New Artist Gabriel Leake

Joseph Cotten — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:23:14 +0000

Having been the new kid on the block, I know what it feels like to begin making your way in the world of professional artistry. So, I wanted to take a moment here to give a shout out to a good friend of mine, and up-and-coming artist Gabriel Leake.

Gabriel and I collaborated on a project for a client of mine, Living Way Church. I had already designed Living Way’s corporate identity, and collaborated with Cotten:Tech to do a website for them as well. Gabriel and I worked together to develop a logo for Living Way’s new youth ministry, which would be called 2Twenty2, based on a scripture from II Timothy 2:22.

We were successful, as Living Way is using the logo, and has gotten a great response from it. Gabriel has a fascinating digital design style that I call Neue Graffiti. If the art of graffiti were to be reinvented, Gabriel’s work would be at the forefront of the movement. It’s painterly, raw, textured and original.

He’s got a new blog site up showcasing some of his work in traditional mediums: graphite pencil portraits, pen and ink drawings, oil painting, and so forth. Check it out! Gabriel Leake Portfolio

Battlestar Galactica Themed Invite Card

Joseph Cotten — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:38:53 +0000

A postmodern inner-city church was beginning a series of free lunch outreaches to college students in the area. The church’s congregation is largely made up of college students or recent graduates, so they have a keen understanding of what will bless the typical dorm-dweller! They asked me to create an advertising card that would create an immediate reaction to the average college student. They didn’t have any theme in mind, just the dates for each free lunch event. As I thought about it, I was leaning toward using the retro futuristic trend that I’ve written about previously. But, it needed a unifying theme so that it wasn’t just eye candy for the sake of eye candy. Flashy graphics will grab attention for a few seconds, but unless the rest of the design makes sense, the target audience will be lost. That’s when I though about tying the retro futuristic look in with Battlestar Galactica, an old sci fi show that I watched when I was a kid, and has been remade by the Sci Fi Channel. It’s huge right now among college students and twenty-somethings, and was therefore the perfect tie-in for the invite card.

I managed to find a well-crafted typeface based on the Battlestar Galactica font, called oddly enough, Battlestar! Then it was a matter of layout, general look, and getting the typeface to look like it was actually floating in space. It was a pretty fun design, to be honest! I suppose it was somewhat self-indulgent of me to do it this way, but I justify it by the fact that it will reach the target demographic effectively. The layout began in my mind after viewing James White‘s recent artwork and subsequent tutorial. However, instead of starting in Illustrator and creating assets to be used in Photoshop, I did everything right in Photoshop. Maybe I’m lazier than James! Actually, I enjoy using Photoshop’s Brush creating abilities for the geometric assets, because all the layer effects are right there with the Brush pallette.

The back of the card had the details of the event: dates, etc, as well as a few pictures I found on the church’s website – to give it a bit of a personal touch.

Trend Setting Design » design blog

New Artist Gabriel Leake

Battlestar Galactica Themed Invite Card