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Category Archives: By Design
2002 – IN THE BEGINNING
A simple good wish and an even simpler pencil drawing of a globe-spanning dinner table (what?!?), were the ingredients in my first ever Christmas Card, created in 2002.
COVER
INSIDE
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MUSI-CAL
“MUSI-CAL” – Created Spring 2015. Original poster & photo by PaC. Assists: Cal Ripken, Jr. & Walter Iooss, Jr.
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MANY HAPPY MEALS
My latest collaboration with the acclaimed graphic arts team at DeLeo Design is this newly imagined logo for one of our family’s favorite gathering spots, Angelina’s Kitchen.
The color scheme spoofery is an homage chosen to salute the sheer volume of visitors whose tummies and spirits Angelina’s has pleased over the years, an innumerable group said to be rivaled in size only by the crowds at that place Ol’ Man Kroc dreamed up. The name of it escapes me.
Thanks to everyone at Angelina’s for all the good times, and to Gina DeLeo-Kennedy for the typically outstanding design work — transforming my cocktail-napkin sketch into a technicolor dream coat.
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BASEBALL, RAY
(Photo: PaC)
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YORN YESTERDAY
(Poster by PaC, created circa 2004)
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2007 – BLISSMAS
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
(Poster by PaC, Created circa. 2002)
PAGE FROM A SAGE: Gridlocked
(Drawing: PaC)
AW SNAP!
(Poster by PaC, 2014)
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ROLLING LIKE THE BUS
In honor of consecutive stellar performances by Notre Dame to open the 2014 season, we’re dipping back into the archives to share the drawing below. It was done back when I was merely a Tweedlet in Mrs. Davis’s 6th grade art class, and only years later, autographed by the subject, Jerome Bettis. Long before he was nicknamed “The Bus” during his NFL career, Bettis was a bulldozing fullback in South Bend — though even his physical style might have met its match in the Irish defense on display the last two weeks. Sure, the now departed Bob Diaco may have resembled Don Draper, but so far his defenses were mere impostors compared with Brian Van Gorder’s Van Goghs. The first year Irish Defensive Coordinator has a name like a Dutch Master but through two games his group is pure Cohiba.
(Drawing by PaC – Autumn, 1992)
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FOURTH OF MEMORIES
Fireworks and chocolate ice cream don’t look alike, don’t sound alike. My best guess is they don’t taste the same. But for the way they both possess the ability to delight even on those rare occasions that they’re underwhelming, these smile-inspiring fraternal twins of summer simply must be made of some of the same stuff.
Among all the stunning pyrotechnic displays made in the American skies each 4th of July, there is none better than the show over the waters of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Give it a look some time, especially if you can do so from a boat anchored in the Chesapeake. For the full effect, pack your own Stars and Stripes to help set a mood like the one pictured below.
OL’ GLORY in the OL’ LINE STATE – Fourth of July fireworks over Chesapeake Bay, as seen from the middle of Chesapeake Bay. (Photo: PaC)
America’s Birthday, 2014 is now in the rear view, but here’s the best flag-centric reading this weekend had to offer: a story from The Atlantic on The O.S.S.B, aka, The Original Star Spangled Banner, and via FastCompanyDesign, an illustrated biography of the American flag.
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STEALING FROM TIFFANY’S
Twelve years ago today, almost exactly to the moment this post goes up, my eyes gazed on this artwork for the first time. Varying in size, color, and composition — from small and flat under mattes and polished glass, to movie-theater-lobby-esque large format, to three-dimensional shadow boxes in frames custom made of reconstituted desk drawers — it comprised the then little known passion project of America’s “King of the Football Movies.” And like the montages he and his filmmaking brain trust popularized, the work resonated with my eyes and ears in such a way that I couldn’t help but imitate it — in part, in the poster below from 2003.
If you’re feeling generous call it flattery, and if you must, call it theft – but then only in consideration of that advice the King himself was known to impart, “If you’re going to steal, steal from Tiffany’s.” I don’t recall what I had for breakfast twelve years ago today ; I can barely remember what I had today. But June 3, 2002 — and how it changed the way I see the world — is a morning I won’t forget.
“Wilbury Po’ster Boys”, created circa 2003. (Original poster and photo by PaC)
MY NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS OF SOME GUY NAMED BUBBA WATSON
Four days after this practice swing, Bubba Watson would don his first green jacket before uttering, with beautiful humility, “I never got this far in my dreams.”
Just after 8am on the morning of Wednesday, April 4, 2012, I stood on the edge of the 14th tee box at Augusta National Golf Course, a trigger happy shutterbug. Getting in position early had afforded me a clear view of the hopeful pros making their way through the final practice round before the start of that week’s Masters. Ignorance of the etiquette for where and when I could snap photos gave me the nerve to capture several action sequences of guys teeing off. So I shot first and asked questions later, questions like, “Who was that guy with the pink driver?”
I now know that the 14th at Augusta is called “Chinese Fir”, and that the Man in White that morning was named Bubba Watson. He’d go on to win his first green jacket four days after I watched him practice ; his second two years and nine days later. Yes, I got shots of Tiger on the tee that morning, and I like them, too. But none more than these images of Bubba just before takeoff, lightning as accidentally bottled as it’s ever been.
(All Photos: PaC)
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2003 – WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT
Vince Guaraldi’s piano stylings … Lucy pining for real estate … Charlie Brown dropping knowledge on the Peanuts, in spite of himself. Lots of “kids stuff” gets better and more meaningful with age, but none more so than “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, the inspiration for the very cut-and-pasted second card ever.
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- Front Cover
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- Inside
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- Back Cover
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SHUTTERS SHUDDER: How Winter is Wearing on Perry the House Face
This portrait gallery illustrates
the stages of decay
through which the interminable winter
has plunged the pluck
of Perry the House Face …
(more…)
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IRISH? BULLY!
The electoral collage “IRISH? BULLY!” was created circa 2005. Look closely for my favorite part, arguably TR’s most famous line, and CLICK HERE to read the money quote in full. Happy Oval Officemans Day.
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ODE TO PLIMPTON
A tribute to the sporting lives of the great George Plimpton: famed observer, participant, and dismayed healer of Will Hunting. Created in 2004.
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2013 – CHUCKDATE
This was the first year I sidestepped scissors, stamps, and the sweet smell of xerox fumes, producing an all digital card out of a table design, photo, and email blast that went out on The Night Before. (Photo: PaC)
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2009 – WAITING FOR JANE*
Ma and I were expecting our first special delivery – to arrive around Christmas – when I designed this card. Jane* joined us three days before Santa’s visit, giving him plenty of time to hang a stocking for her – as the drawing hoped that he would.
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2008 – TASTE THE HOLIDAYS
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2006 – THE AGATE TYPE
The Clement Clark Moore standard meets, you guessed it, Norman the Great. Pickle lovers will recognize traces of their favorite brand in the seal at center.
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2005 – HOLIDAY HIPSTER
Combining the dark shades so featured in a hit of that season with the body of a classic Rockwell? Maybe I am.
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HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORD
Created circa 2003, this piece combines three heavy hitters: Rocky Marciano, the writers WC Heinz, and Hemingway, who penned the quotation featured at lower right in type (above). Click the thumbnail below for a closer look at an essential question of the Old Man behind The Old Man and the Sea.
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2004 – CATCH THE CLARK, HOLD THE GRISWOLD
Proofs of the cover and inside of the ’04 edition, inspired — and autographed by — the great Walter Iooss, Jr. If you never have, you really should catch him.
