THIS IS
MY BLOG.

THIS IS
MY LIFE.

You already SUBSCRIBE TO the creative LIFE.
Why not get the newsletter?

Events John Tindel Events John Tindel

South Exhibit at Kibbee Gallery with pieces from John Tindel

The South + Tindel

South Opening reception July 9, 6-10pm The 3rd annual group show where over 50 artists express thoughts and feelings about the contemporary South and all its complexities. This will be a fun, large group show with a wide array of things to see.

South

Gallery is open Thur, Fri, Sat 2-6pm
Show dates -July 9 - July 30
Opening reception Saturday, July 9, 6-10pm
 

South Opening reception July 9, 6-10pm The 3rd annual group show where over 50 artists express thoughts and feelings about the contemporary South and all its complexities. This will be a fun, large group show with a wide array of things to see.

I will have two new pieces in this exhibit.. but there is so much more. Artists include Melissa Basham, Lela Brunet, Megan Mosholder, Rainey Rawles, Laura Lewis, Rose Barron, Chris Boyko, Mike Montelegre, Corey Singletary, Susan Cipcic, Melissia Fernander, Cara Young, David Doodleslice, Chris Neuenschwander, Julianne Trew, Jerry Cullum, Lisa Tuttle, Mike Germon, Laura Vela, Shae Edman, Caroline Annandale, Jessica Miller, Tracie Hinnant, Olga Sidilkovskaya, Haylee Anne, Anna Nelson-Daniel, Karen Bito, Rachel Osborn, Kenneth Walters, Teri Jester-Hamilton, Katie Troisi, Deborah Sosower, Adam T. Hall, Aaron Artrip, Laura Lewis, Roxanne Anderson, Rebecca Kidd, Erin Henry, Katie Copeland, Brooke Clark, David Robinson, Lauren Peterson, Melissia Fernander, Valerie Dibble, Devin Hunter, Alli Royce Soble, Izabella Herrera, Tori Tinsley, Carolyn Rose Milner, Christopher Hall, Elyse Defoor, Paige Prier, Chase King, Jenny Woodall, John Tindel, Ruben Alvarado, Christine Lu, Jim O'Donnell and more....

Gallery is open Wed 3-7, Thur, Fri, Sat 2-6pm

Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Good Food Truck

 
 

"The Truck sort of found us – we saw it and instantly fell in love with it. Once we raised the money to fix it up, we set out to create a unique menu in easy-to-carry street food configurations, influenced by local Southern comfort food as well as Asian, Mexican, and Indian flavors. There’s also a healthy dose of whatever we think tastes good with fresh, seasonal ingredients from local farms!"

It is not a huge brand, but it is full of that good ol southern charm. Good Food Truck has taken their brand and won every food truck award, been in cosmopolitan, food channel and every other press outlet and food review you can think of. From one truck to three trucks and full catering and event menu. The little brand that can. The GOOD FOOD TRUCK branding work was done for a lifetime supply of their famous "poodle".

More info coming soon.

 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Living Style Guide

CMG's, with 180 digital properties had little to no control over brand standards. they needed a resource that could evolve with the large number of brands, as well as a standard bearer to pull brand information from. Extensive UX/UI research, prototypes, designs and development. Modular, responsive and designed to expand as their brand does.

 
 
 

UX Discovery & project scope for Living Style Guide


BROWSER WIDTH RESEARCH
& WHERE TO GO RESPONSIVE


PROTOTYPING & UI ELEMENTS

 
 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Web Design: Soda Salon

 
 

Soda Salon Web DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

Award-winning Soda Salon needed a website that showcased their story and talents in a user-centered way to focus on the quality and artistic approach to their fashion and salon mission. More information and project breakdown coming soon!

 
 
 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Credit Checkout Funnel

 

Credit Company Mobile Checkout Funnel

Study data on mobile checkout funnel and customers concerns over security in the process. Create funnel optimization and the user experience for new user-interface design.

 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Prissy Tomboy Brand Identity

A powerful, yet pretty identity for Prissy Tomboy Athletics.

Prissy Tomboy is the go-to guide for empowering and inspiring girls and women of all fitness levels and ages to lead a healthy lifestyle through fitness, sports and adventure. We empower girls and women to find faith in their strength and lead healthy, confident lives by connecting our members with resources, activities, publicity and funding opportunities to support their fitness, sport and adventure goals— whether that means jumpstarting a healthier lifestyle or competing at the highest level. Our long-term hope is that our alumni will pay it forward by becoming Prissy Tomboy mentors who help other the next generation discover their passion and change their lives.

 
 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Local Search App

Google searches for everything.
YP® finds local.

YP® created an amazing app when they rebranded and became a digital powerhouse. The Creative life was tasked with coming up with a new look for the app and to surface some of the most used features in a minimal clean UI.

Two concepts were pitched to explore two directions in UX.

 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Art Direction for App Video Series

 
 

YP, only the best local app ever, lets you save all your favorite local businesses in mybook. Create collections like Home, Car, Kids, Date Spots, and Pet Resorts so you can quickly access to your go-to businesses.

 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Intelligent Collateral System Pitch

Project Description: YP® is the leading local search marketer in the nation. During the reinvention of this legacy company into a digital monster, a huge issue had to be addressed.  Working with my creative director & copywriter to develop a collateral system that would keep all sales collateral within brand guidelines and rated by effectiveness. This pitch would embed a collateral system within their proprietary new sales tool.

 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

Email Strategy + Creative

 
 

Email Marketing Strategy

Creative direction & design for email marketing strategy for both b2b and b2cemail campaigns.

Creative Director & Copywriter + Stakeholders & VP's

 
 

App Tip Series

Getting to know an app through strategic email marketing and design. A triggered series of emails showcasing a tip to use the app functionality and also a quick overview of one of the most used features.

 
Read More
Design John Tindel Design John Tindel

YP® Collateral of the Future

YP 2.0 CONCEPT COLLATERAL DESIGN + ICON LANGUAGE

Aligning uniquely designed icons with a suite of products to create a language of product icons that can be used as both a symbol and design elements.

YP 2.0 CONCEPT COLLATERAL DESIGN + ICON LANGUAGE

Aligning uniquely designed icons with a suite of products to create a language of product icons that can be used as both a symbol and design elements.

 
Read More
Blog John Tindel Blog John Tindel

In the Studio: April 24, 2016

I have different day planned in studio today. Wife is feeling a little rough from an all night Prince party, so I am taking the offspring with me. Honestly, they are not excited. Hoping to get there creative juices flowing by making them paint with me Dad in the studio. We will see... 

First stop. Sam Flax for some goodies.

updates throughout day

Read More
Blog John Tindel Blog John Tindel

The Signing: 3 New Print Editions

Small Batch Creativity© from the American South.

Very excited to announce that the prints are signed and ready to be sold/marketed. The prints turned out great and we are excited to be able to start or enhance your art collection. Limited number of 50 per design. Each design was created by artist John Tindel for TheCreative Life and printed by local Danger Press.

Signing took place at the headquarters of the notorious UrbanMedium. Thanks for letting me take over for a few hours!

Look for more limited editions to come from The Creative Life. 

Read More
John Tindel John Tindel

In the Studio: April 17th, 2016

Every Sunday artist John Tindel visits the Goat Farm Arts Center to put to use his studio there. The studio is part of a residency program provided by TCP Atlanta (The Creatives Project).​

The Goat Farm Arts Center

 

We start the day at about 10 am in building 8 with 1/4 of a studio ready to funnel down some ideas from the early mornings of the creative universe. Sunlight hits me from behind as I finish feeding the goats, llama, and alpaca. Head up the stairs to an unpopulated morning paradise. Go...

Studio facing the Windows.  

Studio wall with Zach Wolfe photos

Brough down some classic Zach Wolfe (zachwolfe.com) from the early Tindel Michi (John Tindel & Michi Meko) days. Photos taken in Albany, Ga 2003 during a crazy photo shoot where we entered another dimension and Albany took us through it with style and grace.

Low-Class American Crafting works in progress.  

Set up an area to paint smaller works. Art should be collected by everyone.

Low-Class American Crafting

Tindel paintings hung with care... 

Removing stacks of painting by hanging them up is an easy fix. Still have room for working on large pieces and an area with the small ones. 

OuterSpace work in progress by John Tindel

 Before we out going to work in this big piece tentatively called "outer space". 

Detail of "outer space" by John Tindel

Read More
Blog, Press John Tindel Blog, Press John Tindel

INTERVIEW with CommonCreativ Atlanta

Here, Tindel talks to CommonCreativ about the South, painting fast and promoting himself as an artist and designer.

Original Article on CommonCreativAtlanta by Muriel Vega

John Tindel has been making art in Atlanta for more than a decade now. Whether you’ve seen one of his exhibitions, visited his studio spot at the Goat Farm or successfully chased after one of his #FAFATL pieces, Tindel is a veteran around these parts. His wood blocks often display quotes from his grandparents or metaphors about Southern rap, all spray-painted in vivid colors.

 

A former Living Walls artist, Tindel focuses on the political and social aspects of the South in his work. One of his longest collaborations, with artist Michi Meko, is the project TINDELMICHI, a series of collaborative paintings that call out to their similar Southern roots, growing up in Alabama and moving to Atlanta.

Now, Tindel is working on starting a new company, The Creative Life, to house all of his work and take his ideas to the next level.

Here, Tindel talks to CommonCreativ about the South, painting fast and promoting himself as an artist.

CommonCreativ: Tell me about the South’s influence on your work.

John Tindel: The South didn’t influence my work as much until I was old enough to turn and look back at “The South.” Listening closer to my grandparents old-time wisdom and wit, hearing and understanding dialects that vary as if you were somewhere in Jamaica, and roots that I planted that weren’t even visible, now swell above the ground. I have grown with the South, and the influence feels shared and mutual between myself and my home.

CC: When did you know that art was your thing?

JT: I was always the kid that could draw, but I didn’t really find the talent until the end of college – right before I moved up to Atlanta.

However, art is by no means “my calling.” I realized two years ago that I would rather claw out my eyeballs than have to talk for another second about the narratives behind fine-art imagery. It started to feel very limited for the level of my creative OCD. However, I’m thankful that I had over a decade of straight-killin’-it in the Atlanta art scene, creating some great things with great people that I’m very proud of. I have been shifting my concentration on design for the last two years and it has been a great way to create new pathways in my brain. I returned “art” to something I do Sunday mornings at my Goat Farm Arts Center studio.

 

CC: What sparked your interest in art?

JT: Oddly, that’s a tough question. I almost think that the creativity I have was passed down from certain branches on my family tree. Almost every memory I have as a human involves creating something or arranging and developing ideas. Creativity was my safety blanket growing up.

CC: You use aerosol paint and tape to create visually interesting patterns and a very specific color palette. How did you come up with your style?

JT: I paint fast. Not like theatrical fast, but efficiently. I’ve been painting pretty obsessively since 1998 and evolution has occurred with every painting. It is almost like a bag of tools — you keep pushing what you define as your style, study yourself and understand the things that you can use. Little by little you start to have a pretty sweet set of defined moves that are purely yours and make up the elements that someone could describe as “your” style.

 

John Tindel

CC: How would describe your artistic style?

JT: Martha Stewart on acid.

CC: What inspires those clever sayings you often add to your text wood blocks?

JT: With the hand-cut text stuff, I started out using things that my grandparents would say — clever wisdom from a time gone. The recent chunks of wood use short, vivid metaphors from Southern rap. I want to capture these poems and give them there glory outside of the context of a rap song. I really like witty, extra-short metaphors.

 

Living Walls mural

CC: Is wood your chosen material?

JT: Yes. When I’m painting a large piece, I like to use wood panel. It’s sturdy and has all the extra things wood offers that canvas cannot. I’m using razor blades to cut elements into the work, so I can press down harder on wood. I still do about 20 percent of work on canvas because it’s lighter to ship than wood.

CC: What materials do you love to work with?

JT: Metal. It just intrigues me to no end. I would love to somehow master it.

CC: Tell me about your ongoing collaboration with Michi Meko.

JT: Man, me and Michi have been feeling good about what we gave to the Atlanta art scene. Two Fat Southern Boys Who Paint has been a decade-plus collab that will continue at some point. As we always do, we go on our own creative adventures in order to bring something back to the collaboration. We’ll see. You will know.

CC: What’s your favorite project you’ve collaborated on?

JT: So many things. Probably my favorite project would be the one I am most proud of. We were able to have a full exhibit “RELICS” inside the Marietta-Cobb Museum of Art and we worked our asses off and created what I feel was our best exhibit. But, our first show “Redneck Graffiti” was legendary… I feel like it kicked off a Southern art revival.

CC: You’re involved in #FAFATL. What’s your favorite part of participating?

JT: I was first intrigued that there was a hashtag way to send people on a rush to go find art gifted throughout the city. Atlanta has a great history of artist leaving work for folks to find, but this was on hyperdrive. Evereman started this following of people eager to find his work, but back in the day, you just found it — no hashtags. It has evolved into something unique and honestly a great way to start the spark inside people to start collecting art. I really like making and giving the art away. I use to stress over making money off of every painting that I painted. It feels good to just be able to give them to the city.

 

CC: Do you have any dream collaborations with other local artists?

JT: I’m lucky to be part of The Creatives Project (TCP) artist residency with other talented Atlanta artists including, Joseph Dreher, Meta Gary, Meredith Kooi, William Massey, Shanequa Gay, Margaret Hiden, Scott Silvey and Rachel Garceau. I’m hoping that I get to collaborate with all of them and learn from there take on different approaches and mediums.

CC: How do you promote yourself?

JT: Promotion is a long game. I think you need all the basics – website, business cards, etc. But there’s an element of magic to effective promotion. With art, you need to paint live. This city is small, and painting at events and around town will help you get noticed. Get into group shows. Some smaller galleries here will give you a shot if you get noticed at the show. See if you can score a mural wall around town. Talk to your favorite gallery. Leave found art. My version of success is when you can sell your own creations to collectors of all kinds through your own means.

 

CC: What do you think about Atlanta’s current creative scene?

JT: The creative scene is strong and getting stronger. Fahamu Pecou is finally being noticed by the art elite, and Michi is on the rise in that world as well. There are major design agencies entering the city and that’s adding to the diverse creative fields that thrive. There is the Goat Farm and other great studio spots popping up. Fashion and Hollywood are traveling down these Southern streets as well. The scene is ripe and will get even better. My theory on the art scene is that you need to have less hugging and more people buying art.

You can view more of John Tindel’s work on his portfolio site and his Instagram.

Read More
Blog John Tindel Blog John Tindel

Step 1 in becoming a bad-ass digital illustrator

Step 1

Well... step one is easy. Decide to this.

How I Start

As a designer I am always saving inspiring images that I come across online, in life or by accident. For this challenge I am going to start with this pretty cool antique illustration of a tiger. This is where I start. This is the only idea I have at this point. I like tigers.

 

Organize

When I do client work, there are a few things that I like to set up before I actually open this thing and get to discovering what my style may be. Like to get a folder ready on the desktop with some sub folders for archiving and putting assets in.

Next, like to choose a color scheme either by chance or I will become a zombie and just feed myself scrolls and scrolls of color palettes on sites like color.adobe.com and colourlovers.com which just give you a database of infinite color combinations. I feel like I should call this over stimulation of palettes "flooding" because it makes it easier to connects the dots between unique color combinations and it lets you feel what colors you need by seeing so many levels of colors. 

After choosing where i want to start, getting a little organized, and giving myself a beta color palette, I would go ahead and jump into this illustration.

I like to start playing...

 

TO BE CONTINUED... totally fired out the gate on this post... but drizzled after cutting out the tiger. Get back on it soon.

 
Read More
Blog, Events johntindel Blog, Events johntindel

The Goat Farm Open Studio & Sale

 

Great time and the Goat Farm Open Studio this weekend.

Got to hang with my little man and meet a bunch of great folk. Looking forward to opening up the studio more often. New works in progress and looking forward to sharing them. Want to come visit, set up an appointment by emailing me here.

 
Read More
Blog johntindel Blog johntindel

The Assembling of an Assemblage 

I spent a decade working with Michi Meko who has turned out to be an amazing assemblage artist. So Taught by the best I guess. I want to documenting more of the process of each piece. The outcome is the outcome. I want to try to uncover a little bit of how the intuition comes about. How you know how to put a piece in the right place. 

For this piece, I have been saving an old bench my Grandma gave me. It has since broken into its granular pieces. I also have some leather that my other Granddad used to train horses. Combined with all the random art decade of stuff that I have laying around, I have my ingredients. Now really I sit with them. Be with them. Touch them. Move them around. Stack them. Spread them out. Get a feel for what pieces I have.

At first I was thinking of cutting all the old bench pieces and fix them to the inside of the frame. Kind of like creating a wood panel to paint on out of the bench. I guess kind of like the ladder. However, I couldn't bring myself to cut the bench pieces. I really want them to stay as they are. They are my Grandma.

 So, I gathered more pieces to this puzzle and have started to develop some ideas as to showcase this little sliver of history. The story will continue... 

Read More