My wife and I started watching season 3 of The Sing Off on ABC this Fall. I love accapella music, so this was a great show. On of our favorite groups was the 5-member vocal sensation, Pentatonix.

I had some free time today, so I decided to make some fan art. Enjoy.

You can download the high-res version here.

Leah and I are busy designing our Christmas cards this year.  Stay tuned; more to come!

The bartender says, “We don’t serve Faster-Than-Light particles here.”
A neutrino walks into a bar.

I’m a nerd, so when I first herd that joke, I found it hilarious.  I thought about it all day; silently chuckling to myself.  It’s funny to me because I understood the premise. But when I told it to others, I simply got blank stares. “What’s a neutrino?”

In the world of graphic design, I see this situation play out all the time.  Not that we are telling jokes that we think are funny, only to miss the mark with others.  Instead, we are creating designs that we think are “good”, but falls flat with our audience.

Here’s an example from the real world –

My apartment complex posted signs above our mailboxes to remind everyone that rent is due before the 5^th of each month. (Full disclosure: I love my apartment complex. The rent is great, the staff is helpful, and they keep everything very clean. They are always professional.)

Just by looking at the type; what emotion did you feel from it?  More than one person has said, “It looks like it’s from a horror movie.” Bingo.  The design’s failure boils down to a poor choice of typeface. I know it’s October, but a friendly reminder from professional management shouldn’t scare the residents into compliance.  Freddy Krueger doesn’t work here.  If he does, I’m leaving.

So, being a socially responsible designer, I fixed the problem.   Here’s my design –

It still says the same thing.  Only now the tone is softer.  “We’d like to have your money on time, please” , instead of, “I’m going to kill your firstborn if you’re late!”

What do you think about this situation?  Do you know any good/bad jokes?

PS. If you didn’t get the neutrino joke, try reading here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Speed.

Converting a color PDF to Grayscale is easier than you think.  This process will work on CMYK, RGB, and Spot colors found throughout your entire document.    You will need Adobe Acrobat Pro in order to do this. (I think version 8 or higher).

1: Open your document

2: Find the Advanced menu – Select Print Production – then Preflight

3: Select PDF Fixups – then Convert to Grayscale

4: Click Analyze and Fix then re-save the document.

Your done!  Notice that the entire PDF is now grayscale (The document size will probably be a little less too).

My wife is an awesome decorator. She put together this table setting as a twist on traditional autumn decor.

You can view the process that it took to create this illustration at my youtube channel: