Michael Lashford | Graphic Design & Art Direction

Shiny Street Art

Michael — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:07:30 +0000

Over the past several months, my good friend Paige Smith of A Common Name has been experimenting with street art installations inspired by naturally formed geode crystals all over LA. She painstakingly takes molds of cracks, holes and any other interesting recesses in a wall or surface and creates tiny paper shapes that all work together to form these awesome little gems. After a coat of metallic paint, they’re ready to be installed. It’s such a rad series and I’ve really enjoyed watching her project progress as she posts images of new installations.

Check out more images from the series on her site, here.

Vintagespiration

Michael — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:55:42 +0000

Check out these sets of vintage vinyl record artwork put together by Jive Time Records in Seattle. If you’re looking for some graphic inspiration you won’t likely find in your library, look no further.

Stereo Stack is a sweet collection of those horizontal bars printed on record jackets at (usually) the top to indicate the album was in stereo. The range of typography and design elements is so fun to look at, and nice to see how much time and attention was put into advertising such a commonplace feature by today’s standards. Click the shuffle link to remix the order and look at how the strips fit together as a whole.

Project Thirty Three is a great big set of vintage vector-heavy record jacket artwork—right up my alley as far as style goes—from Jive Time’s private collection. It’s great to see how simple and clean is a timeless treatment.

Claire Day Interiors Website

Michael — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:59:36 +0000

Claire Day Interiors is a residential interior design company in the Bay Area that focuses on creating spaces surrounded in beauty, comfort and calm. They approached me to create an identity and website that captures that peace and elegance, while making their work visually take the lead.

This simple and clean system helps display imagery in a large manner but is surrounded by white space and light design elements to give the site its subtle structure.

Here is the new logo design, which alludes to the perfect tension in a space as well as the company name.

And here is the website design. See it online here.

Protected: Kelly-Moore Mobile App

Michael — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:31:55 +0000

Protected: FuzeBox Website

Michael — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:53:21 +0000

A Rad Collab

Michael — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:49:03 +0000

Check out this pretty sweet little soundboard site with quippy phrases by some of hip hop’s more popular talking heads. Pretty fun to click a bunch in a row to get a feel for what your beat dream team might sound like.

Atomic Doughnuts Logo

Michael — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:56:34 +0000

Here’s a proposed logo design I just completed for Atomic Doughnuts, a gourmet doughnut shop coming soon to Sausalito, CA. Yum. The client chose another great direction, but this one was always my favorite.

The Safeway Foundation Website

Michael — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:19:38 +0000

Complete website redesign for Safeway’s community-based charitable organization. We transformed it from 5 basic pages to an in-depth website spanning dozens of pages that gives the client flexibility to update their content, incorporate videos from their YouTube channel, support online donations and grant applications as well as a zip code lookup feature so users can get involved in their own communities. Check it out at safewayfoundation.org.

Created at Loomis Group, SF.

Dracula Book Cover

Michael — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 02:44:43 +0000

Here’s a book cover re-design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, just in time for Halloween. It’s always fun to get off the computer for a minute and do some painting and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Nothing like a grungy vampire face with vagina fangs.

A Bloody Book

Michael — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:11:23 +0000

Check out my book cover re-design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, just in time for Halloween. It’s for a design challenge put on by the folks at The Fox is Black as part of a monthly contest to create new covers for old classics. It’s always fun to get off the computer for a minute and do some painting and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Nothing like a grungy vampire face with vagina fangs.

Here’s a shot of the work in progress, made possible by candy and Maker’s Mark.