Graphic Design
Position is everything! Sketch first, design second! Use the inverted pyramid! Keep it simple! Read, learn, execute! Organize, organize and organize! Breakup the grey! Tell and Show! Make choices! Be original! Preserve the future and the past (design rules)! You need multiple entry points! Think outside AND inside the boxes! The designer controls the program, not the other way around! Use vivid, use organized, use data metaphor and use simple metaphor! No Comic Sans! No linear thinking! No trapped white-space! Be prepared to break all of these rules once you've learned them! ...My design teachers always yelled.
Dismissing graphic design is easy. People might think graphic design doesn’t have a practical application beyond eye candy, but design can influence opinion and shape emotion. Design creates emphasis and perspective, and should enhance an experience, not detract from it.
A portion of my background directly stems from information graphics and newspage design, but I also have a proper amount of experience as a graphic designer as well. Also, because graphic design and the Web are so closely related, please visit my Web design section for more works.
Print (↑ Top)
Grant Thornton Print Designs
During the final portion of 2007, I was doing a fulltime consultancy with Grant Thornton LLP. Below are but a few of the design samples (low res) I created for this accountancy agency.
Their brand guidelines were fairly straight laced, but allowed from a decent amount of flex to compensate for effective information flow, creativity and color. Surprisingly, there was a fair amount of graphic creation and photo editing involved. Use of an effective graphic was a main component of their complete design aesthetic.
Art and Fun Design Projects
More fun, artisitc and abstract work from 2007 and 2008.
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San Jose Mecury News, Arts and Entertainment Front Page
As a final project for Journalism 360, a desktop publishing and graphic design class, we were positioned with the task of making a front feature page of a major or local newspaper. The page was to be completely reported, written, designed and laid out by us. Not only did we have to do all the work that went into the story, but it must be an exact replica of the newspapers format, layout, fonts and the like.
Having long admired the brilliant risk taking and amazing designs of the San Jose Mercury News, I choose to model my page after something that I felt would appear on their pages. The project began as an effort to show the impact of videogames on the college culture. This was around the time and release of Halo II, one the--to date--most anticipated videogame of all time.
Quickly I realized that doing a feature on a subject could be done, but the problem was the main feature graphic. Other then by doing an illustration, there was little way to fully obtain and show the impact of videogames on a college campus in a compelling, interesting, and most importantly, new way. In a way, the project was testing us in all forms, from creativity, to reporting ability, to final layout designs.
I ended up transforming the idea into a whole new concept, one which I felt full confidence in executing perfectly: the process of how a videogame is made. Having been the managing editor of Mygamer.com for a couple years at this point, I had both the contacts and the availability of a local videogame developer called Volition, who works under the THQ moniker.
Volition at the time was working on a game that had a fair amount of buzz around it. They were converting a fairly infamous comic book character into the interactive world, it was The Punisher. As a character known for his griminess, rouge edges, dark and outlandish comic book history, I figured he would make the perfect character for the front page special on the creation of a videogame. The story had a huge mainstream name, an unusually large load of buzz around it, and lent itself to both textual and graphic representations on the front page.
At the time, I was taking a photojournalism class along with this one, so the two final projects coincided perfectly. I could not only take pictures for the story, but apply them to both classes at the same time. And at the end, this was only supposed to be one page, but I had so much content, that it simply wouldn't all fit on one page. So I did something completely unique in the history of this class, I created a two page spread instead of a one page spread. I handed my project in a week early, and soon discovered that others had followed my idea.
To this day, this project remains an example of nearly all of my skills when it comes to journalism. It represents my creativity, my resourcefulness, my design ability, photographic eye (though it could use some work), as well as my ability with the written word; it remains the magnum opus of all of my newspaper designs to date.
News Gazette Front Page Redesign
Charged with the task of creating a redesign of a local news paper--The News Gazette, Campaign, IL--I had the ambition to do something daring with the design. I tired of the traditional formats and rules of how to develop a news paper. So I when with a distinctly new format, one definitely inspired from my web experience.
I thought that a sidebar would allow for entry points into the non-front page features later in the news paper. Also the sidebar would contain the days weather forecast, though it lack the foresight of the rest of the week. I changed the standard fonts of the newspaper head, from the traditional Gothic imitation, and went with something a little more bold.
The other thing I had a real ambition to do is to place text over a picture. It was always a strict rule that it should never be done, but, again, influenced by some breathtaking designs at the San Jose Mercury News, I choose to make a bold stand here.
While the concept was distinctly more impressive in concept then execution, I learned a lot from this project, and used those lessons well on my final project.
I-Elect Print Newspaper Insert
As the print component of I-Elect, a media convergence project taken on by students of the college of communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, covering a student perspective of the 2004 elections, this piece of work stood defiantly as a success in many rights. While I didn't not personally design this newspaper insert, I was highly involved in many facets of it's production including story development, editing, graphics and typesetting.
My main roll in the I-Elect project was the development of its website. But before we had all the content completed for the web, the main focus where was the print section. The project also had a broadcast section on the day of the election where I worked on and posted the graphics, and an hour long radio feature.
I-Elect Issues Infographic
The American people are breed that generally prefer short to long. They like things to get to the point, and that's exactly why this graphic was created. For the busy student at the University of Illinois, they don't always necessarily have unbridled amounts of time to spend reading long exposes and researching position papers on the views of a candidate they're voting for.
So as an effort to create a more well informed campus citizenry, we created a graphic that compared the beliefs of each candidate, presidential and governor, on the issues we had determined from our survey of the campus where the most important topics to them.
We used bolding of the crutial tidbits to further make the read easier, so a person could read the bold captions straight down the page, and get the basic idea, creating both a "vivid," and "organized" design.
Infographics
These info-graphics are among the examples I created while I was at the Daily Illni. One was created with Macromedia Freehand, the other with Adobe Illustrator. Each graphic uses a different method to convey its points.
The first is a graphical representation of the minority student enrollment which is related to the statistics of enrollment over all. There was a distinctly clear depiction of each. Bold is used to highlight the important points, and makes the graphic organized in an inverted pyramid for the importance of information. The graphic of the gavel was to represent a common theme of law.
The second graphic is a basic pie chart graphic, also organized in structure by bolded points and pie chart. It is a simple graphic, which makes the information flow clear and easy to follow, more so then the other graphic.
Business Cards, Flyers and Tickets (↑ Top)
Shock 3D L.L.C Business Cards
Created for my first attendance to E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in May of 2000, in LA, to represent our company and website, I created the basic template of the Shock 3D business cards, still used today. I was working with a lot of vector graphics at the time, so the sharp edges sort of inspired me to create something I deemed similar, and the result was "shocking," and appropriately so.
Triangle Fraternity: Swampwater Tickets
The famous Triangle Fraternity party, pulling in an average of two to three thousand people a year. As the social chair for this semester, it was my job here to create the tickets to be used and handed out to the people. One of my more fun projects because there were no constraints on the design.
From all my web, photoshop and illustrator work, I was an expert at the time on creating my own cool textures. So I wanted to go with this rough illuminating green texture that would somehow symbolize a swamp. The result was an very fun and cool looking project.
The problem with this was that we had to make 3000 tickets, and the pricing it would have taken to produce these tickets, that are--in the end--just going to be thrown in the garbage, verse the buying of more alcohol party, dictated that we make a simpler design that would cost less money. And therefore the second black and white design was created.
Hip Hop Awareness Week Flyer
As a Vice President of the Hip Hop club, there were a few projects I was in charge of. One was the creation of promotional flyers, and finding venues for shows. Our biggest show would occur during our Hip Hop Awareness week, in which we had various planned events around the UofI campus all week.
I needed a graphically interesting design, while also staying true to the hip hop theme. The most visually impressive things in hip hop tend to be b-boying (or break dancing) and graffiti. Thankfully, having a large assortment of break dancers paid off, so the design of the flyer came together quickly.
Designing these kind of flyers always gets a bit annoying because of the amount of information you need to fit on a small sheet while maintaining an interesting design.
Logos, Icons and Banners (↑ Top)
Mygamer V2.0 Concept Logos
Annoyed with the choice of the last logo, I was determined to reinvent my idea. I found my solution in a reworking of the idea, because there was a request to emphasize "Gamer" as the important statement on the logo. However, typography is among one of the most annoying aspects of design (besides having the most boring classes on the planet).
For some reason, the differences in letter spacing, shape, serifs and anything else to typefaces can lead to more headaches during a designer's career then most people will ever know. Here stands a testament to that idea.
Having just created the new design of our logo, there was a discrepancy with the "G" used in the logo. So with a little editing to both the typeface of the "G" (from Helvetica Inserat Lt Std. to a distorted Franklin Gothic Demi), the ellipse both in size and direction, and a little help with photoshops transparency blending options, we found our new logo and watermark. Though soon to be replaced with a new one, two years and a redesign later.
Mygamer V1.0 Logo
With the start of Mygamer.com, we needed a logo for the site. Being well versed in the ways of freehand and illustrator, I went to work, and 15 minutes later came out with this design. Still one of my favorites, though it was never used, today it remains the soul decision are regret accepting for our site. Thankfully I still had a remnant of the design, and it is display here in it's almost semi-full glory (low resolution).
I-Elect Finished Logos
I-Elect logos ran amuck at the projects conception. Final, Professor Meyer (one of two teachers and consultants on the entire project and its execution), made one of his famous "executive decisions," and choose the logo. I then reworked it for variety and recognition. Both color as well as black and white renditions were finished. It was a triumph to have one of mine chosen after fixing the all too apparent American flag color scheme.
Web Banners
Banners are king in the countries of webdom. They are what logos are to companies. They can represent everything your about, your lifestyle, your image, or they can just look cool. No matter which you choose, they're always fun to make. Designers get to have fun with web banners, and that's exactly what I did here. How cool and futuristic can I make it look while not being too over the top. Here are but a few samples.
Icons
The most basic and easy to recognize icon you can make, yet, it's damn hard to do. How many stars are there, and how are they place? How many stripes are on flag, and in what order to they descend in? The rest of the wavy flag effects and the shadows were the easy part.
Flash (↑ Top)
I-Elect Flash Samples
Flash has taken then internet by storm. It's a very cool medium, almost like a cross between video editing, stop motion animation and regular picture editing. The problem with flash is that it's easy to overuse and abuse. Far too often there are unnecessary flash pieces that move and blink, when many people don't realize flash can be used for a purpose, one of them being, interactivity.
While I've done my fair share of fun blinking moving flash bits (see displayed here), on the I-Elect website, I used flash to play audio quotes from people in the stories upon clicking them. It was an interesting addition to the site, and added a level of interactivity that could only be achieved online. It's a method that uses a combination of broadcast and print mediums, for a new experience, and experience most websites should entail.
Posted here are but a few of the flash bits I did for the I-Elect site. Some for fun, others for headers, sidebars, but the useful ones for audio quotes. Also posted here is the temporary flash piece I did for rock the vote. It was a fun romp into the land of politician bashing, though many of their views relate similarly when it comes to youth voting.
Playing with Colors (↑ Top)
From the Evil Forest to Lord of the Rings
In an effort to find content to display my skills with photoshop, I decided to come upon an example on how a picture can be transformed just by the programs, knowledge of photography and images you use. So I took a regular poorly lit picture from the web, and transformed into something that would be fitting to be in lord of the rings. There's dodging, gauzian blurring, screen and color warmth changes, level editing, color balancing and the like involved in that mystic look in the end. The second to last image almost looks like film stock, with the clarity of and vibrance of the last one tends to reek of digital editing--but that was the point.
Cowboy Bebop Wallpapers
As a huge fan of Japanese animation, throughout my design years, I have discovered somewhat of a passion for creating works of art out of works of art. None of these compositions contain my own original artwork, even though I do some, but all of them are original pieces I created using the availability of artwork from the Japanese animation series Cowboy Bebop.
The first, I feel best shows the art style and brilliance of the series. As a series that is touted as one of the best of all time, for various reasons (music, cinematography, editing, acting, art, action, dialog, story arc), I felt this was one of the best representation I could come up with. It involves the 4 main characters set in front of a composite of scenes throughout the series 26 episodes.
The second image is my imitation of Andy Warhol's famous color pieces. I've been a long time fan of his so this was an exercise in paying homage to two of my favorite things, art and animation. This was a scan from the manga, after editing the scan errors; I dropped screens over each layer, fixing color balances accordingly.
The next series of wallpapers was done in a similar fashion, but with a larger concept in mind. My goal with each picture was to choose a character stance and rendering that would represent each characters individual personality, while sticking to a somewhat strict form factor. Also, because I have a triple monitors on my computer at a high resolution, I'm forever looking for similar wallpapers that will look nice on my desktop.
For some reason, three is such an odd number it doesn't seem right. So in hope and anticipation of my 4th monitor, I created this as a set of four. They consist of my favorite characters from the series: Faye Valentine (the heartthrob), Spike Spiegel (the hero), Vicious (the enemy) and Julia (the heroine).
