Infographics have become increasingly popular, and I thought it would be an interesting idea to use BDSmktg's holiday card as a way to showcase their services and successes over the year to their clients. So I created an infographic holiday card with data that the marketing team collected. I also wrote a terminal script and created a time lapse video as I designed the card as a fun little "making-of" to show the company. The holiday card was well-received by their clients and was featured in Print Magazine.

Monitorama is a conference dedicated to monitoring topics (active and passive monitoring, data collection, data analysis, data visualization, notifications, escalations, etc.) with an emphasis on tools developed by the global open source community. It’s currently operated as a single-track conference (1st day) and dual-track of workshops and hackathon (2nd day). The goal of the event is to improve the state of the open source monitoring toolset and bring together the brightest minds in the industry to collaborate and network in an intimate setting.

The conference was created (and is run) by Jason Dixon. He was in need of a designer to create a better branding identity for the conference so that it would appeal to developers and systems administrators primarily from the web operations industry and universities. He wanted the logo and identity system to convey progress and a passion for improving the industry’s toolset—all with a sense of humor. He is a big Futurama fan and his original logo concept was based off of the Futurama logo (see original logo below).

I spend a lot of time doing research. In my opinion, the more information you have, the better design decisions you can make (and have a legitimate reason for designing things a certain way instead of saying “I just like blue”). Most often I will start a private Pinterest board  where I pin everything from fonts that I think might work well with a project to inspirational images, shapes, and links. Here you can see the Pinterest board that I created for this project and where I got most of my inspiration.

While I’m researching and pinning, I’ll have my sketchbook with me where I’ll start sketching ideas as I’m working. Below you’ll see some of the rough sketches I created while researching and concepting.

After I’ve sketched and researched, I’ll pick 2-3 directions from my sketches that I think are the strongest. I’ll then refine them until I have presentable comps to show the client. You’ll see that I had 4 interesting directions in my initial round that I showed the client. He loved the first two, and after external feedback decided to go with the first direction (although we tweaked the colors, type choice, and sizing). He is very happy with the final logo and I’ve already started working with him to incorporate it into all the various conference collateral.

Website: GeeksInATree.com

I was so excited when a Catherine contacted me about doing the design and identity for her wedding in Nestldown, Los Gatos. They needed an event logo, save the dates, a formal invitation (including RSVP cards, table cards), a custom wedding website, and thank you cards.

Their formal wedding invitations were almost entirely typography-based and screen printed on strips of beautiful cherry wood. The custom designed and coded website used the logo and some of the typefaces from the formal invitation. 

The client was overjoyed with the design for this project and received many compliments. One vendor told my client,

“Your wedding had better branding than most Fortune 500 companies.”

I was asked by one of my clients if I would be interested in volunteering my time to design all of the graphics and collateral for the 2012 NFL Player’s Party event. The challenge was that there was an almost non-existent budget and very little time to get everything designed and produced. Because they were in a time and money crunch, ZOe Productions reached out to me to get this project done because they know how fast I can work. We brainstormed various ideas as to how to design the event, and how to do so with a limited budget. We were able to come up with a theme that focused on a “Fast and the Furious” type of grunge/graffiti event which by nature included items that were very economical to produce. Shipping containers were used as wall dividers/decorative pieces, and we hired graffiti artists to decorate them. I created graphics for the celebrity step/repeat walls, pillow cases for the lounge chairs and graffiti candles. We were able to get everything designed and sent to production on time and within budget. Coming up with an event theme that used traditionally cheap materials allowed us to work with the client’s budget and for the event to not look cheap.

The theme for PacificLife’s ARMM Awards was retro classic rock-inspired. I was hired to design the identity for the event that included all of the digital presentation materials as well as a few designed pieces for the event dining tables. Below you’ll see the title slides I designed for each of the award categories. Each one incorporates PacificLife’s whale in a subtle way. For each of the award winners I either modified existing or created new rock concert posters in which I’d place the winner’s photograph, their name, and some other award-relevant information. Zoe Productions did an outstanding job with the event concept, logistics and management. Take a look at their sizzle reel of the event showing the production from start to finish.

IICF’s annual reports in the past had been created internally in Microsoft Word and were not very visually appealing. They wanted their 2012 annual report to look good so that their brand would be reflected in a better light and so that their readers could be entertained by its content and data rather than burdened by it. As with most charitable organizations, they were on a budget, so this simplified annual report was printed digitally on 17” x 11” card stock (double-sided) and then folded into a trifold. I’ve had the pleasure of working on a variety of IICF-branded materials over the past three years, so I’ve been honored with molding the company’s identity into what it is today. Their 2012 annual report proudly sports their bold, clean design and conveys to its readers that IICF is modern, relevant, and doing a great job providing grants, volunteer service, and leadership.