 I have run my freelance and consulting business for close to 15 years. I love helping people develop their brands visually. I'll never forget my first client, they never paid me. I had done a ton of packaging concepts and he didn’t like any of them, so he decided he was not going to pay for anything he was not going to use. I guess the hours I spent crafting my masterpiece, practicing my presentation and printing the artwork on glossy paper no less (looking at the designs now I would be embarrassed too show anyone) was worthless. That’s when I decided this was the industry for me! :)
My next client was a referral. I was designing automotive ads and mailers for dealerships on the West Coast. I designed for San Diego, Los Angeles all the way up to Oregon and Seattle. Then the recession hit and business took a dip. People were not doing mailers, postage was too much. Matamala Design (the name of my business at the time) was on the decline. Well that client, my referral decided to do online advertising. 16 years later, we do emails, digital ads, E-books & website updates. The times have changed. They evolved with the times. One of the hardest things as a designer is to design for themselves. I’ve had school projects where you needed to design your brand, design your identity & build your logo. I must have done over 100 different versions of my logo/brand and I’ve hated every one, until now. I finally did it! I love my new logo. Clean, modern, typographic, sexy (yes, I think typography is sexy) And yes I did design it. It’s based off of the typeface Museo Sans designed by Jos Buivenga. Years ago a junior designer introduced me to the typeface at an agency during my love affair with Proxima Nova, I always thought it was a great font. I manipulated the bar in the capital A to give the logo a little motion. I adjusted kerning on the letterforms. That’s my Identity until its time to evolve again!  I am an Adobe guy, I love their products and have been using them for the last 15 years. Recently, I've been doing some web development with UI/UX functionality . I've always used Photoshop & In-Design for layout but it was suggested to me to Try out Adobe XD. I am totally impressed with the ease of use. It was fun designing in the software. I am far from a power user, i still have to wrap my head around the plugin library. Here are some prototypes Ive been working on. It was the holy trinity of Photoshop, Illustrator & In-Design but there is a new kid on the block with Adobe XD. Adobe XD is a vector-based user experience design tool for web apps and mobile apps, developed and published by Adobe Inc. It is available for macOS and Windows, although there are versions for iOS and Android to help preview the result of work directly on mobile devices.Start a free trial, visit https://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html  I've been doing alot of experimentation with the letter form. I have created an Instagram account where I'll be choosing phrases or words and setting them to a typeface. Here are a couple of examples of a clean san serif typeface, with a dot of red violence. Controlled like the typeface. The typeface used is Proxima Nova. It was designed by Mark Simonson. It is often described as a hybrid of Futura and Akzidenz Grotesk, combining a geometric appearance with modern proportions. This is one of my favorite go to typefaces. Here is a link to his website: https://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/proxima-nova You can also activate the font using Adobe Fonts: https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/proxima-nova   One of my favorite places to shoot is Colorado Island in San Diego. You get an insane view of down town. I got a new lens for my camera and I was testing out some accessories. Here are a couple of photos & videos of the trip.  I purchased a Movo, it is a motorized pan head for time lapse. As your time-lapse goes, it gives you a great panning sweep and gives you a great cinematic look. Below is what I captured. I am really excited about using it more.  When you have pro wrestler as a friend, life can get exciting. I had drew and design this logo for a t-shirt a couple of years ago. He then re used the artwork and created rig attire for his come back. My friend took a year off and made his debut this weekend and won a title from Zealot Wrestling. I had to take some photos.
 This has been a crazy month. My company hired an agency last summer to rebrand itself and all of its product brands. I am part of implementing the updated look, almost evolving the brand and implementing it in our digital and print communications. At first I was not wild about the brand development but there is a slick cohesiveness and a sophistication I am enjoying. Here are a couple of projects I have been working on. 
             
Last year was HellBoy's 25 anniversary. HellBoy is a character created by Mike Mignola, HellBoy fought Nazis occultists. Comic Con San Diego was celebrating by showcasing the character in their Souvenir Book and had a contest for artist to do their renditions of the character. My son who was 13 years old at the time, entered the contest. It was a proud Dad moment. I grew up reading and drawing comicbooks. I took his artwork, created vector artwork and made T-Shirts for us. Being in the creative field I love encouraging kids to express themselves through artwork. I think the shirt was bold and keeping the illustration red made it really stand out.
 Earlier last year I attended Marketing Nation presented by Marketo. I had a full schedule with my team, but I was able to sneak out on the first morning of the conference. I got an Uber and went exploring. I hiked all over the the Golden Gate Bridge. I was not able to walk across the bridge but I got some cool photos. 
  I designed artwork for merchandise for a friend who is a professional wrestler. He is gearing up to go back on the road and wanted new a new t-shirt for promotion. I take on fun projects like this to experiment. It keeps me loose and lets me try out techniques I wouldn't normally use. I took an event photo taken in Arizona and emphasized the the flying knee with vector elements. The best part of the design process for me is to do the mock ups.
Catching a great sunrise in San Diego is not to difficult, we have amazing days. My good friend and long time mentor/partner Neil Brouillette and I got up extra early to shoot and record the San Diego sunrise at Spanish Landing and Harbor Island, both locations by the airport. I am obsessed with timelapse so I would set up my GoPro Hero 4 and capture the sunrise behind downtown San Diego. Neil is working on Panramic HDR's and testing how his equipment handles low light. It is always great to go out and work on the craft. Here is what I caught! GoPro Hero 4 Timelapse with extras         Still Photography Canon Rebel/ GoPro Hero 4 |
Mike MatamalaCreative Director, Archives
November 2020
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