#155 Maintain Your Space & Cover Your Face

#155 Maintain Your Space & Cover Your Face
#155 Maintain Your Space & Cover Your Face
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.

The pandemic is entering a dangerous new phase for summer 2020.

We’ll soon real­ize how much dam­age has been done over the recent 4th of July week­end by those who won’t wear a mask & won’t keep their dis­tance & won’t even try to halt spread­ing the virus. Now that the big hol­i­day week­end is over with, & the next isn’t until Labor Day, maybe we can be more con­sid­er­ate of oth­ers & watch out for our own lives by fol­low­ing the exam­ple set by our friend the amper­sand who does wear a mask:

Download, print & iron-on image to a T-shirt.

Print & wear these T‑shirts to remind others to be safe & sane.

SHOULD I SELL THESE?

If you think I should make these shirts available as products for purchase, whether you’d wear one or not, please let me know in the comments.
(Um…would you wear one?)

To make T‑shirt:

INSTRUCTIONS: Down­load PDF or png image, print onto Avery T‑Shirt Trans­fer sheet using an inkjet print­er (not a laser print­er), & iron onto T‑shirt. Vis­it this Avery page for details & where to pur­chase trans­fer sheets (most office sup­ply & craft stores). You can also have the image print­ed onto a T‑shirt by some local spe­cial­ty shops or online T‑shirt printers.

Print these posters to remind others to be play it safe:

Print letter-size announcement

Print these poster-​style notices onto standard-​size paper & post all around.

Or be real discreet:

Drop these business-​size reminders around the room & acci­den­tal­ly into pock­ets & purses

Business card size

Down­load this sheet of 12 business-​card-​size notes & print on card stock or even plain paper. Trim & spread the word to end this pandemic.



Concept & design

This piece went through more con­cept and design iter­a­tions than I care to recall. The entire piece was fin­ished as the com­plete “mot­to” we’ve seen in PSAs all over town, shown here:

The original concept

But then, right before upload­ing, on June 30, I saw the headlines:

As patients rapid­ly fill hos­pi­tals, the pan­dem­ic may be enter­ing a dan­ger­ous new phase.
States set records for hos­pi­tal­iza­tions & man­date face masks.

Rather than post­ing the orig­i­nal Amper­Art with the phrase that’s preva­lent every­where, I scrapped it and decid­ed to cre­ate a tru­ly use­ful piece which hope­ful­ly will remind (or urge) enough peo­ple to “main­tain your space & cov­er your face” to pre­vent the spread of the coro­n­avirus & maybe save a life or two. Mean­ing wher­ev­er you are, you’ll be a liv­ing PSA wear­ing the shirt, tap­ing up posters, or hand­ing out cards to help end this pandemic.

I was able to pub­lish the new design by dead­line (last minute of June 2020) but it took a few more days to ren­der sev­er­al lay­outs & for­mats to tru­ly help the cause with reminder posters, tiny notes & T‑shirt imprints. 

T-shirt: ampersand wearing mask

Your opin­ion matters:

If you think I should make these shirts avail­able as prod­ucts for pur­chase, whether you’d wear one or not, please let me know in the com­ments. (Um…would you wear one?)

Thanks for help­ing end this incom­pre­hendible, dev­as­tat­ing pandemic. 

Have a fun & fantastic summer, even if you end up with a weird tan line on your face.


Production notes for #155 Maintain Your Space & Cover Your Face:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Programs: Adobe Photoshop
Font, text: Helvetica
Font, ampersand: Gill Sans
Credits:
Mask: deposit​pho​tos​.com

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.

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Chaz sez...
Want more?
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

#137 Hot & Humid

137 Hot & Humid
#137 Hot & Humid
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.

#137 Hot & Humid was eas­i­ly inspired: 

July 2019 is the hottest month in recorded history

Glob­al warm­ing used to be a phrase I’d pret­ty much ignore, but no more. It’s real­ly hap­pen­ing, & I feel worse for the ani­mals (from hip­pos & whales to the tini­est insects & fish) than I do for the humans; after all we caused it. Let’s hope it’s not too late to reverse the dam­age. Here’s a Newsweek arti­cle on the subject.

July 2019 is the hottest month ever record­ed, accord­ing to accu­rate, sys­tem­at­ic, glob­al ther­mome­ter mea­sure­ments of sur­face tem­per­a­tures — that means only since 1880. Still, it’s the hottest July in over 100 years.

Going back fur­ther, start­ing in 1639, with the inven­tion of the rain gauge & evap­or­ime­ter, & sev­er­al years lat­er, the barom­e­ter & con­den­sa­tion hygrom­e­ter, new instru­ments made it pos­si­ble to stan­dard­ize the record­ing of mete­o­ro­log­i­cal data from place to place. More at earth​magazine​.org


Too hot to cool off

Zero table fan
This is the cute lit­tle fan our fam­i­ly grew up with in the 50’s & 60’s.

It’s so hot — mean­ing every­body in town is run­ning their a/​c at max — that my air con­di­tion­er keeps cycling on & off due to lack of pow­er, so to save it from burn­ing out I just turned it off & sur­round­ed myself with a bunch of box fans, table fans, and even a lit­tle per­son­al fan. (They are also keep­ing the place cool for the cats.) Inter­est­ing how fans keep us cool: By blow­ing air around, the fan makes it eas­i­er for the air to evap­o­rate sweat from your skin, which is how you elim­i­nate body heat. The more evap­o­ra­tion, the cool­er you feel. (A fan alone actu­al­ly increas­es room tem­per­a­ture from the heat gen­er­at­ed by the motor.)


Concept & design

I’m cre­at­ing this piece in 100º weath­er with no air con­di­tion­ing (rea­son explained above) so there was no lack of inspi­ra­tion for the art­work. Swel­ter­ing sun, and humid­i­ty that caus­es glass to fog up, lends itself to the very device I used in my teens to learn the art & nuances of hand let­ter­ing: draw­ing on the bath­room mir­ror right after a steam­ing hot show­er. I used to draw on the mir­ror, my fin­ger repli­cat­ing the exact shape of a ful­ly loaded let­ter­ing brush or mark­er, some­times using the side of my thumb, some­times using my fin­ger­nail, but always pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al script & hand­writ­ten style let­ter­ing. I still do that to this day. (Fin­ger­paint on that slick paper accom­plish­es the same thing.) That’s where the amper­sand came from in #137 Hot & Humid. The rest of the design was inspired sim­ply from the heat & humid­i­ty I cre­at­ed it in.


Here, cool off:


 Please comment here.


chaz sez

Want more?
Rants & raves most­ly about design, some­times about the universe.

An occa­sion­al bit of use­ful advice.
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez


Production notes for #137 Hot & Humid:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Photoshop
Fonts: Block Berthold, Boli

Ampersand: Boli
Credits:
Artwork images: deposit​pho​tos​.com
Fan: apart​mentsi​like​.files​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​1​/​1​0​/​z​e​r​o​-​f​a​n​.​jpg
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, click on the image.

An excel­lent com­pa­ny, prod­uct or ser­vice needs brand­ing and graph­ic design that is prop­er, per­fect and professional.
Please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

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