I would have to say the highlight of the morning was the best man “Bundy”  living up to his reputation of being an absolute nut-job and almost finding his dream date for the wedding — we’ll call her “Roller Girl.”  Poor Bundy almost had the deal sealed, but she quickly fled the scene after taking a digger caused by one too many shots of Jack — like I said, Whiskey at 8 in the morning is brutal. Later that day the ceremony went off without a hitch, good times were had by all, and I wish Heather & John nothing but the very best for their future. Enjoy these events as they were documented through my lens…..(40D / 24-70 f/2.8 L  for all you camera nerds).

“With over 1 billion messages posted every day, social networks are quickly becoming the primary way people discover and share content on the Web. The result is a huge influx of incoming messages and links people must sort through across multiple web sites just to stay up to date,” said Mike McCue, Flipboardʼs CEO. “We believe the timeless principles of print can make social media less noisy, more visually compelling and ultimately more mainstream.” Designed from the ground up for iPad, Flipboard creates a magazine out of a userʼs social content. Simply launch Flipboard and “flip” open the cover to get started. From the Table of Contents readers can view their sections and personalize the magazine.

The Facebook and Twitter sections let readers quickly flip through the latest stories, photos and updates from friends and trusted sources. Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.

Flipboard also lets readers easily create sections around topics or people they care about. Choose from Flipboardʼs suggested sections on topics such as sports, news, tech and style, with content hand-curated from popular and interesting Twitter feeds. Or, create an entirely new section by searching by topic, person or Twitter list to make Flipboard even more personal.

The Flipboard App is available for free at www.flipboard.com or from the App Store on iPad or at www.itunes.com/appstore/.

Earlier this year when WIRED Magazine launched its digital edition (and sold more issues than the newsstand version without cannibalizing print sales) we noted that it was created with InDesign CS5 along with new publishing technologies. Today, we’ve released a short video that overviews these new technologies, including more detail on how they fit into the digital magazine authoring workflow.

Late this summer, we’ll post these new publishing technologies on Adobe Labs so a broad set of media, corporate and retail catalog publishers will be able to create compelling content experiences. Using this Digital Magazine Solution, these publishers can create immersive content without having to hire additional developers or invest in extensive retraining for staff. Publishers can add interactivity without writing code via InDesign and create monetizable digital magazines for the Apple iPad – with other platforms and devices expected in the future.

I’m really excited to get my hands on this software to see how it works, and I strongly believe that this will be a huge step forward in the future of print media.

+ Adobe Digital Publishing Info Page

If you could only use eight typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose?”

Editorial

Written & edited by Elliot Jay Stocks

Contributing writers: John Boardley & Christopher Murphy

Copy edited by Samantha Cliffe

Artwork & Design

Designed by Elliot Jay Stocks

Contributing designers: John Boardley & Able Parris

Website

Designed & built by Elliot Jay Stocks / Kyle Meyer / Decode.UK

Insert Shameless Plug Here.

I told you if you looked close enough you may find my card in this book hahahahaha!!! I would like to thank designer extraordinaire Stacey Lee for encouraging me to spend an absurd amount on my business card and hooking me up with a great print vendor I’m still a bit shocked that these made it in because they’re so minimal, but they do feel very nice in your hand (200lb stock with engraved text ). I would also like to make a shout out to Grace, Katherine & Elfi at Victionary for making it all happen Whoop whoop!!!

+ Order your tickets online
+ Alamo Drafthouse Map & Location

Synopsis:

ART & COPY is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” “Think Different,” and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents. They managed to grab the attention of millions and truly move them. Visually interwoven with their stories, TV satellites are launched, billboards are erected, and the social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.

+ Art & Copy Official Movie Site

The Inspiration

Constructing the Sign

I know there are lots of ways to make a simple dot background but here’s what I feel is the best way. I used to make a circle and option-drag to duplicate, then command-D to keep repeating them until I got the amount of circles I wanted, then I would group those and start doing the same thing to get the vertical ones…not good, or efficient.

Start with one dot selected and then go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform, that will bring up this dialog box. Play with the  move settings to get the distance you like between the dots and the amount of copies, hit OK.

Click that same dot again and go Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform one more time to offset the vertical dots. A dialog box will pop-up asking you if you want to clear the previous effect or keep it and add another — add another. Play with the move settings to get the vertical distance you like between the dots, hit OK. There you go, much easier and you can go back and change the settings if you want now, and all from one dot.

Here you see my path layout before I placed them all into Photoshop. The bulbs in Heather’s name were placed individually, there just wasn’t any way around it, and it gave another imperfect feel to the design.

Once I had the composite sign made I then placed each separate object into Photoshop as a smart object so I could apply different styles to each element and that also allowed me to jump back into Illustrator and make any adjustments as well.

Blending Modes Are Your Friend

For the burned background of the sign I filled a new layer with 50% gray clipped into the smart object Illustrator layer and just brushed away with black. I found that the Hard Light mode worked best, there’s no secret formula, but with 50% gray it needs to be Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light. After that it’s seriously just a matter of playing. I’m constantly blurring, adding noise, selectively blurring areas and really just trying to make it look as organic and random as possible.

I think one of the big mistakes most people make is that they rely too much on just straight layer styles. If you look closely at things, movie posters in specific, they always have those small tweaks and details that just give them that extra little touch, which also makes them fairly difficult to duplicate.

I’m loving the new option in the tool bar for letting the Wacom override the actual brush panel in Photoshop CS5, I’m pretty sure you could do this in CS4, but it was just buried inside the panel—hey, I’m lazy!

For the inside fill bulbs & neon tubes I just cycled through the blend modes inside the Layer Styles box and picked one that looked best to me. It really is just a matter of taking the time to go through them and see what looks cool, no really. I think you would be surprised with the results you can get by just doing this all the time.

Neon Sign Composite:

Refining Heather

As you can see, this wouldn’t be the easiest to pull off the background, but far from the hardest. The new Smart Radius feature in Photoshop CS5 has made this process much less painful.
Photo Courtesy of: Dott Photography

It did a pretty fair job and gave me a much better starting point than messing about with channels for minutes on end. After I commited to the selection and used the new output “New Layer with Layer Mask” option I used the ol’ Dave Cross trick of taking a soft brush set to overlay mode painting with white or black in the layer mask to further fine-tune the selection.

To get the back glow effect I made a loose circular shape with the Lasso Tool, Guassian blurred it, then radial blurred it out from around the head, then using the new mask panel ( introduced in CS4) I punched a hole out of the center and feathered the mask to simulate the back glow spilling around her in the front.

Final Image:

And there you have, hope you gained something from this if not a quick laugh! Now, I didn’t go into every detail of making this, but if you have any questions feel free to contact me.

The Plot:

The film focuses on Machete (Trejo), a renegade former “Mexican Federale”. After a shakedown with a druglord (Seagal), Machete roams the towns and streets of Texas looking to do yard work in exchange for money. Michael Benz (Fahey), a local businessman and spin doctor, explains to Machete that McLaughlin (De Niro), a corrupt senator, is sending hundreds of illegal immigrants out of the country. In order to stop this, Benz offers Machete $150,000 to kill McLaughlin. Machete accepts the murder contract. As Machete attempts to assassinate McLaughlin during a rally, he is double-crossed and one of Benz’s henchmen shoots him. It is revealed that Benz orchestrated the entire attempted assassination as part of a false flag operation to gain public support for McLaughlin’s harsh anti-immigration laws. By setting up Machete as the patsy, the conspirators make it appear that an outlaw illegal Mexican immigrant has tried to assassinate the senator.

A wounded Machete is taken to a hospital to be treated for wounds, and escapes from the guards before he can be arrested. Agent Sartana (Alba), a persistent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, is sent by her superior, Lt. Stillman (Johnson), to go find and capture the injured Machete. Machete, with the help of Luz (Rodriguez), a saucy taco slinger, recruits Padre Benecio del Toro (Marin), Machete’s “holy” brother. To take revenge on Benz, Machete kidnaps Benz’s wife and his daughter, April (Lohan), who has a penchant for guns. After encountering Machete, Sartana begins to have a special interest in the blade slinger. Machete rallies a group of illegal immigrants together, and begins to hunt the people who double crossed him.

via Wikipedia

…but they soon realized — they just fucked with the wrong mexican.”