Changethethought™

Finally, the first series of Changethethought posters is now available for sale. All of the posters in the image above were printed in sets of 100. You can purchase them here for 18 dollars a piece. If you buy 3 or more they are reduced to 15 dollars each. The posters are printed on extra heavy 100lb True White paper. The color reproduction is top notch. They are vivid, lush and rich in detail. I have signed and numbered every poster. The second generation of posters will be marked as such. Merchline ships internationally as well, so don’t be afraid to order if you are in Europe or anywhere else overseas.

Get them while you can. It may be a while before the next series is printed. Massive 24 by 36 Obama posters will be available in September.

Spread the word.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought Posters, Ctt News, Graphic Design, Posters

I have to warn you that the blog will probably be very slow over the next two weeks. It pains me to say it but the traffic is higher than it ever has been since the site first launched as a full on blog. Right now there are close to 3,000 people a day stopping by and that just reached that particular threshold this week. So it saddens me to not be able to keep up the pace for two whole weeks but I will be traveling to Brazil for the next two weeks with my wife. She lives in a fairly remote part of northern Brazil called Teresina. You can see a picture of it above. I will have a spotty dial-up connection here and there but that will be about it for the next two weeks. I wish I could lie and say I will feel bad that I am not pumping out the latest news for you when I am on the beach for 4 days in Fortaleza but I won’t. I am going to give my self at least that long to collect myself and kind of get my focus back.

This year has been the hardest working year of my entire life. That is no exaggeration. This blog has really turned into a part time, if not sometimes full time job but it is something I have wanted to do for a very long time and it has been really exciting to see so many people coming here for inspiration. I don’t think a lot of people realize how hard it can be to run something like this and since about 95% of the posts come directly from me, it has been a tremendous amount of work. I believe in art and design though and I also believe in inspiring people and helping give artists, designers, photographers and anyone in between a place where they can show their work to an interested audience. That was something that really helped me forward my career in the past and I wanted to give that back.

So please bare with me for the next couple of weeks while I soak up a little long needed sun and finally spend some quality time with the woman who has supported me and all my crazy ideas for the last 10 years.

On the Changethethought news front, I have printed 10 of the posters from the print section in series of 100 per design. They are all A3 sized and printed on 100lb true white stock. The color reproduction really blew my mind. I was so excited when I got them back. They really look amazing. They are every bit as vivid and rich in person as they are on the website. I was really stunned. My printer really pulled out all the stops for me and did a great job. The posters include the ‘We Not Me, Buckminster Fuller and Pure Energy’ designs that a lot of people seem to like. They should be in the Changethethought Merchline store the week after next.

Lastly, I also printed 2,000 of the Obama Commemorative posters. Yep, 2,000. It cost me a damned fortune but I think it was worth it. I haven’t had time to photograph them properly yet but they are stunning. I took them out of the packaging and immediately sold 8 of them to my coworkers right there on the spot. If I can actually sell all of them, I would like to give somewhere around 10,000 dollars or so back to the Obama campaign. Maybe even more. I haven’t figured out the math yet. The posters are printed on 80lb Mohawk Felt White paper. There is a texture to the paper that really absorbed the color and they printed really rich and deep. I was really excited. The crazy thing is that when you stack them all they stand about waist high and weigh something like 300-400 pounds. I have no clue how the hell I am going to get them shipped to Merchline. I plan on signing and numbering every single one. Chances are I will never print another run but who knows. I will number them in succession as I print them though.

So when I get home, I gotta crack into those bad boys and start signing away. Then figure out how the hell you ship 400lbs worth of posters over 2,000 miles. Ah the things we do in the creative business. I really felt like there was a need for a more austere and serious Obama poster though. I wanted people to have something that kind of memorialized him and was symbolic of his place in history and his accomplishments. If your for him or not, he really is a special case and I think it’s important to create something that lets people remember this moment in history.

So thank you for reading and thank you for sending emails and thank you for supporting me. I promise you as soon as I am back in the states I will turn it back on again full throttle and keep pouring out every good tidbit of design that I can find to keep your gears turning. For all my bloggers on the site here, if you can keep it rolling for me over the next couple of weeks. Thank you to my fellow bloggers on the site as well. I really appreciate your effort sincerely.

written by Christopher | tags: Brazil, Changethethought, Ctt News, Teresina, vacation

There is new work posted to both my print and illustration sections. Some of which is actual client work the other is experimentation. I try to keep creating things that are different and challenge my skillsets and keep me fresh. That is an ongoing challenge in this field especially when things get stagnant and unchallenging at the day job. It is a struggle to stay relevant in this field. It takes work everyday. I remain committed to the cause.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Illustration, Print, Work

Well, this one goes out to all the readers in the United States. I am currently in San Antonio, Texas visiting some old college friends of my wife and I. They recently had a baby who is absolutely adorable and has boundless energy. I don’t think I have ever been around a baby so little who has such a lust for life. She barely sleeps and is constantly smiling and ready to go. She is already making all kinds of sounds and even standing by pulling herself up on the sofa. All of that is happening while she is only 7 months old. I think she is going to be some kind of a child genius. It doesn’t surprise me though since my friend is working on his P.H.D. at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

It’s always good to get away and see old friends. I rarely get personal on this blog and sometimes I think I should more often because that is what people like. I have been really stressed out lately trying to figure out how to earn more income for my wife and I since she is really ready to have a child. I want to be able to provide for her and my baby when the time comes and it has just been hard to earn enough in this field to do so. The United States has become a lot tougher place in the last 10 years for younger couples and the future doesn’t always look so bright either. It’s a hard time right now I think for everyone. I would love it if I did well enough that my wife could stay home for a year and take care of our baby but I just don’t and that weighs heavy on me. It’s hard not to get down and be a little angry sometimes and when that happens I sometimes bite the hand that feeds me and then make it even worse for myself.

So, I am trying a lot of new things in the future to try to get the ball rolling more for myself. Hopefully some of those things will pan out. It’s been a crazy year so far with this blog and in my own personal work. I never thought it would attract the attention that it has but I am just getting started. I really want to start doing interviews this year with other people in the creative industry and starting to add some new content to the site that will make it a lot more resourceful and meaningful for people.

Happy 4th everyone and if you have the chance to, take some time for yourself or to spend with your family. I’ll try to keep posting a few things here and there while I am on the road and I will be back in the saddle again fulltime come Monday.

written by Christopher | tags: 4th of July, Changethethought, Ctt News, Personal

I just put yet another new poster in the print section. More more more.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Posters, Print

I wasn’t going to do a separate post about this but it is already drawing some interest so I decided I might as well. I created a couple new posters in the print section this week along with the large scale Obama Commemorative Poster last week. This most recent poster was meant to be both meditative and introspective but also about design and typography. I am a big fan of Helvetica and I thought why not combine that with my love for metaphysics? It was kind of a strange idea and hard to explain but fortunately an interesting poster that hopefully has a little more going on than what appears on the surface came out of the exercise. It’s a simple poster in terms of the design but hopefully the complexity comes through when it is given a little extra thought. Anyway, it’s now in the print section and may or may not be printed in the future depending on how much demand it generates.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought Posters, Ctt News, Graphic Design, Helvetica, Posters

I have been interviewed recently by several publications including Pilot Magazine in New Zealand, .PSD Magazine and an interview with Advanced Photoshop UK that hit the newstands today. Being interviewed is always interesting in my case because since I have been so open about my political beliefs on the site, I am often asked questions that I don’t think a lot of other designers would be asked. Inevitably the discussion always shifts away from design and into ideas about the future and where exactly civilization is going. It’s hard for me to talk about what I do without talking about how I see the bigger picture influencing my work. One thing I always hate talking about is style. I always feel like there is this urgent need to be able to pigeon hole designers and artists into a neat little definable genre. I like to experiment a lot and never really settle on any discernable style. I feel like the digital age offers up that opportunity now and I like to take advantage of that.

Anyway, those are some of the things discussed in my recent interviews. If you would like to read my interview with Advanced Photoshop UK, you can do so by downloading a low-res PDF of the interview here.

I also put a couple new poster designs in the print section of the site that you can check out. You can read more about them there as well. There is one in there for all of you fellow Helvetica lovers. There are lots of things going on in my life right now. Stay tuned. I promise you posters will be printed soon. This whole blog thing along with a fulltime job are really pulling me at both ends. It’s been difficult to stay on top of it all lately. I am going back into classes for acting next week as well. So, there are lots of things happening. You gotta live while you can.

written by Christopher | tags: Advanced Photoshop Magazine, Changethethought Posters, Ctt News, Poster

I created yet one more pack of free posters as a creative alternative to the existing posters. This set comes with a version at 8.5 x 11 so it is even more ‘at home’ printer friendly. It is also available in both 11×17 and 24×36. In all honesty these were created because I was experimenting with a new style of vector illustration and a poster came out of that experimentation. I thought I might as well offer it up to anyone who might like to use it to promote Obama. I created this at the same time as the commemoritive poster but decided to go with the look and feel for the commemoritive poster versus this style. It’s a bit more of a characatur than previous images. The image does translate well from a distance though.

As always you can download all of the files in the Obama section and use at your discression (so long as you do not intend to sell them).

I am in the process of gathering price quotes for the printing of the large scale commemoritive poster, so it should be available for sale within the next 3 weeks.

written by Christopher | tags: Barack Obama, Changethethought, Ctt News, Free Obama Posters

I just wanted to note that the reason for the decreased amount of entries over the last few days is because of my absence from the United States. I am currently lounging by the pool at the San Carlos Plaza Hotel in San Carlos, Mexico (you can see it on the coastline in the distance in the picture above). It is absolutely beautiful here. My brother-in-law’s wife’s father owns the hotel and it is a real tropical paradise. I went fishing on a yacht in the Sea of Cortez yesterday and have been on a steady diet of seafood and mojitos now for about 2 days straight. It has been great to unwind. The blog has been kicking my ass lately and wearing me out, so it has been nice to take a little break.

I will be back in the saddle on Wednesday so expect the regular amount of entries later this week.

Viva la Mexico.

written by Christopher | tags: Ctt News, Mexico, San Carlos Plaza Hotel, vacation

Alright, so the fateful time has finally drawn near where it is time to actually print some of the posters I have created over the last several months. I have my quotes in for the first 7 posters. All of the posters (minus the Iso Series posters commemorating the isometric paper system) will be printed on A3 size paper. A3 is pretty close to 11×17. All of the posters will be printed on 100lb stock paper, some on white others on natural tone. Since they aren’t really large posters, they will be fairly inexpensive. The cost per poster will probably be in the 15-20 dollar range and I will be able to ship overseas, which makes it a pretty good deal if you are not subjugated to the sinking dollar like we are here in the states.

The question is, and I am having trouble with this myself so I am asking you, which ones do I print first? I will only be doing 7 at first and depending on how well the first series goes, I will be printing more in the fall. Which posters would you buy? Which posters do you like? Let me know with your comments or send me an email. I will be printing the ‘We Not Me’ poster for sure because there has been a really high volume of emails requesting that particular poster. Outside of that, they are all fair game. Please help me decide. I value your opinion as readers and you, after all, are my audience. If you frequent the blog often and enjoy the work I do, now is your chance to help determine what you would like to own for yourself. If you need a memory refresher, the posters are all listed in the PRINT section of the website.

Thank you so much in advance for reading the blog and supporting the site.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Posters, Print

I wanted to officially put out a notice that I am currently seeking new opportunities. I realize immediately that sounds vague, so let me explain. I am currently looking for several things. I am seeking representation artistically. I would like to gain representation to help me better access freelance projects for both my design and illustration work. With that said I am also actively seeking freelance work at this time. I want to emphasize that the work on this website, all filed under the ‘WORK’ section and subsections was all created by me (Christopher Cox) individually and no one else. So, if you feel you may have a project suitable for me but would like to see my capabilities you can find a good cross section of my work in the work section of the site. I have no real discernable style but consider myself a bit of a renaissance man in that regard. I feel comfortable working in whatever style best suits the unique considerations of the project. If you would like to see something more in a specific style I would be happy to send samples, if available, that are not currently on the site. I am fully capable in creating motion boards, digital illustration, typography, branding, logo development, design for apparel (t-shirt art), posters, comps for websites and providing concepts for television commercials. I am willing and happy to work for or with clients both in the United States and overseas.

In the very near future, because the site is growing so rapidly in audience and content, I will most likely have to move the site to a new host and server. So I am seeking hosting sponsorship along with potential advertising on and for the site. If you or anyone you know are interested in this please contact me.

In the near future I will be printing several posters and I am also looking for good printers for that project as well. I will be printing both digitally on heavy stock paper and screen printing. So for those of you that have been requesting posters, there will be several available before the summer is out.

If you would like to contact me regarding representation, a creative project, or are interested in advertising on the site please contact me via the contact section. Thank you so much for your support and for visiting the site. It’s been a fascinating sociological experiment and it has been great sharing with and engaging with you all on a daily basis. It has been a real growing experience and it will continue to be. Changethethought is only just beginning.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Seeking Opportunity

I created two more Changethethought ‘message’ posters last week. I wanted to try to create something timeless, yet stylish that looks as though it could either be current or could have been created years back. The font is entirely custom. It is a variant of the font I created for the Barack Obama posters that some people loved and others hated. I have since refined the font greatly to make it my own.

These posters will most likely be silkscreened on heavy paper, natural tone stock for the chocolate poster and white for the lime poster. I have been receiving a lot of emails lately requesting posters. I have not printed any officially yet but there should be some available near the end of this summer. I will let everyone know when they are in the storefront.

It’s been great just working with pure typography again lately. I almost forgot how much I love type. I have a new image series in the works however and that will be on the site sometime in the next few weeks. Lots of things going on. Stay tuned.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Posters, Print

Well, I pulled a fast one and deleted a poster I created yesterday because I just didn’t like how it came out. This is another one I had been working on, off and on for a while. I finished it up to my satisfaction today and thought I would give it a post. You can view it along with all the other posters in the print section. As I said in the post I deleted, I have also put a bunch of my past type treatments in the type section as well.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Posters, Print

The very kind and true purveyor of all things creative, Matthew Newton interviewed me this week for his ‘Made You Look’ column. It is a pretty long interview actually because anyone who knows me knows that I can be a bit of a rambler once you pull my string. He did a great job at getting across my personality though and I was able to answer some pretty fundamental questions about my ethos and established philosophy. I really appreciated him asking me to interview and please visit, not just to read my interview, but to support Matthew and his website because he is building a great interview archive there. Even if you are not a fan of my work, I can guarantee he has interviewed someone that you are interested in and would like to find out more about.

Thank you again Matt. You can read the interview here.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Made You Look, Matthew Newton

Well, there has been some debate and backlash over the poster I created for Buckminster Fuller sharing some similarities to the work of Scott Hansen AKA ISO50. Scott’s work has always been a huge influence on me and my work. A lot of his imagery has been burned into my memory and I think is buried pretty deeply in my subconscious. A user left a comment today linking to the poster above comparing it to my own and I admit there are definitely some similarities. The embarrassing thing is, I hadn’t even seen that particular poster by ISO50 in quite a while.

I had an idea already in my mind of how I wanted to lay the Fuller poster out beforehand and I didn’t really know where I got the idea. It was just in my head. I used the strong diagonal lines as well to give the poster a forward direction to kind of help communicate the ‘progress’ Fuller stood for and also emphasize his upward gaze.

I have always liked the way Scott annotates his posters as well and I have started trying to do something similar on some of my recent posters by kind of signing off on them and numbering them in some way. It wasn’t until I saw the poster Hansen had done that I realized how close I was getting to the way he had done it on some of his own posters.

So, I am going to answer the call and do something totally different. I will pull the poster down and do an entirely new one sometime this week or later this week. When I am finished I will post the new one and you can have at it and see what you think. I am going to use the same vector image of Fuller along with the same colorway. I’ll just do a totally different layout. Then you can fire away and see what you think.

I just wanted to address this directly and nip it in the bud. I thought that would be the best way to handle it. I didn’t want to leave it out there for people to stew upon. I know how angry designers can get over things like this.

written by Christopher | tags: Buckminster Fuller, Changethethought, Ctt News, Iso50

I bet you didn’t think it was possible for me to create even more posters did you? Well, think again. There are yet even more in the PRINT section of the site and I am adding one at the rate of about one a week to every two weeks. I will be gathering price quotes later this month on printing and should have some in the store late this summer. I am looking into metallics, varnishes and potentially fluorescents. Should be a little something to love for every design nerd. Don’t take offense to that statement by the way, I am probably the biggest one of all. I have been experimenting with all manner of illustration style and typography. I am trying to really take one each poster individually and do something unique for each. There is a little more Brazilian love in there too since the love of my life is Brazilian. I will be going there again later this summer as well. I am ready now. I could really use a vacation.

There will also be a digital downloads section in my storefront later this year that will offer up, for a very low price, bundles of the vector art I have amassed and categorized over the last decade. I am also planning on offering up store space to my other bloggers, so there may be some of their tees, posters etc. available in the store later this year as well.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, Posters, Print

If you have yet to notice, I have updated my personal work section on the site with a whole bunch of shiny new candy. Specifically, there is new work in both the Print and Illustration sections. You may have seen some of the images recently on FFFFound. Someone over there has been picking up what I have been laying down. I have plans to start printing and selling posters to beef up the online store this summer as well, and you can see a preview of what will be available in the Print section. I will also be adding a digital download section to my store where you can buy and download all the vector madness I have created over the last few years to create the some 10 million t-shirts I have made in the last several years. I have amassed quite a library of vectors over the last decade and I think they could be put to good use by other people out there now. I will also be potentially adding merchandise from other friends and Editors on the site over this summer into next fall as well. The store will be getting a much needed makeover later this year as well. There are all kinds of plans in the works.  I will be adding an author soon as well who will be writing more about independent film and short films.

If you have any suggestions for the blog, or you feel we are missing something that you would like to see more of, please leave a comment after this post or send me an email. Thanks again to all of you reading regularly, I am working day and night to keep searching for new and better content. I know you have voracious appetites.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News

I just wanted to thank each and every one of you out there that has been linking back to the site. The traffic has quadrupled since I started the blog in January. I have had people coming from various community blogs at Barack Obama’s website because of the posters I did for his campaign. Texans for Obama were also very supportive. People have really responded to the creative I have generated to support his campaign and that is really exiting. I did that work out of a sincere desire to show my support for Obama. An amazing website called Stumble Upon has been almost single-handedly responsible for a gigantic amount of traffic. One of my favorite design blogs of all time, Computerlove was also kind enough to grant me a link. The Denver Egotist has also been very supportive of my endeavors. Joyengine has had my back from day one as well and I can’t thank all the guys over there enough for all of their support. Because We Like To has also been very supportive and was another nice little local Denver, now Minneapolis blog run by two good friends who are also amazingly talented designers. Josh Spear has really helped me out as well and offered me some key advice that helped me make the final decision to get the current version of the site online. Design You Trust was also kind enough to post a link. I also have had a couple images floating around FFFFound lately which was exiting since I check that site religiously. Thank you as well to all of the other smaller blogs that have linked my site as well, there are too many to list and if I tried I wouldn’t want to forget any. So in the interest of diplomacy, I just want to thank all of you who have your own blog and have still found enough inspiration here to link back to. Thank you sincerely. I mean it. This is a community and it wouldn’t exist without you.

Lastly I really want to thank Aaron and Matt who have been kind enough to start posting to the site. They are both incredibly talented designers and I can’t believe they are blogging on my website. Thank you so much guys. If you haven’t seen there work, you can read their bios now in the about section. Be sure to check out their individual websites because they are both incredibly talented designers.

Thank you in advance to my future bloggers as well. I have had a good response to the call for bloggers and am considering it closed for now. I will be selectively inviting more bloggers in the near future, so more will be added, but I think we have enough to get off the ground now.
Running a website like this, and I have had this site online for close to 6 years now, is a difficult thing. I haven’t exactly profited from it, but I have committed to it out of my sincere love of all things design and the desire to share that love with others. The global design community just keeps growing and blogs are a fascinating aspect of that social phenomenon. There is just so much out there to be inspired by that there really is something design-related for practically everyone now. You can really see design infiltrating mainstream culture right now on many levels and that is really exiting. Lets just hope we can all come together and find a way to use it to make a change for the better.

Thanks again for all of your support and keep checking the site because this is only the end of the beginning.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News