Passau (pronounced “pass-ow”) is a display typeface with an antique, handmade feel and a diverse personality. The glyphs are based on hand-painted and engraved signage encountered in the streets of the city of Passau in Southeastern Germany.
Creating Radial Lines in Adobe Illustrator is surprisingly simple. Whether you’re recreating a cliché Japanese-style Sunburst or trying to add an interesting background fill to a design, this quick and easy lesson is sure to help.
Continue reading Quick-Tip: Radial Lines in Adobe Illustrator
You wouldn’t expect to hear the sound of skateboard wheels on smooth concrete this far off a long and bumpy dirt road. But then again, this is California. There are sporadic houses throughout the dense woods as we approach Cachagua. I notice a hawk gliding along the ridge to our left. The car stops and we exit into the warm summer air and a cloud of orange dust. An hour ago we were setting up skateboards in Monterey, where it was 50 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy. Now the temperature nears 90 and I can’t see a cloud for miles around.
Chase Jarvis says that the best camera is the one that’s with you. I’ve become a strong believer in this philosophy. I like to travel lightly. The last thing I want when I’m hiking in the Alps or exploring the Big Sur coastline is a 10lb tripod weighing me down. Until recently, this meant I would only bring my tripod along on trips involving a vehicle. When I was on foot, I would simply max-out the ISO or try to find a suitable rock to set my camera on for longer exposures. All of this changed when I found this cheap, tiny plastic tripod that came bundled with a friend’s old point-and-shoot.
As a Graphic Designer, it’s important to have an arsenal of design-enhancing resources at your disposal. I’m constantly creating new reference images, textures, and other resources as well as seeking out the best free textures and other resources available on the web. The design community has provided me with so many invaluable resources throughout the years. As a result, I feel it is my obligation as a designer to follow in their glorious footsteps by giving back what little I can to the community.
It’s not easy. In typical American fashion, I walked into the Ausländerbehörde naively expecting to receive a visa to do freelance work as I pleased with little to no time or effort. Generally I’m not so confident in these sorts of situations, but judging from blog posts across the web from fellow artists (primarily in Berlin), it was going to be a cakewalk. Granted, maybe in 2004 it was easier, and Berlin is clearly a more art-and-design-friendly city than the mid-sized Baden-Württemberg town of Tübingen. Whatever the case, what followed was a multi-month struggle against the forces of bureaucracy and language barriers.
Continue reading Künstler: How to Get a German Freelance Visa as an American Artist
