Tag: graphic design

#184 Chocolates & Truffles

Chaz DeSimone 5 Comments
#184 Chocolates & Truffles
Click image to view full size or download poster for gallery-​quality printing & framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Chocolates & Truffles

But truf­fles are choco­lates, you say. Right, how­ev­er I’ve titled this “Choco­lates & Truf­fles” for a cou­ple reasons:

First, truf­fles are a unique type of con­fec­tion. Although they are coat­ed with choco­late, they are most­ly known for their ganache fill­ings of caramel, can­died orange peel, hazel­nut, cof­fee, fruits, dates or even more choco­late. Sim­ply put, truf­fles are a kind of choco­late where­as choco­late is a fla­vor of truf­fles. (Here’s anoth­er way to look at it is: a chocolate-​covered ice cream bar is cat­e­go­rized as ice cream, not choco­late candy.)

The oth­er rea­son I named this Amper­Art piece “Choco­lates & Truf­fles” is because my orig­i­nal title was too plain & awk­ward: “Dark & Milk.” When I found the pho­to­graph that includ­ed an assort­ment of both choco­lates & truf­fles, that tast­ed like the sweet spot for the title. (Of course I delib­er­at­ed way too long on “Choco­lates & Truf­fles” vs “Truf­fles & Choco­lates.” I won’t explain my deci­sion process here; the box of can­dy would expire before its “best by” date.)

What is chocolate?

I don’t have to tell you what choco­late is — it’s one of the most pop­u­lar foods on the plan­et. It’s cre­at­ed from the beans of cacao trees. These beans are har­vest­ed into a dark, cream­ing brown mate­r­i­al used for all types of bak­ing & cook­ing. It’s also used to make all your favorite sweet treats such as brown­ies, cakes & can­dy bars.

What are chocolate truffles?

Tak­ing its roots in Europe, choco­late truf­fle is a dessert del­i­ca­cy that has a long & deli­cious his­to­ry. The name comes from a Latin word mean­ing ‘lump’ because of its sim­i­lar­i­ty in appear­ance to truf­fle mush­room, a kind of fun­gus that grows under Hazel, Poplar & Oak trees. Choco­late truf­fles are cre­at­ed using ganache & a type of coat­ing, usu­al­ly some type of con­fec­tion or dark, white or milk choco­late & cocoa pow­der. They’re then tra­di­tion­al­ly rolled into a rus­tic, mis­shapen look to resem­ble the truf­fle mush­room they’re named after. They often come in fill­ings of caramel, dif­fer­ent fla­vors of cream, fruits, dates or even more chocolate.

Just for comparison:

chocolate candy

choco­late

chocolate truffle

choco­late truffle

truffle fungus

non-​chocolate truf­fle
(aka fun­gus)

Dedication

Amper­Art #184 Choco­lates & Truf­fles is ded­i­cat­ed to three spe­cial ladies: 

❤ Leona DeS­i­mone, my moth­er, who loved See’s choco­lates & always had a box at hol­i­day dinners,

❤ Roslyn, my younger sis­ter, who car­ries on the tra­di­tion of See’s dur­ing the holidays, &

❤ Jeanette, my “adopt­ed old­er sis­ter” who loves (& intro­duced me to) truffles.

My favorite can­dy is also See’s — but it’s the but­ter­scotch marsh­mal­low kiss­es. I don’t care for chocolate.

What’s your favorite type of chocolate?
Production notes for #184 Chocolates & Truffles:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Photoshop
Font (text): French Script
Font (ampersand): Capistrano
Credits:
Photograph: all​star​.by via deposit​pho​tos​.com (modified)
Reference: truf​fleers​.com/​b​l​o​g​s​/​o​u​r​-​b​l​o​g​/​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​-​b​e​t​w​e​e​n​-​t​r​u​f​f​l​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​c​h​o​c​o​l​ate
Other credits as noted
Note: “&” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.

Chaz DeS­i­mone is the cre­ator of Amper­Art and own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat and his entire career is design for clients who desire the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing cre­ative. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com to dis­cuss your project, pick his brain, or just talk shop.

Chaz sez...

Who banned the ampersand?

Whoever thought up the syntax for Universal Resource Locators (URLs) was 100% coder & 0% copywriter. No foresight whatsoever. We can’t even use common punctuation in a URL except for the hyphen & underscore. It sure makes all the AmperArt URLs ugly & hard to understand—no ampersands allowed!
This is just one of the rants on my blog, chaz sez.
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez
Desimone Design
Desimone Design

#93 Work & Turn

Chaz DeSimone 2 Comments

Click to download hi-rez pdf

#93 Work & Turn
Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

“Work & Turn” is a term used by print­ers to print both sides of a sheet of paper with just one plate & one press set-up.

Find a com­plete list of print­ing terms at wcb​s4print​ing​.com. For more infor­ma­tion about this out­stand­ing full-​service print­er, see the “chaz sez” col­umn below.

What is “work & turn”?

In the case of a two-​sided fly­er, the work & turn job’s plate & paper will be large enough to con­tain two full fly­ers. The plate is set up to print both the front & back images of the fly­er in just one pass. The print­ed work & turn sheet will look like the Amper­Art Work & Turn art, above, con­tain­ing two full fly­ers where the front side is adja­cent to the back side.*

Then then the paper is flipped end-​for-​end (after the ink is dry) so the print­ed side is down and the blank side is up, & then print­ed again with the same plate. In this way, the front of each fly­er will con­tain the oppo­site image on the back. (It’s impor­tant to flip the paper the right way, or each fly­er could con­tain two “front” sides or two “back” sides. Yes, I’ve made that mistake.)

The sheets are then cut apart in the cen­ter to make two fin­ished items, like this — each work & turn fly­er will have a front & a back side:

front & back of a work & turn job

Although one plate could be used for a 1‑color work & turn job, sev­er­al plates would be required for full-​color print­ing such as shown in the Amper­Art Work & Turn art­work. Still, only one press set-​up is required with only one set of plates, not a sep­a­rate set for front & back. The paper is passed through, flipped, & passed through again.

*Tech­ni­cal note: The Amper­art Work & Turn image would actu­al­ly be print­ed full-​bleed (not shown in the Amper­Art Work & Turn piece), then trimmed on all four sides as well as in half. But full bleed is anoth­er dis­cus­sion. “Bleed,” “work & turn,” and oth­er print­ing jar­gon is explained in a com­pre­hen­sive glos­sary page at wcb​s4print​ing​.com. For more infor­ma­tion about this out­stand­ing print­er, keep reading…

chaz sez ...

Here’s a real coin­ci­dence: I searched Google for “work & turn” to find a sim­ple def­i­n­i­tion which I could mod­i­fy for my read­ers. The page I was lead to is wcb​s4print​ing​.com print­ing terms, an excel­lent list of print­ing terms pro­vid­ed by a full-​service print­er in Palm Desert—just a few towns over from me! Of the thou­sands of print­ers all over the world, I find this to be quite a coincidence…like an invi­ta­tion for a short dri­ve to take in the won­der­ful smell of ink & hear the roar of the presses.

The full list of ser­vices & out­stand­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als have enticed me to ask wcb​s4print​ing​.com for a quote on an upcom­ing print job. And when a client needs custom-​printed bags, badge hold­ers, book­marks, lug­gage straps & tags, mag­nets, mugs, name badges, pass­port wal­lets, pens or post-​it notes…
their spe­cial­ty divi­sion, wcb​s4L​o​go​Prod​ucts​.com, han­dles all those items.

Small world. Or as the TV soap goes, As the World Work & Turns.

Production notes for #93 Work & Turn:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Illustrator
Fonts: Rockwell, Bodoni, DIN Schrift
Ampersand: DIN Schrift, modified

Relat­ed arti­cle in the Print­ing & Pub­lish­ing series:
#63 Upper & Lowercase

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

#65 Black & Blue

Chaz DeSimone 8 Comments

65-black-blue

Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

My favorite col­ors are black & “char­lie blue.”

Black is actu­al­ly my very favorite col­or & yes, it is a col­or. (See “chaz sez” below.) “Char­lie blue,” as my friends know it, is any­thing between Cray­ola Blue Green to cerulean to turquoise to cyan (one of the four print­ing ink col­ors). Amper­Art #65, Black & Blue, fea­tures CBG as I call it, cyan, and one oth­er blue which I’ll get to lat­er. All my favorite blues are some­where in-​between CBG and cyan.

I am not fond of sky blue, navy, baby blue nor roy­al blue. They are cold. (Yes, I know, my very favorite col­or—black—is def­i­nite­ly freez­ing. But we’re talk­ing blue here.)

There is a very deep blue that does tin­gle my col­or bone. That’s cobalt blue. My first mem­o­ry of that col­or is my father’s blue cuff links. Also the knob on his steer­ing wheel to help turn the tires before pow­er steer­ing (that acces­so­ry became ille­gal because when the steer­ing wheel snapped back the knob could remove a fin­ger or two). & the cool red tail lights with the blue dot in the mid­dle, which cre­at­ed a mag­i­cal col­or effect.  They’re pop­u­lar again today but I remem­ber the orig­i­nals on my dad’s 1950-​something auto­mo­bile. Prob­a­bly no oth­er rec­ol­lec­tion of cobalt blue is stronger for me than the bot­tle of Vicks VapoRub. That stuff felt ice-​cold as the col­or of the bot­tle it was pack­aged in. I’m also par­tial to cobalt blue because it is the favorite col­or of my moth­er and my broth­er Rob. So that is the oth­er blue in this Amper­Art piece.

Vicks-jar-with-lid-circle

Just look­ing at this Vicks jar opens my sinus­es! Oth­er prod­ucts in cobalt blue bot­tles were Noxze­ma, Phillips Milk of Mag­ne­sia (sounds appe­tiz­ing, does­n’t it?), Bro­mo Seltzer, Nivea and Blue Coral.

In fair­ness to navy, roy­al blue, sky blue & all those that are not my favorites, com­bine them with var­i­ous oth­er col­ors & they cre­ate out­stand­ing col­or schemes. Of course, the same could be said for poop brown.

I am releas­ing #65 Black & Blue dur­ing the play­ful days of sum­mer, because that’s when I recall we’d get the most bruised up falling off our bikes, skate­boards, or just play­ing in the back­yard. I did, any­way. I was a real klutz. Still can’t ride a skateboard.

listen up! Black is a col­or! Not the absence of col­or, nor the com­bi­na­tion of all col­ors. It is col­or. So is white. So why do peo­ple say it’s all the col­ors or no col­or? Because they don’t know the def­i­n­i­tion of col­or. “Col­or” means the descrip­tion of the hue, val­ue & tone. Pure yel­low is a col­or that has a hue some­where between orange & green on the col­or wheel, a very light val­ue (high-​key, or very bright com­pared to very dark such as navy blue), & min­i­mal tone (gray­ish­ness; mauve & sage green have medi­um tone).

The col­or black is defined by no hue (red, yel­low, blue, etc.), the dark­est val­ue, & zero tone. White is defined by no hue, the light­est val­ue, & zero tone. So you see, black & white have no hue & no tone, but they are both colors.

If you want to have some fun with all the oth­er col­ors, check out the Cray­ola web­site, espe­cial­ly the his­to­ry & the Cray­ola Expe­ri­ence where kids (includ­ing big kids) get to play & cre­ate among all things Cray­ola, & see how they are made. If you can’t make it to the fac­to­ry in Eas­t­on, Penn­syl­va­nia, watch this video: How Cray­olas Are Made.

I love Cray­olas. (I won’t use any oth­er brand; the col­ors aren’t as pure, they’re waxy & they just aren’t Cray­ola.) I remem­ber when the box of 64 pre­miered, with the awe­some Built-​In Sharp­en­er. I prob­a­bly have the few stubs that are left of my orig­i­nal set some­where, but today I have The Ulti­mate Cray­ola Col­lec­tion — 152 dif­fer­ent col­ors! — on my desk. I use them fre­quent­ly, & always to sign impor­tant legal doc­u­ments. For that task, of course, it’s Cray­ola Blue Green.

PRODUCTION NOTES:
Original size: 20×30 inches
Program: Illustrator
Lettering: Hand-​lettered by Chaz DeSimone
Colors: Cyan, cobalt blue, Crayola Blue Green & black
CREDITS:
Vicks ad: flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​2​8​1​5​3​7​8​3​@​N​08/ “SaltyCotton” has nearly 2000 photos of vintage ads in pristine condition. An ad designer’s or collector’s eye candy overload!
Vicks jar: Joe Corr on pin​ter​est​.com/​p​i​n​/​2​7​4​9​3​0​7​5​2​2​2​5​6​7​2​7​32/ and etsy​.com/​s​h​o​p​/​o​w​l​s​o​n​g​v​i​n​t​age Beautiful collectibles and antiques.