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Since the flavor of the past few weeks has been House 33, I’m throwing up another detail of one of the shirts. The “Bones” T was offered in the first House 33 run and is long ago sold out. I don’t know if we’ll ever see it again although check the ebays if you’re feeling lucky. I have one in my closet that I’ll break out this summer if I can shave the wintertime fat off of my abs. This art was done with my trusty brush and ink bottle while shoving too many Wawa donuts and coffees in my face.
Posted 990 days ago by Chris Gardner in from-the-crates
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the blog the last couple days you’ll remember that a limited bunch of House 33 shirts became available here. I thought I’d show a portion of the brushed ink-art for the Gross 33 T since it’s the size of a postage stamp on the site. This was one of my favorites to illustrate and more shirts in this vein will be on the way soon enough. So, if you want your favorite girl to say “Eww, what’s that?!... that’s gross honey, I don’t like it!” like my wife did, be sure to grab one right away. The svelt model types went on a spree last night and snapped up all but 5 of ‘em. One XL and 4 XXL’s remain. If you’ve got the big guns to fill these out, they’re all yours.
Posted 996 days ago by Chris Gardner in from-the-crates
Sometime in the near future House will be releasing a snappy new font set with a neat little guy as the spokesman for the thing. Here are the earliest roughs for him, they’ll never see the light of day anywhere but on the blog. We’ve simplified him down and changed him considerably since these sketches were done. Tal is sitting in his basement as we speak working feverishly to finish the fonts while trying not to waste too much time admiring his legendary Eagles bathroom.
Posted 1004 days ago by Chris Gardner in Work-in-Progress
See that? If you’d been listening to David Lee’s new morning show on 94.1 WYSP in philly, you’d have heard him talking about House Industries. So listen to Dave, get your wallet unchained and buy some House stuff.
Posted 1011 days ago by Chris Gardner in events
Seems that after I posted yesterday, the pic of Jack Fox mysteriously disappeared from the House 33 site. I’ve rescued it and re-posted it here. That’s Barnzley looking happy as all hell in the front.
Posted 1024 days ago by Chris Gardner in Work-in-Progress
Some time ago with Andy in the art directors chair next to me, I sat down with my pencils intent on figuring out this guys visual. Here are three of maybe a few dozen sketches from the beginning of it all. We were all Hanna-Barbera’d up initially but got away from it as we went along. Go check out the site over at House33 to see how the old fellow looked in the end.
Posted 1025 days ago by Chris Gardner in Work-in-Progress
Busy around the studio of late, here’a a quick one. This is about as tight as I’ll ever get with a sketch, the good stuff happens while finishing with the ink or whatever. Although I’ll have to go back in and refine the heck out the hands, I’m terrible at them. I’ll spend half my time fiddling around with hands in hopes of making the things look right. I cropped the sketch this way to hide the other one, you should see it, it’s like a damned Popeye hand or something. For God’s sake, learn how to draw hands, spend time on them, lots of time. I’ll have to take my own advice someday when I have some uh….. time.
Posted 1032 days ago by Chris Gardner in Work-in-Progress
We all know that Ken loves to see his mug on the blog. Here’s one he missed, it’s a little known fact that before Rich and Andy got him all cleaned up and gave him a job he was toiling away as the night manager at a Chucky-Cheese. (see above sketch) Rumor has it he regularly subbed as the big dancing bear in the party room, spearheaded a movement to get a vegan pizza on the menu and he also locked up a major award while on the job, shiniest ski-balls in the county if I recall.
Posted 1046 days ago by Chris Gardner in About-House
I’ve been asked a few times about the silhouettes we’ve done here. Everybody and their mother assumes that we’ve taken photos of lovely ladies and streamlined the things. 99 percent of the silos you’ll see out in design-land seem to incorporate that technique. I find that you’ll sometimes end up with an adequate silhouette but it usually has quite a few oddities due to elements from real life that aren’t needed… a strange wrinkle on a shirt, shoelaces that have settled clumsily etc. Not to mention Streamline is garbage. What I’ve done and recommend is to reference photos from magazines or books or TV and work out a sketch. As you’ll see above, I’ve done my best to work out a nice stance and I’ve broken it down to only the desired elements which were a skirt, wristbands and other things not shown just yet. Jump into Illustrator, grab the pen tool and go to work by hand on the outlines adjusting, moving things around and tweaking as you go. In the end, hopefully you’ll have a nice silhouette with everything you need and nothing you don’t.
Posted 1053 days ago by Chris Gardner in Work-in-Progress
If I only knew then what I know now… I always think of that when it comes to artwork. Here’s some hard-learned advice, perhaps it’ll help someone to jump ahead of the curve a little bit. Of course, art is subjective so feel free to ignore this and soldier on without me. When I first started drawing as a young comic nerd in training everything I illustrated had to be super tight and insanely pinpoint sharp. Fast forward seven years and I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve learned to loosen up, to control the tools instead of being controlled by them. If you take a quick peek above at the snippet of our pal Ed Benguiat, you’ll (hopefully) see ink that dances around a bit, eyebrows that weren’t fretted over, and an illustration that’s alive instead of stagnant and dead. Seven years from now I hope to hate this drawing because I’ve gone somewhere better artistically. Right now I’m happy with it, but I’ll continue to chase the knowledge that I haven’t yet found…
Posted 1088 days ago by Chris Gardner in from-the-crates
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House Industries Show at Subliminal Projects
A new exhibition of prints, patterns, installations and sculptures based on House Industries’ 15-year excursion into the alphabetical world.
November 8 – December 5, 2008
http://www.subliminalprojects.com/
Posted 13 days ago by Rich Roat in events
Besides ordering the secret potato at Musso & Franks and wrecking exotic cars in Malibu, the hippest thing to do in LA these days is to screen-print your own T-shirts at Fresh-Pressed in Los Feliz. We worked with the Fresh-Pressed folks to develop a Font Kiosk, a free-standing machine that allows users to set T-shirt art in select House Industries typefaces. Now even the most pithy one-liner will abound with renewed typographic and cultural relevance. Stop by during regular store hours to give it a try!
Fresh Pressed
4646 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Feliz, California
Posted 27 days ago by Rich Roat in events
Ken’s Blaktur font and Studio Lettering collection were honored by the Type Directors Club as part of the organization’s 2008 type design competition.
Posted 272 days ago by Ken Barber in About-House
When we started working on Neutraface in 1999, we took our first cues from the geometric lettering Richard Neutra specified for many of his commercial building designs. The challenge was to strike a balance between the sensibilities of Richard and his son, Dion, and the realities of the regimented world of typography. With the help of Christian Schwartz, we achieved this balance in what has become one of the most ubiquitous typefaces in today’s visual landscape.
Neutraface No. 2 is an extension of the Neutra legacy, where form and function meet at the nexus of practicality and versatility. It is by no means intended as an improvement or replacement of the original Neutraface, but as an expansion of the original concept. Neutra’s highly sought-after residential and commercial designs have stood the test of time, as will the typography that bears his name.
Posted 395 days ago by Rich Roat in House-Products