Dan Rosen Design

"You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can’t do a great ad without good..."

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:02:00 -0400

““You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can’t do a great ad without good typography.””

- Herb Lubalin

1931 Practical Typography & Copy Writing Instructional book

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:11:00 -0400

1931 Practical Typography & Copy Writing Instructional book:

Young guns take note…A fascinating read “A reliable guide to the construction of advertisement lay-outs and to the art of successful copy writing. For all students of Advertising and Salesmanship”, published in 1931. Principles still hold true today.

Instroville artwork

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:30:00 -0400

Just got my samples through the mail of the package design for this Instroville Digipack I did recently for Future Noise of Music. Came out pretty nice I think…I used to play in a band that covered many a tune featured on these discs so I had more than a clue as to the look and feel of the overall package. It’s inspired equally by a little bit of Hatch showprints, and a splash of Burt Goldblatt’s surealism doesn’t hurt a bit. I’m pretty proud of the typesetting on this one. Each song is around 3 mins long, and at 25 songs a disc w/ loads o’ writer and publishing credits, it was a bitch to even out the track listing and still make it all readable to the odd bespectacled hipster or to the shortsighted older set that make up this collection’s target audience.

Gutter Brothers CD artwork

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:08:00 -0400

Not too long ago I was asked to design the artwork for “El Krusho,” the latest release by UK band the Gutter Brothers.

I put a blank CD into the toaster, put it on a medium setting and 5 mins later out this popped. Actually, it was a little bit more involved than that…

The guy on the cover is the now-deceased founding member Dennis Johnson, and this CD includes songs posthumously developed with his last lyrics. So the brief was to illustrate his life in pictures without being over-sentimental and cheesy.

Dennis (known affectionately as El Krusho) was a diamond geezer and a colorful character, so the cover needed a vibrant design to reflect that. The dot-screen/Warhol effect illustrates his standing in pop culture amongst those who knew him, and the type treatment has an air of 70’s cop show mixed with a generous helping of Mexican gang culture about it - something you’d have tattooed on your forehead in the clink if you were unlucky enough to have been caught by Huggy Bear.

"While the dominant use of digital compositing is to create a seamless virtual space, it does not..."

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:36:00 -0400

“While the dominant use of digital compositing is to create a seamless virtual space, it does not have to be subordinated to this goal.”

- Lev Manovich

Website, wordmark and Flash work for the company that brought...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:52:00 -0400

Website, wordmark and Flash work for the company that brought you powwownow, the leading conference call people.

House of Blues New Year’s Eve poster I was commissioned to...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:11:00 -0400

House of Blues New Year’s Eve poster I was commissioned to do.

LP covers of the 50's and 60's

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:09:00 -0400

LP covers of the 50's and 60's:

They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Fantastic inspirational album covers.

Fujitsu product catalogues 2008-10, freelance assignment.

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:21:00 -0400

Fujitsu product catalogues 2008-10, freelance assignment.

"Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations."

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:04:43 -0400

“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”

- Paul Rand

Magazine design

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:19:00 -0400

I started art directing magazines while living in New Orleans.

Firstly, with a start-up called Tribe, an alternative glossy that we tried hard to distinguish from the rest of the entertainment newsprint slop that was and still is around the Crescent City. To do this we tried to be locally focused but compete on a national stage with the big boys like Detours, Paper, Details and their ilk. I got to experience designing by the skin of my teeth, doing all the jobs of a design dept. including picture researcher, scan-boy, ad builder, tea maker - all of this before any actual page layouts. Oh I nearly forgot, I handled all the production grunt work too. I’m not complaining mind you, I learned a lot about about the design process and handling deadlines, etc.

The publication caught the attention of some well known news outlets, got some fantastic exposure from MTV and USA Today, won some design awards and we were on the brink…but we fell at the last post as our funding bottomed out. It was fun while it lasted and I met some great people who I remain good friends with.

My next jaunt at the publishing racket was in London. I did a stint art directing for High Life, British Airways’ in-flight magazine. Contract publishing is just as cutthroat as consumer, and although the budgets were so much higher (I had a picture researcher and went on photo shoots to exotic places, nice!) the politics and backbiting flowed freely. I got my name on the masthead of a few nice issues and returned to the States.

My magazine experience since then has been more as a freelancer, helping out at Maxim along with doing the odd football program and product catalogue. As with a lot of print work, the allure of the printed page has diminished and been cannibalised by the new-fangled internets and online editions of mags. Tactile sensations are not as appreciated as they once were and the days of ink covered thumbs, the smell of soy ink, and the overpowering fragrance sample all seem to be receding at an alarming pace.

But not so fast…just when you thought it was safe to cancel your subscription, here comes the ipad which has come to save InDesign from the same fate as Pagemaker and perhaps Quark. You would’ve thought that since the magazine publishing industry has barely a pulse these days, anything would be an improvement to its current business model. It remains to be seen what effect it will have, will it be the next cycle of evolution as the Mac was to typesetting?

Video

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:48:00 -0400

Paperback designs

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:43:00 -0500

Old is the new new. Amazing gallery of paparback covers, great font treatments, hand-made lettering and illustration.