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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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!

Design Matters: Packaging is a how-to package design book, (the third in the Design Matters series), slated for release in July 2008. The book was authored and designed by Capsule, a Minneapolis design firm, and published by Rockport Publishers. Capsule and Rockport are currently accepting submissions for publication. Visit site for submission guidelines, as well as book details and publisher info.

This is a time sensitive project.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: April 13, 2007

DETAILS

Artist Geneviève Godbout is 22 years old and orginally from Canada. She graduated in the traditional animation of Vieux-Montreal and then the Gobelins in Paris. These days she’s a freelance artist, based in London.

We came across this great illustration of her’s by way of Veerle’s blog and just had to share it with you all.

HAPPY HUMP DAY!

Holly Becker, décor8

As a freelance writer and interior design consultant, Holly Becker has created a very loyal readership to her blog, décor8. Holly is an Interior Design Consultant practicing in New Hampshire, Boston and the surrounding areas. She’s also a published freelance writer, having 10 years of combined writing and design experience, working for Fortune 500 companies and smaller companies in both the U.S. and Canada, including designers, salon owners and artists.

Q. Holly, on décor8 you point out that you look to reach out to others who share your passion for design and the need for creative living. Can you tell us what you mean by “Creative Living?”

Holly: Yes, I’d be happy to expound on this. Creativity is expressing yourself, being original, imaginative, authentic, and productive. We are all alive, but there is a difference between being alive and living. A person who works a job they dislike, comes home to chaos, and has few deep and meaningful interactions in their life, is not really living. At least in my opinion. To really live, you need to tap into your true self first and figure out what your passions and dreams really are. Not the ones you think you should do, or what your friends are telling you to do, or what your parents expect of you. It may not even be the career you’ve been doing for the last 15 years.

You need to be comfortable with who you are and you need to like yourself. And once you have that down, you will start to take better care of yourself – your health, your home, everything will fall into place once you realize your worth, passions, and goals. Layers will start to unfold as you continue to examine who you are, listen to your inner voice, and do things you’ve always wanted to do. Take a long vacation to that exotic locale you’ve always wanted to visit, just because. Once you’ve tapped into what makes your heart feel warm and your outlook bright (whether it is cooking, sewing, taking classes to learn about something that fascinates you…whatever), start doing those things and see where each experience leads you—One step at a time. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Live for today. This is creative living. Read the rest of this entry »

The 20th annual HOW Promotion Design Awards is now accepting entries.

The recently re-tooled HOW’s Self-Promotion Design Awards, has been given a new name — (the Promotion Design Awards) and better-defined categories to make it easier to enter your work!

Winners will be featured in the October 2007 issue of HOW magazine and one Best of Show winner will receive a trip to the 2008 HOW Design Conference.

MORE ON THE COMPETITION

The Design Directory is a portal of design-related links…hundreds of them…that range from design inspiration to creatives for hire to tips and techniques. The site is deep and pretty thoughtfully curated…worth a look and maybe even a bookmark.

Entry forms are now available for the 2007 American Inhouse Design Awards, the premier showcase for inhouse design excellence. The competition encompasses inhouse designers and teams within corporations, media companies, non-profits, educational and government institutions. The purpose: to provide much deserved recognition for inhouse designers to colleagues, clients and upper management.

Winners of the competition will receive an embossed Certificate of Excellence for each winning piece selected, and their managements will be notified of the award, it’s meaning and what it reflects about the winning designer or team. Winning entries are also eligible to be reproduced in our Inhouse Design Awards Annual which will be published in July 2007. This 300-page edition is expected to be seen by more than 100,000 at ad agencies, graphic design firms, inhouse departments and more during the course of the year. Corporate Sponsors for the Inhouse Design Awards are Agfa and The Creative Group.

DOWNLOAD APPLICATION

The Art Interview – 8th International Online Artist Competition is a quarterly, international, juried exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculptures in any medium. It is open to all living artists worldwide aged 16 and up. A European gallery exhibition and a total of € 17,000 in cash may be awarded each quarter to the first, second and third place winners. First place winners receive up to € 10,000 plus a featured interview in Art Interview Online Magazine. The competition is run completely over the Internet, which eliminates the need for you to send slides or arrange for physical transportation of your artworks. Gain international recognition for your artwork and be interviewed along with the world’s top artists, curators and gallery owners in Art Interview Online Magazine.

More Information on the competition and how to enter.

Full Prospectus

DEADLINE MARCH 31, 2007

I’ve recently become a fan of Silja Goetz, a freelance illustrator living in Madrid. Born in Germany, Silja studied comunication design in Nürnberg and worked 2 years as a graphic designer for Allegra Magazine in Hamburg. Her work has appeared in:
Nylon Magazine (USA), Neon (Germany), Rosebud Magazine (Germany), New York Magazine, Yo Dona (Spain), Stern GL (Germany), Emotion (Germany)…just to name a few. I had a really hard time picking just one illustration…but this one definitely caught my eye.

See more of Silja’s wonderful ink drawings, splendid illustrations and some great collage pieces.