SPUR | Graphic Design and Illustration

American Illustration Awards

American Illustration is arguabley one of the most sought after Illustration awards in our industry. Dave Plunkert has been included in the book for 17 consecutive years. This year, his winning entries are from the Theatre Project poster series, Le Cabaret De Carmen and Cyclopedia.

Joyce Hesselberth had two pieces selected for American Illustration's online gallery. The first, for The Chronicle Review's article disputing the Mars/Venus myth. The second, a cover for The Santa Fe Reporter about genetically modified chile peppers.

You can view both the PRINT and WEB winners online at the American Illustration website.

Website Revisited

By Joyce Hesselberth

We've been giving our website a big overhaul, something we do every few years.

Spur Design has had a website since 1997, almost as long as we've had a company. I programmed the very first one in HTML using a text-editing program. Website design was new and shiny. We decided we wanted to make ours more tactile. We worked with scraps of paper, drawn lines and vintage fonts.

In 2001, we shifted gears and reorganized the site. We divided things more simply into Design and Illustration. The intro page was clean and dark blue, with animated orange arrows.

2002, and we moved to browns and ochre and back to a retro collage. The grumpy guy is my dad. Fortunately, in real life he has a sense of humor.

 

2005, we combined grumpy guy with bright CMYK colors. It was mostly a reference to the print process, but reminded us of Bradbury Thompson, one of design's greats.

And here is where we are now. The opening features a simple animation with buttons below.

 

Followed by pages with our portfolios. It has served us well for a couple years now, and it's time to move forward.

So where do we go from here? The new website will incorporate a lot of what we have learned in the past, but with a clean, spare Flash-based presentation. We will be announcing its launch soon, so stay tuned.

Kid Baltimore Nominated for Nickelodeon Parents' Pick

One of our blogs, Kid Baltimore, has just been nominated for the Nickelodeon Parents' Pick award for best local blog in Baltimore. Kid Baltimore is designed and maintained by Spur Design and focuses on kid-friendly activities around Baltimore, MD. To help support our blog, you can vote daily until July 15th.

South by Southwest - Award for Best Poster

David Plunkert's poster for Dungeon Masters, a film directed by Kevin McAlester, recently took home the best poster award at the South by Southwest Film Festival. The poster was reproduced both digitally and as an oversized, three-color, 25 x 39" screenprint.

Gold Award - Society of Illustrators, New York

Illustrator Marc Burckhardt and David Plunkert received gold medals for illustration and art direction, respectively from the Society of Illustrators in New York. The Directory of Illustration 26 brochure cover, with Burckhardt's amazing oil painting, illustrated the concept "put you best face forward."

Arts Cuts

by Joyce Hesselberth

 

My latest illustration, for Baltimore's Urbanite, is a about budget cuts in arts organizations. The Baltimore Opera, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Center Stage have been hit hard already, but some organizations are cautiously optimistic that better times will come soon. You can read the full story here.