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What's All This Then?
This is Layer Tennis, a live, weekly series of design competitions, presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 3. It was created by Coudal Partners. We've made lots of other stuff too.
What's All This Then?
This is Layer Tennis, a live, weekly series of design competitions, presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 3. It was created by Coudal Partners. We've made lots of other stuff too.
Are you feeling the love today? I am. And so too are our two competitors. Steven Harrington and Chuck Anderson both self-identify as artists & designers and share one other trait relevent to our business here today: they love to collaborate.
In pre-match comments made to this reporter, Anderson looks on this match as a chance to "collaborate live and make something really cool;. Harrington agreed, saying that he's "really looking forward to making something of quality with Chuck".
So what we're looking at here may be less of a competition but a doubles matchup with Anderson and Harrington against the clock and, er, the clock's doubles partner. Or is this just gamesmanship on the part of these young-but-savvy competitors? Will one "could you give me something that doesn't glow" comment from Harrington send Anderson off the rails? Will the folks in the forums, always hungry for blood, rebel against all this hand-holding comraderie?
Lots of open questions for sure, but one thing is certain: today's match will not be drab or minimalist. Both of these artists love to blow up the canvas with high contrast, bright colors, and layer upon layer of detail. Harrington draws his influence from the psychedelic 70s while Anderson skews slightly earlier; his copy of Photoshop seems to have dropped a lot of acid and hasn't come down yet.
Just moments ago, I spoke with both players as they warmed up for the match. When buttonholed about the short turnaround time, Harrington replied that he's "been looking at Chuck's work over the last couple of days and I'm really excited to see how he reacts/vibes to the imagery that I'll be playing with. I think a lot of inspiration will be based on building off each other's imagery." I asked Anderson about his setup for the match. Photoshop sits at the center of his creative process, but that "most of what I do actually originates elsewhere -- photography, drawings, illustrations, vector/Illustrator".
And with that, let's see what these two young powerhouses will churn out for us today. Quiet, please, for Harrington's serve.
Steven Harrington is a designer and artist from southern California. After attending Art Center College of Design, he hooked up with fellow graduate Justin Krietemeyer to form National Forest, a design firm that works on projects from interior design to art direction to web design.
Chuck Anderson is a 22-year-old designer and artist from the Chicago area. Not wanting to wait through four years of design school, he dove full-time into the working world right after high school. Since then, he's accumulated quite a reputation and a client list to match. You may have heard of some of them: Microsoft, Dolce & Gabbana, Pepsi, and Adidas.
Jason Kottke hails from NYC and has been the editor of kottke.org since approximately forever ago. In a perfect world, kottke.org is about a wide variety of topics like photography, graphic design, economics, and movies, but funny YouTube videos and Star Wars ephemera inevitably creep in. In a previous life, Jason worked as a web designer and hopes he remembers enough about design to comment adequately on these proceedings.
Here's how the game works. Jump into the Layer Tennis Forums, we'll be taking the pulse of the conversations there to declare a winner. You can also subscribe to our Layer Tennis RSS feed and follow along via Twitter.
Congrats to totopromo, the in-forum contest winner, and Operator, the remix winner. We have some Jewelboxing and Swap Meat items to send out to you. We're also sending packs of Field Notes to reo5th, BMB and naamyo. Email your shipping info to dawson at coudal.com.
Today is your last chance to sound off about who won Friday's Layer Tennis Matches and to post your remix/contest entries too.
On the last Friday of the season we played two matches at the same time, Koxvold vs Hutchinson and Glass vs Inman. There was a lot of action on the court and a lot in the forums too.
All matches took place on Fridays, live at 2pm Chicago time or GMT-6.
January 25 - Match 1 | View Match
Chris Glass vs Shaun Inman*
Commentary by John Gruber | Forum
January 25 - Match 2 | View Match
Jason Koxvold* vs James Hutchinson
Commentary by Rosecrans Baldwin | Forum
January 11th | View the Match
Veerle Pieters* vs Cindy Li
Commentary by Kevin Guilfoile | Match Forum
December 14th | View the Match
Matt Owens vs Jason Gnewikow*
Commentary by Joshua Allen | Match Forum
December 7th | View the Match
Jason Koxvold* vs Bran Dougherty-Johnson
Commentary by Matt Haughey | Match Forum
Match was played using Adobe® After Effects®
November 30th | View the Match
Trevor Van Meter* vs James Hutchinson
Commentary by Bryan Bedell | Match Forum
This match was played using Adobe® Flash®.
November 16th | View the Match
Aaron Draplin* vs David Nakamoto
Commentary by Steven Heller | Match Forum
November 9th | View the Match
Scott Hansen* vs Rob Cordiner
Commentary by Alissa Walker | Match Forum
November 2nd | View the Match
Marian Bantjes* vs Armin Vit
Commentary by Heather Armstrong | Match Forum
Match was played using Adobe® After Illustrator®
October 26th | View the Match
Brian Taylor vs Jason Santa Maria*
Commentary by Matthew Baldwin | Match Forum
October 19th | View the Match
Naz Hamid vs Chris Glass*
Commentary by Rosecrans Baldwin | Match Forum
October 12th | View the Match
Steven Harrington* vs Chuck Anderson
Commentary by Jason Kottke | Match Forum
October 5th | View the Match
Neil Duerden vs Mathew Star Thomas*
Commentary by Debbie Millman | Match Forum
September 28th | View the Match
Kevin Cornell* vs Shaun Inman
Commentary by John Gruber | Match Forum
* =winner
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Layer Tennis was created by Coudal Partners in Chicago. We also created Jewelboxing for making awesome disc packaging and The Deck, an ad network targeted at creative folks.
