TheYea.com » Design

Collages.

Matthew Smith — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:19:25 +0000

Old collage pieces from art school. we had to make numerous collages. (above) an old collage of Joe and Dan Cox. Pictures taken from a DIG BMX magazine. (below) a more personal one. They’ve gone through a flood and have started to rot so I figured I’d scan them in.

Happy Friday.

Matthew Smith — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:12:39 +0000

Built up my new bike, look for an edit involving Lafawnduh 2.0 in the near future.

Work Drawings.

Matthew Smith — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Working at a call center allows me to draw while I’m on the phone with people. It’s become quite therapeutic for me as I loathe arguing on the phone with people about student loans. Below I posted a few of the drawings.

Elephant.

Shyster

Things I’d Rather be Doing.

View out the window

Round and Round

The Panty Dropper.

Matthew Smith — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:49:31 +0000

If I ever had a signature seat this is what it would look like. Through the course of an afternoon I designed this completely awesome product. The Gray is really more of a flat black leather but I wanted to shade it a little. The purple would be luminescent just like the real Panty Dropper.

Happy Friday.

Matthew Smith — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:15:33 +0000

Last night I put the finishing touches to the rest of the stickers that are going out. I bought some cheap metallic paint markers and they were hard to work with. Gonna have to upgrade them.

Happy Friday

Matthew Smith — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:14:21 +0000

This week I’ve been working on some more hand drawn stickers to send out to a few people who missed the sticker bonanza. Stoked on how they are coming out.

The DFL.

Matthew Smith — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:00:12 +0000

The internet is an awesome tool. It can be used to connect people all over the world. It can also connect you with every douche you went to highschool with. A few months ago I came across The DFL. What does DFL stand for? Down For Life? no one seems to know. But what I do know is they are a creative outlet from St. Louis. There’s a hand made zine that they make for free from submitted work.
When someone submits a zine using their DFLm template, they print them out and hand them out to everyone. I recently received a box of what seems to be just about all the issues so far. There’s a lot of funny stuff to read. Everyone fills their DFL differently.

Each issue if filled with random stuff and little codes and hints to other things. I’ve yet to figure any of them out. They also have an ongoing video series called Skate Socks. Which, showcases the life of a skate shop employee and the type of business that comes in. I love the look of the video. It’s like a little diorama.

The DFL has a twitter, and tumblr where they keep you up to date with the newest issues coming out as well as submit your own DFL. free stuff is awesome.

More Logo Rips.

Matthew Smith — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:55:59 +0000

About this time last year I made these logo rips for Van. I’m from PA where we have Sheetz and in Jersey, Van has WaWa. When we were working on the new shirt designs I wanted to do something to unite PA and NJ a little bit. There’s always been this weird little thing that if you’re from Jersey you think Wawa is the best and if you’re from PA you’ll think Sheetz is better.

I was really happy with how these came out. I was on a logo ripping kick after I did the rock and roll business cards and I was hoping we’d make the Sheets and Wawa Logos into shirts to give to good customers from PA and NJ.

I never could pick which place I liked more though. The Wawa tuna BLT with jalapenos are delicious.

The Death Metal logo // A Rise to Fruition.

Matthew Smith — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:07:07 +0000

If you watched the new Skavenger video then you might have noticed a few logo rips. Logo rips are something as a designer, I find quite fun. So I decided to post the inspiration and a little behind the scenes look at how The Yea’s Death Metal logo was made.

The inspiration was The Black Dahlia Murder. Even as a kid I loved the way this logo looked. I wanted to make something reminiscent yet different.

I actually looked up a few Death Metal logo artists. Most notably, Mark Riddick.

I worked on making the letters reflect each other since I wanted a very center looking design. I scanned the drawings and traced them in illustrator, I had to tweak a lot of the porportions and distortion to get it to look how I imagined.

Gas Money.

Matthew Smith — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:00:25 +0000

Took me just about a full day to complete this. I made it a few weeks ago. Sharpie and sheetrock. Here’s a detail shot. You can’t really tell the size of the piece so I posed for a scale shot.

Thanks to Seth for the photo.

Awkward Words.

Matthew Smith — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:30:04 +0000

Look what came in the mail. I ordered some vinyl stickers last week from San Diego based doodler and shredder, Tom Perry. aka Awkward Words. Check his site out as it’s frequently updated with cool little doodles.

The Making of Regretstown.

Matthew Smith — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:29:13 +0000

I’m really stoked that this new project is finished. I’ve been working on this for the past month or two. My cousin and I teamed up to create his new website, Regretstown. He wanted a blog to update with different catagories / characters / personalities. A little slice aptly named “Planet Bedrock” was created. With the idea that this is a little slice of his imagination. I figured I’d post this little behind the scenes look at what it took to bring the site to fruition.

the first draft had lots of errors and needed a second draft.

I illustrated the buildings with a finer detail. Looking to make it as clean as possible.

Here I took the basic illustrations we created and scanned them into photoshop and worked on a light source. After that I would build up the middle tones and shadows untill I got what I had imagined.

read more to see more to see the rest of how we built Regretstown or check it out for your self right here, Regretstown.com

^ Here I compiled all of the stages of creation.

I implemented the illustrations as sliced images through photoshop and exported them as XHTML. I then incorporated the background and title into the clickable menus. I used iframes to give the client full content control of their wordpress powered blog.

I used the iframe feature so I could build custom html pages with simplified URLs. Hoping to make it easier for viewers to remember where they are.

The content displays nicely in the iframe. it also looks nice on mobile. iphones / androids.

The illustrations create a very user friendly way of navigating around a blog via mobile. For more on the design and creation of the site, visit my Behance Portfolio. For more on the Regretstown, visit Regretstown.com

Yellow: (An Unfinished Film)

Matthew Smith — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:00:41 +0000

Yellow: (an unfinished film) is from our friends over at The Attempted Theft of Millions. It was originally going to be a much longer film, as mentioned in Sean Patrick’s interview.

Readmore for a little back story on why this film wasn’t finished and how it came to be what it is now. It’s interesting as someone who is also working on a video project, I can sympathize with how ball-ups, delays and other flack can really put a damper on your plans.

Yellow
(An Unfinished Film)

Yellow was a film started in the summer of 2010. I developed the idea after driving back from my parents home in Traverse City, Michigan. As soon as a I got home, I jotted it down. A few days later, I started scripting it with my friends Jacob Mendel and Ryan Howard. It was about an unimpressive drug runner in a nondescript place and time period. He was being chased. Things were falling apart before his eyes. Drop offs gone awry. Spying, pulling a dead man into a bathtub, sniper rifles being shot at Ryan, Swiss tape machines, and lots of being pushed around and threatened. Ryan had recently gotten a motorcycle, which I’m sure was the impetus for the vehicle of choice to be an old Honda. We shot the hardest things first. Car to Bike, Steadicam shots on sandy hills, etc. We thought the rest would be a breeze. We even got permission for building shots and cast everyone else. Camera rentals fell through, Other commitments, and a few other things dashed some of our important plans. Oh well. The idea lives on now in this experimental permutation. From chase film to avant garde… (Maybe)

I’m proud in what we shot and accomplished. Maybe we will make the full version some day. Hope you enjoy.

SCP
The Man
Ryan Howard
Cinematography by Jacob Mendel
Music by Sean Patrick
Written & Filmed by Jacob Mendel & Sean Patrick

Directed by
Sean Patrick

Kern Type, the kerning game.

Matthew Smith — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:08:16 +0000

Yesterday I stumbled across Kern Type by Mark MacKay . It’s has an excellently designed user interface and even works on ipads as well. As a designer that loves type I jumped at the chance to test my kerning. It’s a really fun way to test how good your skills are. You move the letters with the mouse or keyboard to get them to read correctly, then click next to see your score for that word. Then at the end, you get a score for the whole test. Read more to see my score and to see a little animated gif I made.

Some were easy and some I thought I was spot on..until I saw my score. A humbling experience haha. For more info visit Kern Type.

Opening Credits.

Matthew Smith — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:59:13 +0000

I’m still real new to After Effects.

Sleep ∞ Over

Matthew Smith — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:36:23 +0000

I heard Sleep ∞ Over last night on my cousin’s Sirius radio and I checked them out. Sleep ∞ Over is Stefanie Franciotti, from Austin Texas. The first song I heard was Casual Diamond, I really like Romantic Streams. Listen to it below. And check out her website here. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but the super basic html design of the site goes along perfectly with her minimal sound. “Forever”, her debut album will be out tomorrow, September 27. Pick it up here. I think I’ll be listening to more of this. Romantic Streams by Sleep ∞ Over

Death Grips: Exmilitary.

Matthew Smith — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:56:42 +0000

I stumbled across this on last.fm today. I find the music interesting.. so I looked further into them and it’s some pretty rough stuff. Not something I’d play before I went out for the night but it’s worth a hear. Continue reading for the video of the first track off their album. It starts off with a Charles Manson sample..

Com Truise – Brokendate

Matthew Smith — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:37:31 +0000

New track & music video from synthesizer sensation, Com Truise. Plus a little back story as to how this music video came about. Great tunes. Awesome work all around. enjoy.

Com Truise – “Brokendate” from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

Music as evocative as the stuff made by Com Truise—master of the transporting synth odyssey—necessitates videos that are nothing short of cinematic. Hence the fully blown-out treatment for “Brokendate,” which rolls everything from eighties cop noir to Blade Runner retro-futurism to slo-mo Hype Williams nods into one five-minute world unto itself.

Says previous collaborator and director Will Joines of 10 lb Pictures: “While I was cutting the ‘Fairlight’ video earlier in the year I kept thinking that it was fun, but if I ever had the opportunity to actually film something for one of Com Truise’s songs then I could really go all out and create this whole world that would be specifically tailored to his music.” Mission accomplished.

About Com Truise

When talking about the music of Com Truise (one of the many pseudonyms of New Jersey designer/musician Seth Haley), the nostalgia bit inevitably comes up, so let’s get that out of the way. Yes, his songs tap classic sci-fi and proto-electro in a way that is distinctly early eighties in scope. But they’re also remarkably weird—stutter-step proggy and intoxicatingly psychedelic, like those classic touchstones got drunk on lava lamp juice inside a pinball machine. After his well-received Cyanide Sisters EP, a grip of remixes for artists like Twin Shadow, Neon Indian, and, uh, Daft Punk, and a few floating MP3s, Truise’s first LP, Galactic Melt, will finally enter brainspaces this summer.

Find ‘Galactic Melt’ in The Ghostly Store:
http://theghostlystore.com/products/com-truise-galactic-melt

Production House:
10lb Pictures | http://10lbpictures.com/

Director:Will Joines
Producer: Sarah Romney
Cinematographer: Zoë White
Release details:
http://ghostly.com/releases/galactic-melt

Tour Dates:
http://ghostly.com/live#com-truise

Posted Up.

Matthew Smith — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:29:08 +0000

I’ve been working on some new stickers to post up..

Newcastle Brown Ale: Shadow Art.

Matthew Smith — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:44:45 +0000

This is really rad. Newcastle is one of my favorite beers.

“Newcastle Brown Ale’s Shadow Art is debuting at the end of July in San Diego’s night life hub, the Gaslamp district. Using only a single light source and thousands of real-life Newcastle Brown Ale bottle caps, two well-known New York shadow artists have partnered with Newcastle to bring to life a 128 square foot shadow sculpture of a man reaching for a pint of Newcastle. Check out the video above to see how the shadow art was created.”