We Rock the Lake.

One idea for "The Roanoker" Full Page advertisement for Floyd Enterprises.  The idea is to express both classiness/wealth/design and fun/style/lakeside life in one ad.  The dichotomy is great, in my opinion.

Peace.

- jacob musick

graphic. design.

1st Quarter.

The top image is a draft of the Pamela Jean Gallery quarter-page advertisement in The Roanoker magazine.  The second is the final version of the Joe Rowell/Pamela Jean Gallery half-page advertisement in City Magazine.  That's all the inspiration i have left for the day.

cheers,

jacob musick

graphic. design.

Joe was Here.

The Pamela Jean Gallery recently commissioned me to do three advertisements; two in the upcoming "The Roanoker Magazine" - a fairly high-class local glossy - and another half-page in the August City Magazine.  (Both should hire me to do website design, in my humble opinion.)  The City ad is going to feature the work of Joe Rowell, and this is the rough draft that I'll show off to the Gallery tomorrow.  Joe Rowell is brilliant, by the way.

- jacob musick

graphic. design.

Sketches of the Day.

All the World's a .jpg.

The beginnings of a complicated website for our beloved Sister Cities, who's current site is very much in need of an update.  The concept involves a significant amount of flash, signposts, and ancient map-dragons.  I'm very much looking forward to presenting the ideas at the annual picnic thingamajig next saturday.  This small image can do no justice to those that currently reside only in my head.

Identify Yourself.

This is the first non-graphic related thought this blog has seen.  Although my current projects are all arrayed in the background of my computer desktop, it's Sunday, and I'm enjoying a little bit of breathing room.   The most recent bit of deeper thoughts that have been drifting around in my head are preparing to take this opportunity and charge the barriers of my laziness and formulate into something cohesive.

Bam.  The catalyst - someone in a crowded room and noisemakers in the corner sporting fashionable bracelets emblazening the emblem, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"

It's a funny thing, actually, modern popular philosophy.  The era of thought i am formally familiar with concerned itself completely with the nature of reality.  The question was "DO I EXIST?"  Today, no one cares about existence.  Reality is taken for granted.  "Sure, i exist, but WHO AM I?"

It's self-centered, i'm nearly positive, to care nothing for the nature of the envelope of universe surrounding your being - to focus on the identity of the being itself.  It's definitely apathetic never to question the reality of reality, and follow Descartes' lonely trail of doubt; instead, the only journey we want to take is the journey to oneself.  

Who am I?

We can approach this question is much the same manner as the question of existence.  We can ask things like: upon what set of "data" - experience, actions, senses - should we base our identity? But there seems to be an important question which is never really asked, but only assumed by those seeking themselves:

Is identity something that can even be approached rationally and studied under a glass like some rare insect specimen?  Is identity tangible?  (Does identity exist?)

What proof have we that WHO I AM is something that we can define?  (Shouldn't we know before we go to the trouble to define it?)  We seem to chase phantoms searching for some elusive person called "SELF" that is supposed to exist separately from the cumulative set of ideas that make us human - Goals, loves, drives, history, mothers, beauty, holding-hands, spirit, good-books and hot-coffee, laughing-children, joy, sorrow, shade-trees on summer-days, prayer, experience, work, family, and all the concepts that are a part of us - but more than that, a part of how we relate with everyone and everything around us.  Identity then requires relationship.  It requires others.

The more we seek to find our "self," the farther from ourselves we find ourselves.  You don't exist in a dark room meditating.  You exist in the arms of small children and laughter and astonishment at the color of the shade of the apple trees.  You find yourself in the eyes of your best friend.

Release your Inner Gardener.

Here's the current concept for the brand new Roanoke Community Garden Association.  I think we're going to go with this, but I still need to work on the font, the detail and weight of the seedling and the proportions.   Something about the seedling still doesn't look right.  The leaves are the wrong shape or size.   Anycase, this is the work in progress.

Haitian Reboot

So, yeah.  She was grumpy.