Goings on

Okay, so it’s been awhile since I blogged like a blogger. Here’s what’s happened since then:

Helen and I have settled into the surprisingly great city of Charlotte. As predicted, BooneOakley is a killer agency. And Hawse Design has turned out to be a wonderful place for Helen to work. Now, we just need to find a house and we’ll be ready for visitors to come up and not have to sleep on our air mattress, awesome as it is. We’ll keep you posted on housing developments (Get it? I do.).


Meanwhile, our family has grown by two kittens: Lincoln and Kennedy. They’re very affectionate, they go crazy for a laser pointer and they like to meow at 5am. Also, they can meow the preamble.


Liam rocked his Bar Mitzvah this past weekend. We were all blown away by how smooth the whole service went and by how elegantly Liam spoke. Also, his rock-and-roll-themed after-party (of which I supplied part of the decorations, downloadable here) kicked ass almost as much as Liam did. He put the illin’ in tefillin.


Helen redesigned Store of David, my t-shirt website, which now includes a line of advertising- and design-themed tribute shirts that make a great holiday gift. Subtle, right?

So, really, that’s about it. We’re very happy to be living in a town that’s so close to our family and friends in Atlanta and we hope to see more and more of you in the coming year.

Until then, shalom out.

Helen at the Bat

HELEN AT THE BAT

The outlook wasn’t hopeful for the young Greek girl that day.
She’d never tried “The Softball,” but the team still let her play.
So, to the field ran Helen, not expecting much at all.
When WHACK! Some dude sent Helen one real bad-ass line drive ball!

The teammates gasped. The crowd sat still. And everything slowed down.
Just like that scene in movies where, um, everything slows down.
The ball flew right towards Helen and her eyes sprang open wide.
What if she missed? What if she sucked? Should I take off and hide?

Her left gloved hand stretched clear across her curvy, ample chest.
That pink-striped new black leather mitt would be put to the test.
She turned her gloved hand clockwise; her arm was all contorted.
“She may have even closed both eyes and cowered,” some reported.

But speculate all day and night, the truth’s another story.
For Awesome held the field that day and Helen earned the glory.
With twisted arm and obscured view, this Greek girl wowed them all.
The NoDa team erupted – mighty Helen caught the ball.

News Brief

Bought this car:


Made this shirt:


Love these prints:
(Designed by the incredibly great Fleet Street Scandal)

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The Bay Bump

Thanks to Michael Bay's Transformers movie, people have been searching YouTube for Tranformers clips. Mine, which shows the more intimate side of robotic relationships, has shot from 200 views to over 2000 in the past week.

On a related note, my Flapper site just hit the 100,000 mark. These, my friends, are the stupid things I will be remembered for.

Good times.

This just in

Just got word that the logo I did for Lisa’s bakery Big Sugar got into Print’s Regional Design Annual. For those out of the know, here’s a blurb about the annual from Print’s website:

The Regional Design Annual issue is the most comprehensive survey of graphic design in the United States—and one of the biggest issues to hit the graphic design industry each year. We received more than 20,000 individual entries for the 2006 Regional Annual, from almost every state. The process of selection in all regions of the country was as stringent as ever, and, as always, we feel that the work we chose is first-rate, and that it represents the best design, illustrations, and photography being produced throughout the United States.

In other words, behold the face of awesome:

Big Sugar in NY Times

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See my logo? It’s right there on the back of everyone’s shirt! Joke, that was a joke. I am very proud of Lisa, her incredible bakery and also its awesome logo.

Big Sugar, Bigger Nerds

When we decided to head to L.A. for a mini-vacation for Memorial Day weekend, I had one goal: see Big Sugar, my brother’s wife’s bakery. Sure, I’d heard that the donut muffins were to die for (they were) and yeah, I wanted to load up on delicious buckeyes…



…but I was really going because I designed their logo...



...and I wanted to see it in action. I wasn’t disappointed. Check out the awesomeness.

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ME SEEING THE SIGN FOR THE FIRST TIME.

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HELEN SAMPLING EVERYTHING.

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INSIDE BIG SUGAR.

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Logo aside, I was blown away by the bakeshop itself. As charming as it is well-designed. I kept doing 360s of the place, in awe of how cool and perfect it was.

I was already proud of the logo (one of three favorite logos I’ve ever done), but I’m even prouder of Lisa’s accomplishment.

On the flipside of cool - the Bizarro cool, if you will - Helen and I checked out the Star Wars Convention at the L.A. Convention Center this weekend. See how I used the phrase “checked out” as opposed to “attended.” I am going to try to sound like we’re not total nerds but I have to admit: It was soooo awesome.

Yes, there were 40 year-olds dressed up as Ben Kenobi, light saber and all. Sure, there were women dressed up as Slave Girl Leia (and no, they could NOT pull it off as well as Carrie Fisher did). And no, I did not know that video stores across America employed THIS many people. But, I gotta say, it was a lot of fun.

I would say we were totally geeking out, but that’s not how anyone treated us. Everyone was so nice and so accepting. They could tell it was our first convention and they accepted us with open arms. Okay, so those arms were covered in home-made Empire-grade plastic Boba Fett forearm shielding, but so what?! Here are a few favorite pics:


HELEN GETTING CHOKED DARK-SIDE-STYLE BY DARTH VADER

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ME SUPPORTING THE TROOPS

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DAVE WITH THE VERY POPULAR TROOPERETTE

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Challah if you want one!

New shirt time! As usual, it can be found in my store by going HERE. Also available on white and jewey blue.

Wakey'z Shmakey'z

Apparently, Wakey’z Drugmall is big with the Jews. Check it out here.


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Up Up and Awake!

Wakey’z Drugmall launched today!!!

Wakey’z is a project I’ve been working on for some months now. It’s part of a Select Comfort campaign that positions their Sleep Number beds as a better alternative to the crazy wake-aids and sleep-aids Americans use to make up for poor sleep.

The funny thing about creating the over-the-top inventory of products for Wakey’z is that the more research we did, the more actual insane products we encountered. I mean, you can actually buy caffeinated beer, caffeinated mints, caffeinated donuts, caffeinated breath strips, caffeinated soap (!) and even an energy drink called Cocaine.

While it was tough to create even crazier products, we feel we did a pretty great job. And while the products are not real, you CAN pick up some Wakey’s swag at Wakey’z Wear. See if you can guess which t-shirt is my favorite.

Some of my favorite Wakey’z products are:


Morn Horn, alarm clock amplifier


Resteban, The Sleep-Inducing Teddy Bear


Bum Rush, stimulant laxative (The #2 Wake-Aid!)


ChloroFoam, sleep masks

Who rules? Helen rules.

After months of intense work for Helen, The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is over. You MUST read her moving epilogue HERE.

I'd like to thank

Just heard that The Duel campaign I worked on got in The One Show. If you worked in the ad industry, you’d be all, “The One Show! That’s awesome! That’s like The Oscars of Advertising!” And I’d reply, “A) Stop yelling and B) Actually, Cannes is The Oscars of Advertising. The One Show is more like The Golden Globes, but it’s still awesome so thanks.”

I also found out that The Duel got in D&AD (Don’t be fooled by the name. D&AD is actually about more than Design & Art Direction.). It’s one of the most prestigious awards in advertising and rarely do American agencies get in, so it’s truly an honor.

Both The One Show and D&AD have gold & silver award systems, but I won’t find out if we won one of those until May. At the very least, The Duel will be in both shows so that’s pretty cool.

Ten Lines

Launched my new website a minute ago. In case you’re interested, it can be found here.

I was just tired of having all those different urls for my work, my illustrations, my flapping paper airplane, etc. Now everything’s in one place. Sure, iWeb’s pages don’t load as quickly as I’d like them too, but what the site lacks in slick functionality, it more than makes up for in content. And there’s a crapload of content, especially in the STASH section where you can find everything from my illustration works to that silly Transformers video I did to a bank of ads I love but didn’t have room for in my portfolio.

And in case you’re wondering, the reason the url references “ten lines” is because that’s the fewest number of lines it takes to write KEITH.

the girls

Below is just some of the wonderful, amazing work of Amanda Visell. If I could draw, I’d do stuff like this. So incredibly great. You can find more of her work here. And be sure to check out the amazing stuff she just did for the anniversary of Pirates of the Caribbean which you can find on her blog. Also on her blog, coincidentally, is a series of two-headed figures, kinda like the ones I did but cooler.

Superbowl Ads 07

I should begin by confessing that I do not look at Superbowl ads the way regular people do. Because I work in the industry, I see more ads in a week than most do all year so if I'm overly critical, that's why. That said, I wasn't too thrilled with this year's crop of Superbowl ads.

The best one I saw was actually not a new ad. Weiden & Kennedy's "Give A Little Love" ad for Coke was, to me, the best ad of the bunch. Incredibly well-written and even better executed. So what if it's been running in theaters for the past few months.



That's not to say there weren't some moments of greatness. The Heart Attack ad was wonderful and not only because it didn't have a logo on the end. I also liked the idea behind Careerbuilder's Promotion Pit. The Snickers "Kiss" ad was hilarious, Garmin's "Maposaurus" had its moments and anything with Robert Goulet makes me laugh.

I am not sure what's gotten into America, but I checked USA Today's Admeter and was ridiculously disappointed to find that the Budweiser "Crab" ad was ranked so high. Really? REALLY?! I thought most, if not all, of the Bud ads were just plain boring. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" had a pretty funny punch line but I saw it coming a mile away.

Again, I see a lot of ads so I know a lot of formulas, so I apologize if I'm ruining the fun of Ad Day. But I just expect more on Superbowl Sunday. It's the one day when any company can change their destiny by running a - pardon the pun - game-changing ad much in the way Apple did with "1984," the way Monster did with "I wanna file all day," the way E*Trade did with their "Well, we just blew a million bucks" ad, etc. etc. etc. I will give E-Trade credit for this year's "Finger" ad which I felt had some nice moments in it. But to the rest, it felt like they could've done more with their $2.6 million.

See all the spots here and lemme know what you think.

My Blue World

Well, I think I’m done with the My Blue World series. I just don’t feel like these later ones hit the mark as much as the earlier ones did. I think part of it has to do with a lack of time I have to really think about them, and another part has to do with a long list of rules I set up for myself based on those earlier concepts. Rules like: Never show an entire face so that the people portrayed can be fairly anonymous, try to capture the least amount of information possible in order to tell the story, try to capture the story at its most interesting moment, etc.

I’ll probably be printing the series in iPhoto book form accompanied by a CD of ELO covers (since my illustrations are like covers: my take on ELO songs). Love to take credit for the CD idea but that was Bill’s genius. If you'd like a copy, lemme know.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed most of them.

Sweet Talkin' Woman

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Mr. Blue Sky

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How's the rain look? Not sure how happy I am with it.

Turn To Stone

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Bock Bock

Uncovered these the other day. When my friend Laurie first announced she was going to open a Guthrie’s in Atlanta, I did similar versions of these for her. Check ‘em out. Incidentally, my lovely wife did the illustration for the 2nd poster. She is awesome.

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Don’t Bring Me Down

The latest in my E.L.O. series. I think I wanna do "Turn To Stone" next. Any ideas for that one?

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emoticohn

:—)

This is the emoticohn: The first Jewish emoticon (according to me). Notice the Heebie shnoz. And don’t worry, I’ve already put it on t-shirts here. (Most of them say “emoticohn” on the left sleeve.)