I’m pleased to announce the launch of elifersantos.com, the online portfolio and blog of Elifer Santos. This website was part of a branding and identity project recently concluded with Eli, and serves as a way to showcase his work to new clients. You can visit the website here, or by clicking on the image below.
I recently completed a logo and business card package and will soon be concluding work on a portfolio website for Elifer Santos, a Vancouver-based filmmaker. Eli is both a friend and a client, and I’m glad I could help him build a secure business identity.
I’ve uploaded a selection of images from the design process of Eli’s logo, including a few sketches, idea generation and a couple of drafts. I’ve also included a preview of Elifer’s website that will be online soon. Thanks to both Shelby White and David Airey for inspiring this post.
A simple mind map to start exploring logo options
I was walking around downtown with a friend who was passing through Vancouver from Australia on his way to study on the East Coast. We had an hour to kill, so we decided to head to the Vancouver Art Gallery. Unfortunately, entry was rather expensive at $19.50, so instead we decided to browse the gift shop, which is essentially a smaller-scale, more commercial version of the gallery. I found a beautiful native print which I sent home as a gift, but I also came across a book of 24 detachable postcards by an artist called Brian Jungen.
Jungen is an artist from Fort St. John, BC and specialises in found art. The work featured on the postcards is from his Prototype for New Understanding series; basing the forms of his creations on Pacific North-West aboriginal masks, Jungen has repurposed Nike Air Jordans into incredibly striking works which combine traditional artforms and commercial products to create a compelling dichotomy. The shapes and colours he uses are distinctly aboriginal, but the Nike swooshes and jumping Jordan silhouettes which intermittently dot the pieces are unmistakeable markers of the origins of the material.
Jungen has also used hanging black human hair in a number of these sculptures, which give them an eery life of their own. As soon as I picked up the book I knew I was going to be buying it; I’m not sure I’m going to send any of the postcards though, they’re too beautiful! I’ve featured a selection of his pieces below.
Prototype for New Understanding #8, 1999
Over the last two weeks Vancouver has been in the grips of the Celebration of Light, an annual fireworks festival. The festival is in a competition format, and several countries compete for the best fireworks display. Not very environmentally-friendly, but pretty spectacular. We managed to catch all four shows from the USA, Spain, Mexico and China (in that order). Spain was the winner this year with a spectacular show set to classic orchestral and cinematic music. China put on a non-competitive ‘tribute to China’ after its win last year, which may well have won had they been competing.
We saw the first show at English Bay, but after experiencing how crowded it got there, decided that we’d be better off moving to the southern side of False Creek and viewing the fireworks near Kitsilano beach. I took a lot of photos, but I’ve tried to cull them down so only the decent ones are in this entry.
The Celebration of Light 2010 barge – view from English Bay
I’ve just moved to Vancouver with my girlfriend, V. It might seem like a big move, but I didn’t have a lot of stuff to pack up and take with me, although it always seems like more when you’re trying to cram it into two 23kg bags. I’m on a two-year WHP working visa and I have a fairly open-ended itinerary. I thought I’d share the few photos I took on our journey. There would be more, but we were quite rushed most of the time, as I’ll explain.
We found some extremely reasonably priced flights with Delta Airlines for AU$1500 return, Melbourne to Vancouver. The travel time was 32 hours in total, and we transferred from Melbourne to Sydney, Sydney to LAX then LAX to YVR.
We got into Sydney at 8am with two hours to spare. We made our way to check-in, only for the attendant to explain to us that because we were passing through the US, we would need a visa waiver for security reasons. This was news to us, and extremely distressing news as our flight left in an hour. Sydney airport had set up a computer terminal for travellers like us, but there was a long queue of equally distressed travellers and the connection between the terminal and the ESTA visa waiver website was ropey at best.
Because of the queue and the connection, I ended up having to sprint between our bags and a downstairs internet café to secure our waivers so Delta would allow us on the plane. Apparently without the waiver, you’re sent back to Australia on the next flight at Delta’s expense. We finally got everything in line and ran through the airport to make it to the boarding gate, which they told us was closing in five minutes. Turns out that after we got onto the plane, the gate stayed open for a good half an hour; we assumed to wait for more travellers who were caught out like us.
A waterspout created by a plane’s jet engine at Sydney airport
