AI-assisted Poster Art

A poster for the 2024 eclipse. The background image is modified from something I made with Google’s AI-powered image generation tool.  A note on the AI aspect of this: for the last few months I've used a set of similar prompts as a sort of homemade benchmark for the tools from Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI.  This is one of the resulting images that I especially liked.

Family History Graphic

I put this together for my extended family.  We grew up hearing about how Grandpa Don built airplanes during the war, and this shows exactly where it happened and some of what it looked like.  It started when I tried looking up "Weeks Ave." after I came across the photo of the house; it turns out that the street no longer exists.  So instead I found a map of San Diego from just before the war (the map is from 1940), and the rest came together from there.  

Postscript: Consolidated merged with Vultee in 1943 and became Convair, which was bough by General Dynamics in the 1950s, which was bought in turn by McDonnell Douglas in the early 1990s.  McDonnell Douglas closed all manufacturing operations in San Diego by the mid-1990s, and Lindbergh Field is now the San Diego International Airport.  All the old buildings are long gone, but you can still see artifacts from the 1940s on display at the San Diego Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park, including a fully restored PBY.

Branding for Wasatch Elementary School 75th Anniversary

I worked with others on the basic design, then refined it and provided multiple variations in vector and raster formats to allow for use in digital form, on posters, banners, clothing, stationary, etc.  Every time we stop by the school it's cool to see it in new and different forms and in new and different places.

Clean and Simple Calendars (2013)

Annual update, back after taking one year off.  As detailed in the post for the 2010 set, I started making these when I couldn't find anything suitable online (most of the blank calendars on the web are formatted one month to a page, and nothing that I could find with a full year on a page was as simple and straightforward as what I wanted).

Federal holidays shown on the bottom, as always, but this time around no indication of paydays.

Company Logo and Branding Materials (ongoing)

Late in 2011, I created the original Hidden Butler company logo after talking with the company owner about the desired look.  I've since made several variations of the all-vector design, and used them for branding and advertising across many mediums. (Some of the examples noted below are more recent than the date on this post, and still more may be added in the future.)

The composite image shows some of the variety; on the top left you see an embroidered sample and mockups for use on a polo shirt and laundry bag.  Below these is a business card, in the center are two six-foot tall banners (used for trade show advertising), and on the right are two views of the branding on a fleet vehicle (a baseline version of the 2012 Ford Transit).

After the break you'll find an inverted background version, the logo as placed on the main product (cut into the metal plaque/nameplate), and, as soon as they're released, links to the company's dedicated smartphone apps.

The copyright for all of these images is owned by Hidden Butler.  Click here for more info on the company, and here, here, and here [forthcoming] for posts on my other logo design work.

Personal History (the rest)

As noted in this earlier post, I started a regular job while in the thick of doing a personal history.

And now it's done: adding a few dozen evenings and weekends to the mix has resulted in nearly 150 more pages, front and back covers, all final proofing and editing, and a very happy customer (she is happy with both the substance and the timing; the digital content made it to the printer in time for her to get finished copies to giver to her family as Christmas gifts).

Even though I based the formatting on what I had developed for an earlier book, this just-finished book was made as a a glossy paperback with perfect binding (rather than a stitched hardback with endpapers).

In total, the book has over 80,000 words spread over 17 chapters and complimented by over 650 pictures.

(An image with tiny thumbnails of the middle 100 pages is past the break.)

Company Business Overview Report

A multipage report made to provide a high-level overview of the company for select external partners.  As with the publicly-available press report [post forthcoming - available here in the meantime], this was designed to work both as a printed booklet and as an all-digital package.  Some design cues also taken from the capabilities report.

As indicated in the tags for this post, the project required a combination of creating new content, finding and adapting existing content, copy writing/editing, and then bringing it together into a cohesive whole.

The copyright on these images belongs to Novatek, and the versions posted are intentionally shown at a size that obscures the finer details, alas.  Though it's probably overcautious on my part, I've also blacked out some sections, just to be sure nothing even remotely sensitive is wrongly hinted at.  A further disclaimer: a period of time after the first drafts were proofed, the report was updated before further internal or external distribution, but what's posted here is the old, outdated content.

Personal History (first third)

Time to break a long drought in postings, not with a finished product, but with a snapshot of the reason for the drought: ongoing work on my last big freelance job.  I committed to it before starting full time with Novatek (see below), and I've been working on it in fits and starts ever since.

To date, squeezing in a few hours at a time has totaled in 108 finished pages (the first 100 shown to the right in miniature; a mix of fully-formatted text and just short of 300 pictures).  I've used the same basic layout that is shown here, and hope to be done before summer is over...

Novatek Capabilities Report

Copyright for this image belongs to Novatek.

A hybrid technical report and marketing booklet focused on the company's capabilities.  This started as a set of eight .pdf pages focused on existing and planned drill testing facilities, but it has since tripled in size to cover different production, R&D, and other areas.

The report also grew into a top-level page featured in the main navigation bar of the company website.  The image to the right shows a screen grab of the page, which I designed.

I was in charge of collecting all information and graphics, writing and editing copy, and producing, posting, and printing the final digital and print versions.

As shown in the graphic, the print versions were produced with formatting that took advantage of the medium by using mirrored layouts for facing pages.

Another Custom Family Calendar

Another very very very custom calendar - see this post for the 2010 version.  Again designed with full bleed tabloid-sized sheets and different layouts for every page.  Again printed and distributed to all adult members of the family for less than what it would have cost to make a template-based calendar of a smaller size.

(There are more than twelve pages in the montage because several February variations were considered, including one featuring a picture of a trilobite I found over the summer near Delta, Utah.)

Clean and Simple Calendars (2011)

Annual update.  As detailed in the post for the 2010 set, I started making these when I couldn't find anything suitable online (most blank calendars on the web are formatted one month to a page, and nothing that I could find with a full year on a page was as simple and straightforward as what I wanted).

As always, federal holidays and paydays are shown, useful for planning and budgeting, especially if you're paid every other week on Thursdays.

Family Reunion Invitation

An invitation printed two-to-a-page for a biennial reunion, with a "historic photo" of the root family at the top.  In the original photo, the family was arranged in more of a tall pyramid shape, so it took some masking and cloning work to get the result shown.

Also including a screen capture from within the program used to make the invite (Fireworks CS4), to give an idea of the number of elements used to create the finished product.

  

Monthly Newsletter

This is an ongoing volunteer effort that I produce for the ward (the congregation) where I attend church.  Each issue contains:

• A short message from the leadership of the ward.
• Photos and spotlights for at least seven youth and adults.
• Updates from the dozen or so locals that are serving as missionaries around the world.

I do not do all the writing or photography, but I do take care of all the coordination and bring all the elements together to produce a finished product (this includes making adjustments to the photos and doing all the editing, layout, and formatting).  We print 150 copies of each issue and one copy is distributed to each household in the ward.

Family Calendar, etc.

Tabloid-sized print with all birthday information on one side and a montage of all family members on the other.  I also produced a single-sheet summary of all family contact info as part of the project.

This was commissioned for a great-grandmother with 17 biological and adopted children and nearly three dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Copies were sent to all the adult children in the family.

Completing the project required extensive collaboration in order to collect and organize four generations worth of names, dates, and photos.

Family Cards

Forty laminated credit card-sized pictures with initials and color-coordinated backgrounds (more on the color scheme below).

These were made to help keep track of who's who on both sides of the family, but they have been used in many other ways, too.  The letters are good for learning the alphabet, the family groupings allow games of Go Fish, and there are many different ways to rearrange by type (to see which side of the family has more members, to see if there are more boys than girls overall, to see how many people wear glasses, etc.).

Colors indicate relationships (all cousins have a blue background, for example), and the letters are placed to show maternal or paternal relationship (letters for people on the father's side are on the left, those for the mother's side on the right, as below).

Family Contact Info Sheet

A single-sheet summary of the addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays of 18 people in six households.  The overall dimensions are just right for printing on 8 by 10 photo paper, making it easy to get a high-quality hard copy from the digital file.

Note that the information shown has been scrambled and fictionalized (even images are not of the people that appear in the original).

Cemetery Guidebook

A 52-page guide to the burial places of four generations of client's ancestry. Project included researching burial locations, on-site photography, creating a comprehensive organizational system, and of course the layout and formatting of all materials.  I also got it placed in the FamilySearch Digital Library/Catalog for permanent online availability. (Note that you'll need a FamilySearch login to get access to the full version and that I updated this 2010 version in 2014.) 

Significant features:

• Full-bleed maps of the region in which each cemetery is located (with addresses, hours, and contact information for regional resources such as museums and family history centers).
• Full-bleed aerials of each cemetery (with GPS coordinates and burial sites markers).
• Ground-level photographs of each gravesite, accompanied by map and portrait insets.
• Life outlines for each ancestor.

Custom Family Calendar

A very very very custom calendar, with full bleed tabloid-sized sheets and different layouts for every page (including different orientations for several months).  All family images came from pictures taken during the prior year, except for the June and December "heritage" images.

Printed and distributed to all adult members of the family for less than what a template-based calendar of a smaller size would cost.

(There are more than twelve pages in the montage because two cover options are included as well as a mockup of a page for a 2011 calendar.)

Clean and Simple Calendars

 Updated each year around October. 

I started making these one-year-on-one-page calendars when I couldn't find anything suitable online.  There are plenty of sources for blank calendars on the web (probably thousands), but most are formatted as one-month-to-a-page.  Options for customizing content are also available, but nothing that I could find was as simple and straightforward as this.

The emphasis on federal holidays and paydays is due to the fact that I worked for the government at the time I started making theses, but it's still useful for planning and budgeting for anyone who's in the U.S. or on a biweekly pay plan.

Past years are available after the break, along with feedback from those that received these as part of what became an annual distribution tradition.

Set of Brochures and Flyers

Some marketing materials:

• On the left: my rates for creating a digital manuscript of a family or personal history.
• In the middle: the kind of digitization that I can do.
• On the right: a combination brochure and order form for custom calendars (the full PDF of this document is linked below, and finished calendar examples can be seen here and here).