Some Cool Truck Graffiti

Mighty impressive road advertising by an unknown artist (Taken on my cell phone cam while driving)

(Click to Enlarge)

Igeek History

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JBattdesign Store on RedBubble!

I'd like you to meet a new networking site for artists called RedBubble.com. I now have a store on it selling cases for iPads, iPods, iPhones, tee shirts, stickers and poster prints.  Also anything I make here will get shared on my Pinterest.

One of my current design trends, and something I wanted to expand on since I first started doing this in college, is typographic art.  This means using the natural shapes of specific letterforms from selected typefaces to create mesmerizing patterns and decorative objects.  With over 1400 fonts installed on my design workstation, the possibilities are endless! 

I call it the "Typographic Continuum" project.

Here are just the iPhone cases I made so far, for example:

Fun and cool, right?  I predict these will be hot sellers.  View the store here:

The Jbattdesign iPhone Case Store

There are only twelve so far, but I could crank out a new one every day for years!  They are so easy and fun to make.  All this is done in Adobe Illustrator with my extensive font library.

As a former sign maker, my entire career used to revolve around typography and font selection. It's an art form in itself, and as old as Gutenberg's movable printing press.  It's not so much what you say, but how you say it.

Daily Post 4-7-2013

Time is what life consists of. Your time is too precious to waste. Before you use it up, decide exactly what you plan to do with it. Don't wait until the end of the day and wonder where it all went. Instead, start the day by making a list of what you have decided to accomplish. When something comes along to distract you, look at that list and decide which is more important, your goals or the distraction. Refuse to waste your time agonizing about the past or worrying about the future. Get the most from the time you have right now.

Don't let yourself get dragged down by petty gossip, anger or envy. Your time and attention are too important to be consumed with such things. Stay focused, positively focused on the priorities you have set. As you get each thing done, check it off on your list. Delight in the wonderful sense of accomplishment and let your positive momentum carry you forward....You Deserve!
— Les Brown

Not Strong Enough

Roughly a year ago this month, my enlistment in the United States Air Force was denied.  After six months of the most grueling personal training ever, including hours of heavy exercise and 10 mile hikes every day with 60 pounds of gear on my back, being out in all kinds of weather and working myself to exhaustion, in an attempt to build up my physical strength and stamina.  And all I wanted to do was be a ground crewmember and load stuff onto cargo aircraft. I would have swept the hangar floors, anything they would have let me do. 

I was kind of depressed about it for a while and made this pencil drawing a few weeks later.

The men surrounding me at the bottom of this drawing are, from left to right, my great uncle Vern and Grandpa Mel, who were both in the Army, and my grandpa who was on a  Navy submarine during World War II, and great-grandfather who was also in the Navy during the Spanish American War.  The man all the way to the right is a great-great uncle who was in World War I.