Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Richie for being today’s interviewee.
Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
Just another dude trying to make rent with Letter-Picture Combo Platters. I live, work & get weird in my most loved & hated city in the world: Boston, MA. I recently left my comrades at Oat to open up my own shop Commoner, Inc. with my better half, Brook Lyn. Our job is to listen to people’s stories, interpret, and consequently visualize them with letters and shapes.
What are you working on?
At the moment, it seems to be quite a bit of ‘boutique branding’ projects. Two coffee shops, a clothing company, a barber shop, an antique luggage restoration company and a website which sells custom tumblr themes. I am also in the midst of making a deck of cards for a certain playing card company & some things for Salvation Army’s WarDrobe project. Oh, and a TypeFight match coming up, which I’m pretty stoked on.
Choose a favorite shot of yours. Why is it a favorite?
I think this little fella would probably be my favorite shot:
This holds a special spot for me as it was made for a very dear friend of mine who brews pretty stellar craft beer. A labor of love, as it were, his main goal is to make the best beer he can for no other reason than to give to his friends and put something into the world that didn’t already exist. No financial gain…just straight up passion. That kind of attitude inspires me, which hopefully comes through in the design.
Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)? (e.g. hardware, software, pens, paper, blowtorch, etc.)
To be completely honest with you, I’m a straight-up caveman in this digital age of ours. A No. 2 pencil and the pen tool in illustrator is about the extent of my arsenal. The pathfinder, occasionally, but that’s kind of a guessing game until things work. Then a minor bit of Photoshop to add texture if needed. I suppose something about embracing the simplicity and straight-forwardness of the more traditional tools, helps to inform my style and process. Though it would be nice to be more well rounded in my knowledge of the Creative Suite, I was never really inclined to learn any Photoshop wizardry. And for the most part, the type of work I do rarely calls for anything more than the aforementioned tools.
Also, coffee & beer usually sneak their way into the mix at some point.
Choose a favorite shot from another Player. Why do you dig it?
I think this little ditty by Chris DeLorenzo is just beautiful:
Something about looking at an image with such ‘simple & limited’ shapes, without becoming bored after 2 seconds, is really impressive to me. The stark geometry, subtle shading, palette, scale, proportion…it just has this quiet, but at the same time, incredible energy to it. Also, it seems in his description it was created for no other reason than, ‘just to make something.’ That kind of thinking is rad as hell and more designers (people in general) should embrace that kind of attitude.
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