portfolio

Key

The Lost World

book design | typography

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, a classic piece of literature that I quite enjoy, no matter how out of date it is. For this book jacket, I wanted to hint at what was to come and not come out right and say what it was; an adventure novel about dinosaurs. Though that comes across fairly well enough anyhow. So I placed a silhouette of the novel’s main villain, the Megalosaurus, upon the book cover and cut it out, hinting at the dinosaur but not completely revealing what it is. This book jacket slips over a second one, making a window out of the die-cut, and letting the viewer either get a themed glimpse at this “Lost World” or outright look at by removing the first jacket. For the title, I wanted to give it a prehistoric jungle feel, and thus used Photoshop to enhance the majestic Trajan to become somewhat of a lost ruin of type, light spilling on to it through jungle branches unseen.

Project Magazine

layout design | print design | magazine design

The fictional magazine PROJECT is a magazine about the fantastic world of design and whose layout reflects that. Testing my skills in magazine layout, each spread uses a different grid to come up with varying results for each. The Happy Scary New World of Design spread emphasizes white space and uses its text pattern to create a wave motion at the bottom. The Bold New Language of Product Design uses large dark type in its title to create the bold feeling, as well as using the grid to keep a compact, bold feel. Graphic Design on the Edge’s photos bleed off the spread, keeping true to the edginess of design. Pun. All three spreads are united by their use of gray futura in their titles as well as the use of futura, the folios, and magazine runner.

Bookhound Interactive Componet

interactive design | logo design

Bookhound was an extensive group effort to solve a specific problem: How can we help shoppers at bookstores find books without having to seek out an employee? The answer is a simple one, an interactive kiosk that allows the customer to quickly look up his or her book, get an answer to wether it is in stock or not, and directions to the books place in the store.

For the interface design, I wanted to keep it bright and simple. Something that children and people with failing eye sight would be able use easily. The result was large, colorful buttons and the use of futura, a clean, playful type. The kiosk offers multiple options, allowing users to look for the current best sellers, see store events, or simply find their goods. Simply touching the screen brings the user to the next screen in the process. This was simulated through a flash program

Click the Flash button to see a demo of the system in action. As a demo, only a portion works.

Bookhound Process Book

layout design | logo design | print design

This piece is in addition to the Bookhound interface seen on the previous spreads. It is a saddle stitched booklet detailing the process of creating the kiosk from beginning notes, through interviews with book store employees and customers, to a completed flash interface (seen earlier) and identity work.

Each spread of the work is divided into zones that provide for an interesting and exciting look at the material. The left side of the spread is used for the text (headers in a blue Bodoni, body copy in Times), the middle of the spread reserved for a central image related to the copy, and the far right of the spread becomes a zone reserved for quick snapshots of the bookstore world. The bottom of the spread becomes a band of notes, not only revealing the thought process of the Bookhound project, but also painting a texture of hand drawn type and doodles across the book.

Rosewood Man

typography | poster design

Let’s pretend there’s a physical type shop in the mall. What sort of advertising goes on inside that shop? How do you sell a type to the uninitiated? This was a theme that ran through the making of this poster, choosing a type (The ever bold Rosewood) and personifying it for poster use. The Rosewood Man is obviously from the west, sporting a fancy old timer look or a thick bold feel. As the type was created to emulate signage found in the old West, Rosewood Man become a true cowboy, and like the variation Rosewood Fill, become bold and in your face. Rosewood Man isn’t polite, he has no lower case. He’s loud and in charge, and not like Helvetica, is overflowing with distinct personality.

Recipe For Disaster

book design | layout design | illustration

At some point I decided I was going to write a book and that book became Recipe for Disaster, over 70 pages of dry humor and insane ramblings about ways to kill yourself. I also provided the illustrations throughout the work in a messy ink pen manner. As much fun as that is, it also needed to be designed.

The book is a small five inches by 9 inches, and Recipe for Disaster’s layout uses a simple red color field to frame the story. The book is divided into 4 sections, each using a large photograph to set up the section. The interior of that places the chapter title in the color field at the start of the chapter, and at the end of each chapter is the “ingredients list” for said disasters in its own special box. The work makes use of the colors red, white, and pink for its captions, color fields, and titles. A color field at the top of the page allows the viewer to quickly note what kid of page he or she is on.

Bones in Type

typography | print design

I have a fascination with many things, bones being among them. For sometime I had been wanting to pursue a project utilizing animal bones and finally got my chance with this experimental book. For this piece I created ten different compositions using image, type, and images as type, the central theme being the use of animal bones as type. The book is comprised of a varying assortment of paper stocks, each to try and bring a different feel out of the type and image treatment printed on it. The book is bound by wire spiral binding in an attempt to further the book theme, resembling a spinal chord.

VCU Signage Re-imagining

sign design | wayfinding | poster design

This piece is a twenty inch by thirty inch poster centered around the problems plaguing Virginia Commonwealth’s wayfinding system and how design could improve it. The problem calls for a new system, as the old one just simply doesn’t work as the existing signage is just too small or hidden. The new system calls for both signs aimed at the 30,000 plus pedestrians on VCU’s twin campuses as well as signs for drivers in Richmond. The new signs use VCU’s pre-existing design aesthetics, as detailed in the VCU sign manual, using univers as the type and pre-approved arrow designs. The pedestrian signs are round, giving them a unique shape compared with other signs in the area, and use icons to list what schools buildings belong to. The driver signs are large backlit triangular shapes mounted on street corners within VCU territory, with type large enough to see from a distance while driving the speed limit.

Richmond Almanack

layout design | print design

Another interest of mine is history and I am always intrigued by the Victorian aesthetic. In this piece, I created a largely fictional though up to date guide to Richmond but gave it a Victorian flair. The result was a blend of Victorian aesthetic and type with modern ideas of layout and design.

The book uses two grid styles, a three column grid and a four column grid, and switches between them to keep things from getting stale. The book is half letter size and made to appear as printed on old newsletter. Designed as a throwaway piece for tourists seeking a good joke, the booklet has a map of 19th century Richmond as well as Victorian inspired advertising. The type used throughout is Rosewood for headings and Caslon for body. Ole style numbers are used in place of modern aligned ones.

Perserverance is the Key to Success

animation | illustration

As my philosophy - of sorts - states to inject what you love into your work, it was only a matter of time before comic book characters showed up. This piece is a 53 second long animation using stop motion backgrounds combined with hand drawn animated figures. The concept of the piece was to create a short narrative based around the saying, “perseverance is the key to success.” So our plot here revolves around one guy’s comic collection coming to life and the detective super hero the Question attempting to his job. Of course other characters wake up as well, including young super heroine Katie Power, who demands attention from her new found “friend.” As the Question perseverance through the endless prattling of a child, she eventually grows frustrated and leaves to find something fun, leaving the Question in piece. The piece was made by taking photos of the backgrounds, drawing the character’s animation frames, combining them in Adobe Photoshop, and animating it all in Frame-by-Frame.

The Question Biography Web site

web design | interactive design

This piece is a web site detailing the biographies and settings of fictional comic book crusaders using the name of “The Question.” Both Questions are very down to earth street level super heroes, more at home among characters like the Green Hornet and the Shadow over Superman and Green Lantern, so I wanted to give the site that sort of fell, the corrupt underbelly of the city. Thus I used a lot of blacks and had a rolling fog animation built in, while a track from CSI plays in the background (I placed a mute button in just for those who would grow tired of the loop). Upon clicking buttons, you can find information about the Question in general and his creators, the world he operated in, and by clicking the hat icon, two more buttons appear, detailing the lives of both Question characters. And as an Easter egg, hovering the magnifying glass icon over the comic book panel on the far left brings forth a movie! Over all, it is a piece that I feel captures the essence of both characters and will leave readers with an enjoyable experience.

Flash Tragedy Beijing Style Face

interactive design | animation | typographic design

This piece is a flash animation inspired by the old Dada trick of pulling random words from a hat. The phrases I pulled for this exercise were: “A Show of Flash;””Tragedy in the Realm of Myth;””Beijing - the Unexpected;””Style to Burn;””Straight to the Face.” Using these five phrases, I put together a story set at the Olympics starring a cast of typographic characters with the lead being -of course- the letter A.

The flash application starts off with an interactive menu, allowing the viewer to choose a scene or start at the beginning. Highlighting the words also brings up a small animation. A home button hangs in the corner throughout the movie, clicking it returns the user to the opening menu.

United States-Native American Wars 1776–1918

exhibit design | information design | print design

This is an exhibition piece for an exhibit on Native American wars in the United States. It was also a chance to experiment with how we read things. Usually we read from left to right, however as America grew from east to west, I wanted to reflect that in the 36 inch long time line. The time line has over 40 different wars listed on it and uses a simple icon to determine the victor. The earliest entrees are on the right, or eastern, side while the latest entries are on the left, or western, edge. A series of paintings and photographs run the length of time line at the bottom in a black bar, which contrasts nicely with the tanned leather beige of the rest of the piece. The paintings also tell time, the earlier material depicted on the right and the later photographs on the left. The time line of dates at the top is in a faded olive green which goes well with the beige background, as well as a simplified U.S. map in the background of the time line to help drive in the east to west concept. A large title also helps the reader in where to start, and is balanced by a large key on the end.

Our History on Earth

interactive design | information design | illustration

Our History on Earth is one of my favorite pieces. The research was intriguing, the concept interesting, illustrating the animals fun, and the execution entertaining. Our History on Earth is a flash piece, an interactive application that details 15 key animals in our ancestral tree. The piece is intended for any interested in the subject and contains many Easter eggs to be found by scrolling the mouse over the 1000 x 500 pixel board.

The piece uses many symbols and icons that fill the user in on information at a glance. If unsure as to what the symbol means, one simply roll over the icon for a pop-up explanation. Buttons grow when highlighted and a mutable sound track lures the user into a foreign and prehistoric atmosphere.

Dinosauria

exhibit design | layout design | print design

Dinosauria is a hypothetical dinosaur hall at an imaginary museum of gigantic proportions. Focusing on dinosaur relationships between family groups, the hall divides into small halls: theropods, sauropods, ornithopods, thyropheans, and marginocephalian dinosaurs. The example book created for this monumental exhibit focuses on but one portion of one hall; the hadrosauridae.

The hadrosaur portion of the ornithopod hall sits in a circular room, using mostly pure white walls, inspired by DK’s Eyewitness series of the 90’s. A ramp leads up from the iguanodont section into the massive hadrosaur exhibit. The exhibit starts with an introductory panel and some information panels about common hadrosaur traits and the basal hadrosaur group. The room the divides as the family divides, crested lambeosaurines on the left separated by a frosted glass wall from the crestless hadrosaurines on the right. Interactive stations are set up in both sides of the hall for children and curious adults to play with, and massive skeletons are posed on the other side of informational rails with projected movies played on slanted walls behind them. The room comes together in the end, with an interactive panel about predation and an exit out of the hall.

The book here shows three information panels and how the system would work for a whole hall. Use of clean whites and grays, thin rules on maps and charts, and use of Century Gothic and Calibri unite the myriad of panels and stations found throughout the dinosauria exhibit.

Action Script Website

web design | interactive design

The Action Script teaching tool was designed to give a short interactive approach to learning the very basics of action script syntax. It’s a very simple and clean flash piece, with painterly, colorful buttons that grow as you hover over them and easy to identify icons. Clicking a button will bring you to a page that describes the syntax with a paragraph and a short video clip of what the syntax looks like in code. While this was just a sample of what a whole site could be, I feel it bring a good idea of what a whole action script teaching site could be.

Black Letter Magazine

layout design | magazine design | print design

Black Letter magazine is an experiment with type and layout. While nothing truly avant-garde, it does clean up nicely. It uses a 6-column grid and a body text of Didot, a very nice old style type. The page headers are a combination of zapfino and Sabbath black, a very thick and rugged black letter type, hence the name of the project. And while the type is merely placeholder, it is a good idea of what this layout could look like if applied to a magazine or book. The use of the CMYK block on the bottom of the page contrasts nicely with the old style type and the black and white lithographs on the opposite pages.

Cannonball Carnival Website

web design | interactive design | illustration

Cannonball Carnival was an early foray for me into web design. It was conceived as a portfolio for my comic work that I worked on along with a friend. The site contains comic synopsis, over 60 character biographies and art, and sample pages from the comic books, as well as what could have been a weekly comic strip and simple flash animations. The name comes from a bastardization of the song “Panama” by Van Halen, which gave me the idea of using an old West carnival as the sites motif. While a dinosaur by today’s web standards, I feel it captures a lot of the creativity and energy I have to offer.

Censorship Poster Series

poster design | print design

The censorship poster series was inspired by a pet peeve of mine. Often in animated programs, the villain while often shout, “I’ll destroy you!” instead of saying “I’ll kill you!” While this may seem a very minor thing to be annoyed about, many dramatic and tense moments in the medium are made ridiculous by this kind of censorship. So the idea became “what if we applied these same kind of ridiculous rules to some of the great and most iconic lines in film?” We get things like soda joints and giving a darn for Casablanca and Mother lovers for Pulp Fiction. The poster series captures the absurdity of the censorship by highlighting the corrected words in bright red and a help stop censorship message at the bottom.

Green Duck Education Website

web design | interactive design

The Green Duck project was developed as Green Duck, a company that specializes in creating sustaining and biodegradable disposable silverware and containers for restaurants, approached our web design class and asked for assistance with generating ideas for an Education section for their web site. I decided to create a flash application that sits inside a mock up of their site (at the time it was created). The Flash application worked like a colorful interactive F.A.Q, Asking what I thought to be the most common questions regarding not only why we should worry about sustainability and recycling, but also how, such as dealing with composts and doing everything you can to help the planet. A bar at the top of the application has photos that act as buttons, hovering over them reveals a topic. Clicking a topic loads up the question and answer below. While this project was not picked for Green Ducks page, I felt it was an interesting approach to learning and FAQ development.

Loan Reform Poster

poster design | print design

As part of a series of posters for a show on loan reform at the Virginia state capital, this entry was made with the idea that it was up to both sides of the argument to be financially responsible. The poster itself is 20 inches wide by 30 inches tall, and despite being so large, the type in the middle of the poster is only a 6 pt type. This is meant to play with the idea of fine print, viewers need to walk right up to the poster and squint to make out the ridiculous claim of paying a loan in 14 days at 300% interest. Thus the theme of “reading the fine print” and the magnifying glass.

Lost World Poster

poster design | print design

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” is one of my favorite books, and argued as one of the greatest adventure novels of all time. I wanted to capture a moment of it as a poster, create the feel the book gives. I took a quote of which the narrator describes that the Brazilian natives fear the dark heart of the jungle, the curipuri, a terrible spirit that lives up the river. I laid out the text to resemble the winding river, set it in Caslon, a type face typical of the time, and placed it over several images, super imposed over each other, to give that feeling of adventure, terror, and the reptilian menace the really was the Curipuri of the novel.

Princess Mononoke Title Sequence Re-imagining

video design | typography | illustration

Re-imagining the title sequence to Hayao Miyazaki’s animé classic, “Princess Mononoke”, was a task that was assigned to a small group of three for a class. The film is a fairy tale, dealing with very ancient Japanese notions of spirits with a theme of environmentalism. We wanted to pay tribute to that idea with giving the opening a motif of Japanese calligraphic art. Thus our group painted scenes of forests with calligraphy brushes and rich black ink. To contrasts the free flowing strokes of nature, our scenes of man were very artificial, created in Adobe Illustrator, and using short strokes with very unnatural 90 degree turns as opposed to any kind of curve. We filmed ink in water to create scenes of chaos and confusion, and using Adobe After Effects, super imposed it on our ink drawings. To accompany the visuals, we mixed three different songs and a slew of sound effects. We mixed two Joe Hisiashi songs, the composer of Mononoke’s actual soundtrack, to keep it in line with the following film, as well as a track by Kenji Kawai from the film “Ghost in the Shell.” This track gave us our haunting and ancient Japanese vocals to accompany the calligraphy on film. Together, the audio and visuals paint a very abstract tale of the destruction of the environment by the advent of man, echoing the themes of Princess Mononoke.

Project Winterfood Signage

sign design | wayfinding

Project Winterfood was an event put on by our design class in December, and everyone had their responsibilities. The event itself was an art show with a focus on local and sustainable food that could be grown in the winter (Richmond, VA, has a very active urban farming scene). I was tasked with creating signage. Following the visual cues given from the Project Winterfood logo, I developed a sort of type face into many different signs and posters, as well as doing art for the restroom signs seen here. Besides mimicking the style of the logo, the type and signage needed to portray the feel of the event; casual, fun, even rural. I feel I got all those across in the signage on display at the event.

Sin & Virtue Wallpaper

illustration | pattern design

The Sin & Virtue Wallpaper piece was developed around the challenge of creating a pattern based on one sin and one virtue. For this, I chose the sin of Sloth and the virtue of Diligence. To create these sins and virtues, I decided to represent them as animals. For diligence I chose the ant and the ox, two animals that are commonly known in pop culture for a hard work ethic. I also used the color orange, as it is psychologically a busy color. For the sin of sloth, I used -what else- a sloth as well as a cat, which are known for their frequent naps. I chose blue as the color on the same reason I chose orange for the virtue piece, as blue is a psychologically known calming color. I created the animals in Adobe Illustrator and set the pattern. Sloth's pieces are bigger, as to not have the same overwhelming business that tiny figures do, as what happens in the diligence piece.

BN'Con

web design | interactive design | poster design

BN’con was a store event that Barnes & Noble @ VCU, the college bookstore, held centered on animé and comics. Using my experience with both animé and comic conventions, I developed the advertising, signage, and web site for the event. The poster is 11 inches x 17 inches and was placed all over campus. I provided the illustrations for the piece. The accompanying web site was built in Flash and provided information on the event, such as guests, videos, and locations. Visitors could even download a printable pdf of schedule events by clicking the corresponding button in the top right zone of “important” event information, along with maps and e-mailing the store.

DC DustCoats Logo

logo design | identity design

D.C. Dust Coats was a web comic about 1920's Washington D.C. In being tasked to handle the logo for the client, I researched themes and motifs of the area, and settled on something akin to art deco. Using sharp angles and shapes as the theme of the piece, I then sought out a typeface evocative of the era. In the end, I ended up using Upper EastSide for the "D.C." and Gotham for the title. Many color concepts were submitted to the client, of which the one picked had a sepia tone old world feel to it. The tone was later applied to the whole web site. Overall, I feel the logo does a good job in capturing the era the comic is based in and giving the comic an identity separate from other web comic works.

Freeplay & Freeplay 2

logo design | identity design | layout design

Freeplay was a free convention hosted by the Chesapeake library and put on by Southeast Virginia Gaming that showcased and educated visitors on old school games and arcade machines. When doing the logo and identity for the event, I wanted to capture that old school essence that comes to mind whenever we think of the hey day of video games. Thus I used the raster emulating type Classic 1066, which in itself perfectly emulates those old Atari and Amiga boxes of days gone past. Since the event also encompassed arcade machines, I added the joysticks on either end of the logo, turning the word "Freeplay" into an old school arcade deck. The event also covered modern gaming as well, I used a type that looked modern and would contrast with the Classic 1066 of the title for the sub-title, Century-Gothic.
These ideas about the logo would also be incorporated into the exhibit signage, along with colors that identified each piece with its company (Blue for SEGA, red for Nintendo, etc.) These pieces were placed around the convention, accompanying the machine they were about, and educated the gamer about the initial hardware specs of the machine and its history in gaming culture.
When the event returned, it was important to give that year a new and exciting logo, but keep it similar enough to the previous event so that viewers would associate the two. Many different ideas were played with, but the client chose the logo with the gray 2 behind it, describing it as "The subtle grey-scale of the foreground two is very attractive [...]"

SEVA Identity

logo design | identity design | layout design

When tasked with developing SEVA's (Southeast Virginia Gaming) identity, I wanted to give their logo the same feelings their event, "Freeplay" evoked. Old-school video gaming, an era of quarters in the arcade, condensed into type. So I chose the type Classic 1066 for the title and Century-Gothic for the sub-title. Century Gothic is modern enough to remind viewers that SEVA exists in the now, and while they specialize on arcade cabinets and video game consoles of years past, they still tackle gaming today. To stamp down their identity though, I changed the "E" in SEVA to an arcade cabinet, further driving home the triumvirate of their Freeplay events: classic gaming, modern gaming, and arcade. To demonstrate how this logo would work out with their identity, I put out a sample of developed letter head, business cards, and a web site. The business card and letter head use a bitmap pixelated backdrop, mixed with 1980's computer black, and pixelated images of arcade cabinets, reinforcing their image as classic gaming purists. The website, which also doubles as the web site for their Freeplay events, echoes the vector graphics found in their event flyers.

Superior Pest Control Identity

logo design | identity design | layout design

Superior Pest Control of Virginia Beach, VA, was toying with the idea of changing their logo and had created a contest for submissions. I entered this piece and developed a basic identity system around it. Superior’s old logo used a friendly cartoon mouse, an issue I took issue with as in my mind you wanted mice dead, not to be friends, if you were contacting a pest control company. Using that train of thought, I developed a clean vector symbol. An upside down mouse whose tail curved around to make an almost complete circle, with an "X" for an eye. The symbol was distinct enough to identify Superior without having to use Superior's name. To match the circle created by the mouse, I used Century Gothic as the logo's typeface, known for its near perfect "O's", which would reflect the mouse symbol well. The curve of the "O" and of the mouse-tail was a central theme in developing the identity, showcasing it on the letter head, the business card, the postcard, and the envelope. This logo was all about curves, and its supplemental material was to reflect that. And while the system was not picked, I felt it still made for a good example of my identity skills.