Another month another flier for the Damaged Goods Improv group here in Louisville, KY. This months theme is a line that many Americans yell out during the Fourth of July holidays, “Let’s Move to Canada!” Normally I would create a post shortly after I finished the flier, but job searching has been taking up most of my time (which as of now has been successful) and most of my free time has been spent working on projects or with a special someone. Also, have been trying out new blogging desktop software that hasn’t been working out.

Moving on, this month the group decided to let me go with my own thing 100%, unlike with the first few fliers I wasn’t given any sort of photo or artwork that they wanted incorporated into the design. So, I decided right away that I was going to do something with the USA and Canadian flag and some sort of map. I initially was going to do a 3D effect with the shapes but quickly found that to be tacky decided to stick with 2D, which I think worked out much better. Then from their, I incorporated the moving van (which starts where Kentucky would be on the map and goes to the middle of nowhere Canada) and the giant Damaged Goods flag planted in the middle of Canada.

For the colors I wanted to keep everything consistent with country colors. So, used USA blue (at least that is what I’m calling it) for the title of the show and Canadian Red (once again my own name for the color) for all the info. Also with the title I decided to go with some juxtaposition and chose to used the font called Patriot, a font I’ve had in my collection for sometime and never found a way to incorporate into any design until now.

I think this may actually be my best Damaged Goods flier to date and have actually found out that many people have given it high praise more then any of the other fliers. Hell, even one person wanted to buy a print of it.

I have more writings planned for more then just my own work. But, a lot is changing for me right now, so who knows when it may come to the few eyes that will pass through here.

I ended up coming up with what you see above and finishing the project by the deadline. Personally I’m really pleased with how it ended up turning out and it may have been even better then what I was initially going to do. I ended up doing some quick painting work over the image given to me and a stock photo of a baby to give them a bit of a unique look and gave them fat white borders to make them look almost like large stickers. I created a textured background to make the solid colored background more interesting. And for the font I used the best font type out there, Helvetica.

Feel free to offer up any critique you may as I love to see what other people think of my work, no matter your knowledge level of design.

If you are in the Louisville, KY area and would like more information about the show click this link to the event information on Facebook.

Anyways, I wanted to know if I was part of the majority or the minority when it came to my thinking on design software usage. So I decided to ask my fellow designers on Twitter what design software they use. With some help from Sheri Strykowski (writer_sheri), Gerrel Saunders (gaksdesigns) and Dwyndal (Dwyndal) I gathered 79 responses on the matter. Below are the results:

• Adobe CS4: 44
• Adobe CS3: 26
• Adobe CS2: 7
• Other:
  • Adobe CS: 1
  • Corel 14: 1

As you can see Adobe CS4 was by far the most used proving that I am part of the minority and most are willing to pay the the money for the latest (or at least that is what we are going to go with). Personally, like I said earlier, I don’t see anything in CS4 that makes me go, “Wow! I have to update!” That being said, I will be upgrading to CS5 when the time comes, because already you can tell that it will be well worth it. Lets just hope that Adobe realizes that they need to lower the price of their software when CS5 does come out.

But, enough of what I think, below are some thoughts shared by others on Twitter:

Feel free to share your thoughts and what design software you use in the comments section. I look forward to reading them.

Yet, there are those who didn’t vote, those are the people I don’t want to hear a word out of. Not a single word! I don’t care who you “say” you support, but if things don’t go the way you want over the next four years I don’t want to hear from you. You lose your right to a voice when you don’t exercise your right to vote, its that simple.

Anyways, to go along with this idea I created a poster yesterday. And well, I just wanted to show it off to everyone of the internets. Enjoy and feel free to share your ideas on the poster or the issue at hand.