On occasion, I meet up with other designers, challenging them to co-create an exquisite corpse* with me.

Here is the way this process works:

🡒 A theme is randomly selected from a list
🡒 You have 10 minutes to gather content, write, and do pencil sketches.
🡒 You have 30 minutes for digital production.
🡒 After 30 minutes, you trade files.
🡒 We jump straight into production. You must use everything in the file you received. But you can completely destroy it.

It's a bit like musical chairs, but for art.

* Mine is a variation on the original game of the 1920's art crowds, where they obscured the previous artwork using folded paper, leaving it untouched.

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In college (in business school, actually) I sat on the student board. I quickly decided that the only way to add real value to that position was going to be to make all the posters for the whole school.

I appropriated just enough funds for an Epson 1400, a huge stack of 13x19 Mohawk Superfine Paper, and a hacked, refillable ink cartridge system.

With that, I huddled into the corner, and like a true tyrant, created a paper inbox/outbox with a request form that every single club in the school had to use to get their free posters.

There was no time limit (except the posted date), no edits, and I printed and hung them myself. I would shoot an email before printing, and they would say yes or no. It was a simple, understandable, reliable process. Everyone loved it.

We had an in-school print shop which charged a huge amount for these posters (usually 11x17 or the forgettable 8.5x11) and required a one-month lead time. By skipping their "services" we ended up saving close to fourteen thousand dollars on this initiative, and doubled attendance at most of these events.

One of my happiest months was during the pandemic, when I somehow managed to get a 1:1 lesson with Jessica Hische. She got into my design files with a wrecking ball and set me straight.

Did it again with Draplin just a few months later. He taught me some real secrets around getting precise math in vector geometry I have never seen in any Skillshare or online tutorial since.

Experiments with blended linework in Illustrator

Flat cats, part of a series inspired by Charley Harpers modernist birds.

The junk drawer.
Thanks for making it this far!