Bookmark: Westercon69 Portland in 2016

by Meredith 3. March 2014 15:55

Portland in 2016 bookmarkI've updated the Portland in 2016 bookmark with the new logo. Time to get another 5000 printed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookmark: OryCon 36

by Meredith 2. March 2014 15:49

Artist Guest of Honor Mark Roland has some amazing artwork and he has granted us permission to use his work in promoting OryCon 36. The colors and imagery are so vibrant and eye catching. The convention is incredibly lucky to use his work for promotional purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logo: Portland in 2016, a bid for Westercon69

by Meredith 1. March 2014 15:43

Portland in 2016 LogoWe needed a logo and I was given the following criteria to design with:
Use the font already selected; Portland; reaching; optimistic; no roses; bridges are ok if the photos are lit up at night; and the skyline is ok if it is lit up at night. Something that can work both really tiny (1/2 inch sticker) and really big (banners, t-shirts, and other advertising). Need to be able to resize it significantly.

I interpreted these instructions as a vector graphic that had a bridge and the Portland skyline. Another artist, Samuel Klein and I passed files back and forth, working out options for the logo. He had the fabulous idea of adding in a space ship flying through the foreground and adding a pop of red into the logo. Building this logo was a great collaborative experience.

Below is the example sheet of the logo with different background options as well as the 1/2 inch sticker version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Portland in 2016 web content is ready

by Meredith 18. February 2014 15:38

www.portlandin2016.org

I've spent the last couple of days polishing up the content for the Westercon69 bid page. The webmaster should be updating the site content and design soon. I have learned a lot about Portland that I had no clue was out there. The Chinese Gardens were built after I had moved to Washington and it was a pleasant surprise to discover them. I hope to visit the gardens this summer. I also had no idea about Portland's craft distilleries. Breweries I knew about, but distilleries, I did not. On a sad note, I also learned that the Church of Elvis and the Clinton's Street Theater are closed. No more midnight performances of Rocky.

Go check out Crash Cart in the app store!

by Meredith 31. January 2014 18:35

Our latest game is live. Produced by Appsomniacs, Crash Cart is a racing game that combines obstacles and comical crashes into a fun driving challenge. Beyond just playing the game, Crash Cart also offers a track editor that players can use to bring their own racing ideas to the game. My contribution to the game was to produce background images, both new and edited existing, that players can choose from when building their own tracks. Check out my awesome background graphics in my gallery.

 

 

 

 

Publications for Portland in 2016

by Meredith 15. January 2014 15:35

Portland in 2016 adI volunteered for the publications role on the bid committee for bringing Westercon to Portland. The bid process runs two years in advance of the convention where we must convince the voting attendees of Westercon 67 (in Utah this year) to vote for us. We're running unopposed but we still need to have a polished and competent bid. The first jobs for my role are to create ads and bookmarks that will be distributed at other regional conventions. I'll do some volunteering for fan tables and room parties if I'm attending the other conventions to, but for the most part I will be creating a lot of paper things.

 

 

OryCon 35 Pubs are Done

by Meredith 1. November 2013 22:39

On Saturday, I had to take over doing the pocket program and spent most of the weekend and into Monday building a new publication. I had all the content and had already tested creating the program grids so it should have been pretty simple to complete. But oh the issues I had with formatting! I wasted way too much time wrestling with character and paragraph formatting -- trying to recycle all of the styles that I had created in the souvenir book ended up being more trouble than it was worth. In the end, I cleared all of the formatting, made all new styles, and started from scratch. Everything worked way better after that.

Despite any headaches this project has given, it has been a fabulous opportunity to refine and refresh my print production skills. I’ve dealt with a printer (two actually) and their requirements, created new documents from scratch, gathered content, wrote new content, edited old content, prepped art, made ads, collected ads, and organized a complex layout in two publications. And the bonus… I got to brush up on my skills in Inkscape, Photoshop, and InDesign.

Yesterday, in between all the Halloween stuff I visited the printer and approved the proofs. The souvenir book and pocket program look great! Lithtex use a digital process for printing so the proof review was different than how I've done them in the past. They actually had both books completely bound and cut just as we would see them. It was pretty cool. I was going to do a tour of the printing process but totally forgot about it. I'll ask about it next year.

I'm already thinking about what I want to try out next year. I would love to get all of the souvenir book in full color and on glossy paper. I'll need to get creative with the quotes to see if that can happen. I'm also interested in feedback from the convention membership. I would like to know more about what they want to see in the printed publications.

Want to see what I’ve been working on? Follow the image links to get a sneak preview of this year’s publications. Or you can go to the convention next week to collect a copy in person.

 

More Ads for OryCon 35 Publications

by Meredith 23. October 2013 16:48

Needed several more ads for the Pocket Program. I’ve updated the gallery with the images. Two of the ads were comps for the other conventions (RadCon and Norwescon) because of there inadvertent help (aka we borrowed several of their ideas for our own convention). I thought a little extra help would be a nice thank you for them being so awesome.

I’m hoping to meet the person that did the Norwescon publications sometime (maybe at the 2014 con). I wanted to compliment them on how clean their layout is and how professional it all looks. Their pubs were a heavy influence in the design layout for OryCon this year. There were several elements that just seemed like a really smart solution, particularly in the Pocket Program. Hopefully they will appreciate the extra ad. <smiles>

Another project for my limitless spare time

by Meredith 11. October 2013 16:15

Appsomniacs is working on a new game called Crash Cart™ and I am helping out with creating a few backgrounds. In between OryCon publications work I have done only a few. After the convention I will crank up the output. This background is inspired by Halloween coming up and I thought a Tim Burtonesque theme would be fun to make.

 

 

 

 

 

OryCon 36 Ad

by Meredith 1. October 2013 16:44

Working on the OryCon 35 Souvenir Book and Pocket Program I need to create an ad for next year’s convention. These are the ads that I created with the graphics and instructions given. The Pocket Program ad needs to be black and white.

My production schedule for all the publications is looking good. I am supposed to have all the parts and pieces collected and placed into layout by the end of next week. I have 90% of my materials.  

Finding photos has been a bit challenging. High res images with a note for photo credit would be very welcome. Currently, all the photos published in the souvenir book will be black and white (the CMYK section is reserved for the guests of honor and ads). We might be able to go full color next year. I plan to add a little blurb of text about photo submissions into the pubs. Maybe we can get more submissions for next year.

Because we have such an amazing number of panelists this year, the only way to fit panelist bios into the souvenir book is to limit text to 75 words per person. I'm working with programming to get a message out to everyone. Also, because of the large quantities of panelists and programming I need to get a new print quote for the pocket program. In my brief phone conversation with the our rep at Lithtex today I learned of several things we can do to save us some money on printing the pocket program. I am going to meet with them on Wed to work out a new design that will give us the the most pages for our money. I really like Norwescon's pocket program and would like to see if we can have something similar. 

Regarding ads, I have made contact with all the other conventions that we are doing ad swaps with and should be receiving their art files soon. 

All of this reminds me of my old job at Pelican Productions. Fun times!

 

 

 

 

About Meredith Cook

Welcome to my repository of creative expression. I'm not a happy camper unless I am making something and over the years I have dabbled in quite a few different kinds of art projects. Some projects come from taking art classes, others are completely hobby driven, and projects like home decor come from a need to customize an item and make it better or unique. The overall theme behind what I do is to learn how to manipulate objects and practice what I know about visual aesthetic and good design. Oh yeah, and to have fun.

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