King Lear Image for Portland Shakespeare Project
We recently completed a marketing image for Portland Shakespeare’s “The Lear Project” or “The Season of Lear”. The goal was to create a graphic image that could express the visceral, howling profundity of William Shakespeare’s King Lear. No big deal. Ol’ Bill had four hours and five acts to work with. We needed one image.
It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but Bill had five acts and over 3,300 lines to do his work, which has to equate to over 15,000 words. But do we get fifteen images? No. We get one.
The result is a pretty simple PhotoShop project, but it required some wandering and diddling, several fabulous ideas that suddenly became really stupid ideas, followed by panic, and then a bit of luck. So, you know, the standard process.
So what do you think of when you think about King Lear? Howling in the storm, obviously. And the Portland Shakes main production was to be set on a Virginia tobacco plantation, so we searched Google for an image of a storm that might suggest that location. We came up with this free wallpaper image:
That’s fine, but not “dramatic” enough. We shifted the color to get some orange into the sky to contrast with the green and give it some heat.
Then we added a green background (#39a1a2, in case you’re interested).
Then we changed the storm layer’s blending mode to “hard light” to get this effect.
The original idea was to put some kind of dead tree that looked like–or could be made to look like–it was vaguely human and reaching up toward the sky, being twisted by the storm. We found some great looking dead trees, but by the time we cut them out and tried to incorporate them into the landscape we had created, they just looked kind of silly. Blending them with a human figure? We had neither the time nor money to do the kind of photoshoot that might make the idea work, so instead we panicked. Momentarily. Then we said, “What the heck, we need some inspiration. Google ‘King Lear’ and see what shows up.” We didn’t have high hopes. We really didn’t want to get literal and put the face of an actor from somebody else’s production in the image, getting people shivering with antici…pation… ”Oh! Portland Shakes has hired Derek Jocobi (or Richard Burton, or John Gielgud…) to play King Lear! Let’s rush out and buy tickets!”
Lo and behold, up popped a wonderful photograph, full of a simple, tragic anguish that we instantly loved. But could we get the rights to use it? Within a minute we discovered that a) it was a photograph of one of my favorite actors, Greg Hicks (who I hadn’t even recognized) in his recent performance of Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), and b) the RSC had already granted permission, on the website where we found the photo, to use the photo, as long as we credited the photographer.
Score! Thank you Manuel Harlan, thank you RSC, thank you Greg Hicks for everything you give to everything you do.
We did a quick, very rough job of removing Mr. Hicks from his background, just so we could plop him into our storm image to see how he would look, and to find out if the image would even work. He worked a heck of a lot better than the tree, that’s for sure, and we figured we were onto something.
We moved experimented with blending options, and settled on the “overlay” option. We moved him around the frame and resized him, trying different compositions, and then, suddenly, this one jumped out at us.
Suddenly, he became both a part of the landscape, and enveloped by the storm. The clouds suggest a beard, completely disguising Mr. Hicks. Now he is Lear, not a famous actor, and his head is, literally, in the clouds. There is also something emotionally powerful about the fact that his left hand seems to be breaking through the clouds, but his right is lost, missing. A balance of hope and powerlessness.
Another stroke of luck: the rough edges of the sloppy cutout became insignificant. There was no need for refining the edges, pixel by pixel.
We added text–more orange to play against the green–and came up with this.
We loved it. But what would the client think?
“I really didn’t think we could do something as dramatic as what we had last season, but everyone really likes your new graphic. We can’t wait to get it up. Thank you very much for your hard and creative work on this. We are soon going to be better known for our graphic design than our productions.”
J.R., Portland Shakespeare Project
Olympia Police – Effective Design
Park revelers found a surprise upon returning to their cars.
This little item may not jump out at you as “good design”, but look a little closer and think about what “design” means.
Here’s the story. A group of friends recently visited Priest Point Park to enjoy a beautiful summer day. Upon returning to our cars, we all found the all-too-familiar yellow Olympia parking tickets on our windshields.
Everyone was incredulous. “What?! They’re giving parking tickets for parking in the park now?!” Trust us. We all read our “tickets” to find out what infraction we could possibly have committed and how much it was going to cost us.
Relief and amusement followed.
Set Up Mac Mail with Google Apps
In this short tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up Mac Mail to receive e-mail from a google apps account.
Fake a Facebook Place
You’ve all seen your friends “checking in” to locations on Facebook – maybe you’ve done it yourself once or twice. It’s a great way to share where you are and what you’re up to, and maybe connect with friends nearby. Sometimes checking into a place can get you a deal, like %20 off at an outlet store, or a free drink at a gig. And why not? You’re helping businesses spread the good word to all of your friends.
But the sad reality is that unless you have a location aware mobile device (like a smart phone or an iPad or something), you’re out of luck. Sorry Joe, you can’t check into your local bar and get a 2-for-1 drink deal from your laptop. Or can you?
Turns out, Facebook isn’t all-powerful and all-knowing, and like all things that rely on computers, it can be tricked.
In this short tutorial I’ll show you how to log-in to Facebook Places from a desktop or laptop computer, advertise a fake location on the planet, and check-in.