Artistry

I have been pretty obsessed over the past year with the artistry of ballet. Everything about it... the fluidity of movement, the shapes in both positive and negative space the dancers create, the mood it conveys so effectively without words – without music even, the tension and ease and color and form. One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2010 is to achieve – or at the very least strive to achieve these principles in my design.

Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-François Vilanoba in "Within The Golden Hour"; San Francisco Ballet

Let it Show, Let it Show, Let it Show!

Clearly, I have been given WAAAY too much license to write copy, conceptualize and stamp everything with my own personal aesthetic. Behold, my cutesy semi-retro Holiday Movie Fest poster. My favorite part is definitely the movie theatre carpet sampled and used as the pattern for the tree. And, of course, the popcorn snow and movie reel snowflakes. Doesn't it get you in the mood to sit outside in the cold with a snuggie and a hot chocolate and watch your favorite holiday movie? See you on Fulton Square!

All Images are property of Jody Piper and Harrah's New Orleans. ANY unauthorized use may result in legal action against the respective parties. All rights reserved 2009.

Must be 21 or older to gamble or obtain a Total Rewards® card. Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-522-4700. ©2009 Harrah's License Company, LLC.

December Cruise Giveaway

Give me a cruise giveaway promotion without a theme or any creative direction and I'm going to Jodify the hell out of it!

All Images are property of Jody Piper and Harrah's New Orleans. ANY unauthorized use may result in legal action against the respective parties. All rights reserved 2009.

Must be 21 or older to gamble or obtain a Total Rewards® card. Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-522-4700. ©2009 Harrah's License Company, LLC.

After Two Months of Labor...

This baby was born. The Tenth Anniversary Boxed VVIP Invitation for Harrah's New Orleans. I am actually pretty proud of keeping it as intact as I did considering all the challenges faced in the process of designing and producing this piece – which, of course, are the same challenges that pop up in designing ANY piece, specifically one as high-end and highly visible as this one.

Inspired by the familiar textures in a casino – card table felt and playing cards – I created a keepsake invitation in a table felt-covered box. The box included a booklet detailing the impressive contributions of Harrah's New Orleans to its community, an invitation to the VIP Anniversary Party and a commemorative deck of custom playing cards.

All Images are property of Jody Piper and Harrah's New Orleans. ANY unauthorized use may result in legal action against the respective parties. All rights reserved 2009.

Must be 21 or older to gamble or obtain a Total Rewards® card. Know When To Stop Before You Start.® Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-522-4700. ©2009 Harrah's License Company, LLC.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Every good designer needs a decent self-promotion packet. I have been thinking about this lately – and how horribly inept my silly little resume/portfolio PDF is. They fairly represent neither my abilities as a designer nor my personality. After a week or so of brainstorming on the subject, imagining an array of beautifully designed and flawlessly executed brochures it hit me… I am not a formal type of gal. While I take my work very seriously, I move through life with a healthy balance of childish humor and nostalgia. I started a doodle yesterday and, as I sketched and giggled incessantly, it evolved into the masthead for this blog. This morning, as I scanned, cleaned, colorized and got my layout just as I like it, the idea evolved yet again. My self-promotion package should represent myself, not just as an artist willing to express myself in less-than-conventional ways, but as person.... silliness and childlike wonderment intact! I started jotting down a short list of the things I have loved in my life. Silly things, fads and childhood memories I cling to now. I won’t even attempt to deny the fact that I still watch The Dark Crystal and Xanadu on a regular basis. But I digress…

I started doodling my doodles tonight – as doodling has always been a huge part of my creative process and, therefore, belong in any piece representative of me as a designer – putting on paper a few of my favorite things. Drawn in a juvenile manner, roughly sketched and vaguely ill-proportioned, they are designed to invoke feelings of comfort, familiarity and whimsy. These illustrations will eventually make their way into my fun yet serious-enough-to-hire-me self-promotional package. There, goddess willing, they will drum up some fortuitous freelance work and opportunities ripe for creativity!

Stagnate

You would think I was a fount of creativity, wouldn’t you? You would imagine me, an Art Director (in all but title and salary), a person who spends her day dealing with the design and production of vast quantities of direct mails and signage and photography, would ooze creativity. I am sorry to report you would be disappointed. After the bulk of a career known as the office speed demon, every last-minute rush project imagined dropped in my lap with mere hours before deadline – and missing deadlines is on par with taking a Doc Martin to the gut for me and my over-inflated work ethic – I have lost most anything with some semblance to creativity. It has been systematically over-worked out of me.

Once upon a time I was a doodler. I doodled on every relatively still surface I could find – margins and notepads, binder covers and locker doors, napkins, scraps and even the living flesh of both myself and friends. I doodled with purpose, a clearly intended image taking shape. I doodled without thought, fingers working on the backside of a memo while my mind engaged (at least somewhat) in an office meeting. I doodled because somewhere in my cells with all the ribosomes and mitochondria and cytoplasm floated around some tiny molecule hell-bent on spilling whatever thoughts and emotions were trapped inside out into the material world. Now, I will admit I have never been a great artist. My doodles or drawings or whatever else I scratched out on paper are no great works of art. I have never had any formal fine art training, never sat in a classroom sketching apples and vases learning about perspective and proportion. I draw because I love it, I draw because it is a challenge, because it stretches my abilities, somehow lightens my emotional load and relaxes me.

Sadly, that creativity that once soothed me has atrophied, has gone dormant and become nigh inaccessible to me. And, with that, any confidence I have had in myself as a creative person has dried up like slugs on a hot sidewalk. At times, all that remains is an insane and insatiable jealousy of people still able to tap into their creativity, specifically those in my same field. When I see my fellow designer at work drawing in his sketch pad, retracing those drawings in Illustrator, and given the wide berth of time and resources necessary to creating something truly unique – while I, with nothing but a cubicle wall separating us, am mired down in direct mail pieces and e-blasts with two-day turnaround times, unable to take the time to actually CREATE anything, shackled to the creativity-sapping brand standards – well, I toggle between wanting to commit acts of gruesome violence and throwing myself off the Crescent City Connection in some ill-conceived cry for help.

And so, here I am… on a Saturday morning at my favorite coffee house with a sketchpad and a No. 2 pencil… in what is, perhaps, a more logically conceived attempt to take back some small part of what I once was. Harking back to a time with the Martinez Art Guild, I am making a commitment to myself that once a week I will come here – free from deadlines and brand standards and the incessant “creative direction” from those not genuinely qualified to give it, free from expectations and agenda, free from self-doubt and self-deprecation, free from the distractions of the internet and t.v. and cell phone – and I will doodle. I will draw or sketch, sometimes with a clear intent, other times at random while eavesdropping on my neighbors. There simply MUST be something left in me, something I can unearth if I dig long enough and hard enough, if I am as relentless in this pursuit as I am with everything else truly important to me.