Lew Baldwin

Lew Baldwin is a creative art director for web, film, sound, broadcast and motion graphic design projects. He works out of his Los Angeles-based studio team agency, which just recently located from New York.

Lew recently shot and directed a series of video for Nike Soccer, including a music video starring Clint Dempsey from the U.S. National Team. He is also a musician and created the musical score for the Sony feature film “November” (sonyclassics.com/November) starring Courteney Cox.

He has exhibited artwork at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Foundation Polar in Caracas, Venezuela and is recognized internationally for his videos, visual art and installations.

Lew currently resides in Los Angeles.

Margaret Penney has known much of Lew’s work since he launched one of the first online interactive narrative art projects at Redsmoke.com.  Lew’s style is distinctive, as it moves across a variety of mediums from new media to film, television, theater, and music.

Margaret interviewed Lew about his career, inspirations, and designer toolkit.

Q: What did you want to be when you grew up?

Lew: Well, at first I wanted to be a pilot, when I was a little kid.  Then I wanted to be an artist and filmmaker pretty early on.  I was a big fan of Andy Warhol and his multi-tasking work ethic when I was quite young, around 16.  My older brother was always turning me on to interesting creative people at a young age.  He would bring stuff back from Austin where he was attending college.

I used to skip school and silkscreen.  I sold my first ‘product’ - a stenciled, painted belt - to a clothing shop in Austin when I was 17, so I was pretty psyched to do my own thing. 

Q:  Were you always interested in visual communication?

Lew: I was always pretty visually-oriented.  I wasn’t interested in visual communication for corporate purposes until I needed to make a living.  I always associated design with Advertising— which was not fine art so to speak.   I used to keep commercial work separate from my personal work, but the lines are more blurry these days.

Q: How did you get started?

Lew: I studied at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). When I got out of school I only wanted to pursue Filmmaking and Art.  I was never interested in design.  While in school, I made a few shorts and I worked as a PA on the all-star film A League of Their Own and several big-budget John Hughes films like Home Alone 2 and Dennis the Menace. 

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Outfoxing the Small Business Owner: Crafty Techniques for Creating a Profitable Relationship, by Gene Marks (2005, ISBN 1-59337-157-8) is worth reading if you’re thinking of freelancing. Small businesses make up the vast majority of potential clients, and the approaches you’ll take to work with them profitably are different from those you’ll take with large corporate clients. I’ve worked with both, and found this book to be up-to-date and practical.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy as a gift for contributing to one of Gene Marks’ other books about small business management.)

People quite often ask me “How did you know that?” I usually answer “I don’t know.” (Not wanting to get into a long conversation!) However, as any successful designer will attest, you must know everything there is to know about a subject before you can create successful designs for it.

The problem usually arises in this quest for knowledge when the client draws a blank page. There have been many times when my own research, or prodding questions to the client has turned up more useful information about the product than even the client knew. So with every client, every new job; you have to dig in and learn what it is, how it works, who it benefits and why its important. These are the tools you’ll need to produce effective, persuasive design work.

You’ll be thrilled when you discover that the most usable aspect of the subject is what the client didn’t tell you.

A look at the launch of Tab’s new Tab Energy Drink prompts an interesting comparison between the designers’ approach to the branding and advertising for this product versus the old Tab Diet Cola you may remember from the days when Disco was the rage. Tab Diet Cola ads from the 1960s and 70s feature imagery that would probably give any feminist plenty to rage about. The commercials play a soothing soundtrack as an older man in an executive-type suit stops to ponder a certain woman: a wife or girlfriend, or maybe someone he doesn’t even know. She is noticeably youthful, dressed to reveal a slender figure and a pampered lifestyle; she’s shown playing tennis, enjoying a garden party, or somesuch leisure activity….

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Good thing designers are curious types, hyper-aware of the visual world around them. The designers I’ve met tend to mine their surroundings and experiences for creative fodder that feeds, consciously or subconsciously, into their work. Keeping an eye on trends—fashion, interior décor, color, type—is one of the ways creative pros can stay abreast of what’s fresh (or what’ll be fresh six months from now). So, how can you spot trends? Look at what teenage boys and girls are into, especially the cool kids on the fringes—they’re quick to adopt the next big thing. Keep an eye out for movies that are due to come out later in the year; as Pantone’s Leatrice Eisman has noted, the first “Shrek” movie made lime green very in vogue. And watch the trendwatchers. A couple of sites we like (more…)

I am among the last generation of copywriters who sat with art directors and designers as they sliced into type galleys to hand-kern letters, adjust word or line spacing, or piece together new words and sentences.

“Can we cut seven characters out of this copy block?” they’d ask, and I’d take up the challenge, think of another way to say the same thing in the same voice using not only seven fewer characters but also only the words and characters already typeset.

It was the final, laborious polish on the mechanical, and it was a team effort.

Now it seems there’s less sweat equity in the way copy looks. And that’s too bad.

Why accept an imperfect line break, a stray widow or orphan, or a repetitive word stack when the solution might be a minor re-write? As a copywriter, I think anything that enhances the visual appeal of copy, makes it more inviting, is worth doing.

It’s not just about legibility. It’s about fine-tuning the details to create great work.

In my development years as a graphic designer, I had a mentor named Phil Meggs. Unfortunately, Phil is no longer with us. However, one lesson he instilled in me made an incredible difference in my career. I’d like to share it with you: Never pass up an opportunity to learn from a master. I know, you’ve probably heard that before — but it’s time to take it seriously. Successful practitioners in the graphic design discipline will all agree that you don’t know where you are going unless you know where you’ve been.

Never pass up an opportunity to learn from the masters. Attend a seminar; visit a gallery show; take a workshop — particularly if the event is by a master. There are lots of opportunities, but you have to go and find them. If you’re in New York, try to catch a seminar or workshop with Ed Benguait. Yes, he still teaches at NYU. (more…)

Some folks aren’t aware how powerful Firefox is for web development. There are several extensions available to help with our job of designing web sites. Below is a short list to help get you started.

• The Web Developer Toolbar: [http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/]
Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
• Colorzilla: [http://www.iosart.com/firefox/colorzilla/]
Advanced Eyedropper, Color picker and Page zoomer
• MeasureIt: [http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/measureit/]
A ruler to measure your screen with
• HTML Validator: [http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/]
Adds HTML validation to the ‘View Page Source’ of the browser
• Screen Grab!: [http://andy.5263.org/screengrab/]
Takes a screen shot of your web page.

Softbank Mobile is releasing the Sharp 812SH in 20 different colors…the best part, the colors all come from the Pantone Matching System!

Talk about Color Coordinating!

When the ideas flow, concepting is fun. When they don’t, I grind away over award books, archives, and stock photo sites producing page after page of tedious, trite, irrelevant, stupid ideas. Yes, I may be laying the groundwork for later brilliance. Or not. That’s why, when the deadline looms, it pays to have a few different approaches to concept development in one’s mental toolkit.

Here are more than 100 creativity techniques to unclog the brain. Many of them are actually information-gathering or evaluation techniques, but there are still a lot of different ways to approach a problem here. Three techniques that I’ve found useful are Brutethink, Laddering, and Osborn’s Checklist.

http://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques