Portfolio Highlight: Mt. Hood Jazz Band CD Cover

This was a CD cover and inlay created for the Mt. Hood Jazz Band using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS4. For the design, the intent was to capture the feel of jazz within the cover-raw, edgy and underlying elegance. The music notes used in the design are adapted from one of the tracks “Georgia On My Mind”.

Portfolio Highlight: Stylized Iconic Illustration-Typewriter

This project was to take an ordinary object, and create a stylized iconic illustration of said object, in addition to five emotional variations of the same illustration. The object that I selected was a typewriter. These could be used as a blog icon or gravatar-see my header above.

Five Emotional Variations

Portfolio Highlight: Alam Cocoa

The purpose of this project was to illustrate the ideation process in which a visual identity system was created for a theoretical cocoa company that is a member of the World Cocoa Foundation.  This included determining a name for the company relevant to the country of origin, creating a logo, and developing product packaging for three sample products. The country selected was Indonesia. The company that was created was Alam Cocoa, a company that specializes in organic chocolate products.

Portfolio Highlight: Dave’s Killer Bread

For a school project, we were asked to choose a brand or product that we love, and re-design their current logo. I selected Dave’s Killer Bread, which is a local successful bread company.  The current logo, while fun and playful, undermines the quality of the product, and could be perceived as “cheap”, when the bread itself averages $5.00 a loaf. The intent for the redesign of the logo was to enhance the logo, giving their quality product the recognition it deserves, but while maintaining the integrity of the original logo and illustration. The solution was to re-create the arm, remove the balloon text, and used Gill Sans Bold to call attention to the logo.

Dave’s Killer Bread logo Redesign Process

Dave’s Killer Bread Final Logo

Application of Dave’s Killer Bread Logo

Disclaimer: Dave’s Killer Bread did not commission me for this redesign, nor are they affliated with the redesign in anyway. This was simply a school exercise. They make the best quality organic bread, and once you try it, you won’t buy anything else. Trust me, it’s killer!

Portfolio Highlight: Bright Future

Bright Future is a non-profit organization who’s primary goal is to focus on the health and wellness of children in schools. I created a complete visual package  including logo, stationery, and three magazine ads as well. The logo was created in a way to convey a positive look, with fun and vibrant colors. The magazine ads were to take a soft hearted look at how times have changed, highlighting three important issues within our schools.

Are you a member of the Civil Defense?

As I was plugging away the other day, I had the tv on the History Channel, where an episode of Lost Worlds was on. This particular episode was focused on the creation of U.S. Secret Bunkers during the Cold War. These bunkers were to offer shelter in case of a nuclear attack or nuclear fallout, but what was most interesting to me, was that in the unfortunate event of a nuclear attack, a Civil Defense was already in place to deal with the situation. The Civil Defense’s primary purpose was to organize and prepare for the protection of civilian lives, their property and the means of economic production before, during, and immediately after large-scale emergencies, such as a nuclear attack. This also includes the organization and training of volunteers in the means of self-protection and in learning to reduce loss of life in emergencies. Their logo is displayed below:

Civil Defense Logo

There was alot of propaganda that went along with the Civil Defense, in addition to effective warning systems, shelters inside and outside the home, stockpiles of food and medicine, firefighting, carrying through necessary rescue operations after an attack. The CivilDefenseMuseum.com has collected a vast portion of this material,  along with the pamphlets and posters. I’m a big fan of retro design, and there’s great design here as well, so naturally I posted some of my favorites below. As always, click the pic to head over to the CivilDefenseMuseum.com to see more.

"You'd best know where the shelter is, son."

WHAT?!!!

HAHA! Nuclear War is SO silly!

Yes, but man cannot live on pickles alone...

Free Fonts! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Smashingmagazine.com has some links to 15 high-quality free fonts available for download. Some are pretty decent, most notably MISO.

MISO *insert "Full Metal Jacket" reference here*

It seems I recall seeing more uses of MISO of late. Could this be the new “Helvetica”? Okay, okay, that’s a high pedestal to achieve from a free font, but I have a feeling you’ll probably see more MISO in your future if you haven’t already. Any other’s you feel should have honorable mention from their list? Let me know!