of Danny Roberts, especially his magazine covers. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Æon Flux‘s Peter Chung, but more impressionistic. (via Mrs. Blankenship)
Five Activities I’ve Been Doing that Aren’t Writing Here
1. Preparing for Mrs. Blankenship‘s return (in other words, house projects)
2. Preparing for this weekend’s final interview with a potential web dev for NewSpring
3. Finishing this drawing
4. Finishing some HUGE Prom Night Fist Fight style vinyl wall graphics
5. Trying, and failing, to keep up with email
Five Artistic Influences from My Childhood
1. John Romita Jr. era Daredevil
2. Gustav Doré
3. Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body
4. Shinobi
5. Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations in Stephen King’s The Stand
Robot Abe Lincoln & Zombie Andrew Jackson. What more do you need to know? (via Yewknee)
Sometimes, ffffound!’s recommendations are way off. And then sometimes I find myself saying “Why YES! I do love a boxy paper cutout of the Norse God of Thunder Thor.”
I keep a little notebook with me and often write down the occasional turn-of-phrase for future use. This one made me laugh out loud. In public. Awkward.
If any of you have an abundance of goodwill and a spare $189.95, I will be more than happy to supply you with my mailing address so you can send me this. I thank you in advance.
What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand?
This Terry Colon illustration from the October issue of Reason Magazine is clever, well-executed and informative. No small feat when you’re talking about the U.S. immigration process and what has to be almost insurmountable bureaucracy.