a website for me?

Hello friends!

I am constantly trying to design a website for myself, but this time it is really going to happen. My only real goals for it are to represent my personality and my work really well. I am pretty happy with what I have so far but thought I should ask yous opinion (people really pluralize you like that in New Zealand).

So when the website comes up it will just have my name and the links to the left. When you click on a link, the appropriate thing will come up. Then, for example, on the portfolio page you click on a number to see different items. I don't want it to scroll so I'm just setting stuff up to fit on the front page. I will attach a couple of screen shots. What do you think?

coolages (cool collages)

I am working on a little home decoratey project, which may or may not be welcomed on this blog. It's design related I promise!

I want to frame some of my bfa pieces for my living room. I did 24 collages, but some of them are total crap so I want to get some sweet square frames and pick my favorites. I can't decide whether to do a series of six or nine. The the frames are like 20"x20". So they are pretty big. That is why I'm hesitant about doing nine. That would take up a big chunk of wall, but I'm not opposed to it because I think they lend themselves nicely to the whole square motif. But I can't choose which ones to elimate? What say ye? Which ones should I frame and should I do a series of 6 or 9?! 

 Or just six????

Or maybe just four? Vote! Help!

insideSales posters

Some of you may know that I used to work for a company in Utah called inside|sales. You can see some of the collateral and branding I did for them a couple years ago on my site.

Anyways, they got in touch with me about a month or so ago to do some posters for them. The concept behind them is tying their achievements in their sphere of influence to great world leaders/innovators of the past. Lets get past the moral issues of making a claim like that—another conversation entirely. These are basically in-house propaganda posters to try to sell the "vision" to the employees. So, such bold (or blasphemous) claims kinda slide a little under that kind of setting and use. And, really, without getting too much into their story, lets just say that the stretch may not be as ridiculous as it seems right off the bat.

ANYWAYS. here are some of the illustrations (in order of completed-ness). Click on them to see some details since they're probably going to be pretty small here.

Any thoughts on these? The artistic concept behind them is kind of a fusion of Russian Constructivism and Web 2.0/2010 tech-style. And here's the precedent:

So, I feel pretty good about the illustrations. But I'm struggling on the accompanying typography.

I feel like the type should be pretty contemporary, almost verging on "trendy" and I've been looking to a lot of NIKE ads and design for inspiration. I have 7 different directions that are really rough at this point, but I'd love to get some feedback on them.

And a couple implemented into the design…

Any thoughts, critiques, suggestions you can offer would be great. really appreciate them from the other project…

Heaven and Health

I'm making this logo for a friend who is opening a massage therapy business. She really likes it but thought the lines should be thicker (see second image). She sent it to some "friends" who said it is hard to read. I told her I would try to make it more legible but I can't tell what about it is hard to read. Everyone I have shown it to around here can read it. Any opinions?

strange request.

I got an email from a middle school down in Texas asking if they could use the logo I designed for the proposed New Orleans Hornets rebrand I did back in school for "Spirit Items" like t-shirts and so on. Currently they're using the yellow jacket mascot below.



I don't think that they're swapping the logo out… they just want to use mine, too… ? Which is kinda weird, right? They said they'd like it for free because they're a low-income public school but realize that they may have to pay for it.

So, I'm kinda at a loss for what to do. I don't know exactly why, but I feel a bit resistant to the idea. On one hand it's cool that my logo would be "out in the public" but I would have zero control of how and where it's used. And still, if they have a logo, I don't get why they would want to use 2 different marks.

What do you guys think? WWYD?

The Conservation Conversation

This is a project that I'm working on for a friend. It's kind of a This American Life meets the local farmer's market meets environmentalism meets Sesame Street… or something.

The premise is that there is a series of short films targeted toward elementary/middle school aged kids teaching them how they can help be more eco-minded. The "lessons" aren't too didactic or preachy, just things like: "you should try riding you bike next time you go out." The hope is that by showing kids these fun and simple things that they can do to help make the world a greener place that they will get excited about it, talk to their family about it, and then make it a family habit.

So, you can see that the primary audience is younger kids. The secondary audience is those kids' families—especially their parents.

One of the struggles I've had in approaching this is that the name—The Conservation Conversation—is really kind of tricky, both to say and to read. The play on words (reversing the S and the V) is fun in concept, but everything I've done to draw attention to it just makes it harder to read. In the end, I proposed just doing a simple type treatment in Gotham Rounded and rely more on secondary graphics and visual language to help brand the thing.

The only real direction I received as far as visuals go is that they wanted it clean and modern, but not too trendy. Simple to use, simple to read. Engaging, lively, etc.

The last piece that I'm attaching is a mock up of the website—which they really quite liked—but I completely forgot about my primary target audience (KIDS), so I told them I'd come back with another take to try and make it more youthful.

Any thoughts or critiques?

(r1)






(r2)






(web mock, r1)

business card printer?

So this girl asked me to design a logo/business card/blog header for her. She of course chose the most boring sketch I sent her, but that is water under the bridge now. The images above are for the business card. She said she would get them printed herself and asked me for advice on where to print them. Well, these are her exact words:

"question...what type of printing would you rec for the business card? I think the back being that grapefruit color would be too much for letterpress. Flatfinish printing? On like a heavy cardstock? Do you have a rec for a printer?"

Sadly I don't have any rec(comendations) for a printer. What type/where would you guys print something like this? She lives in Virginia. I feel like I would just print them letterpress and see/like how they turned out. Any advice?

Sarah's wedding announcement

The theme for Sarah's* wedding is 1950's garden party. I scanned the images from a 1950's garden book. The cards have a quarter inch white border around the outside (I should have put a border on, it isn't showing well on this blog. So..... what do you think? I don't think they ended up very authentic '50's but I do like them.

*For those of you who may know Sarah, the dates on this announcement are not final so don't write them down in your calendar just yet.