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.

Portfolio Hightlight:Zappo’s Catalog

This is a promotional shoe catalog I did for Zappos.com, highlighting skate and urban shoe brands. I chose the theme “Footwear to traverse the Concrete Jungle” to create a dynamic setting and to tell a story with the shoes.

Let’s talk business…

FreeLanceSwitch.com has 40 great resources for learning more about business. They’ve got some great links to a extremely useful article on sitepoint.com, Best Practices for Freelance Business Part 1 and Part 2. As much as my designer mind dislikes having to learn this aspect, it’s necessary to develop these skill in order to survive as a freelancer.

Planning for your future…business

So with doing some small time freelancing, I’ve finally decided to become official with registering and starting my own business.  With that said, if you’re considering freelancing, you should definitely be considering how to run your business. While I myself have been considering this as well, I stumbled upon a great article on FREELANCESWITCH.COM on the value of a business credit card/debit card. In my experience in banking, it’s amazing to see how many people mix their business into their personal accounts. Co-mingling funds could eventually prove to be a huge liability for that person and said business. Anyway, check the article out-

http://www.freelanceswitch.com/the-business-of-freelancing/put-it-on-plastic-a-freelancers-credit-card/

Let me know what you think!

RED HARVEST-Underappreciated

I must rant a bit. I’m a huge fan of noir. The characters, the style, the aura. With that said, “Red Harvest” by Dashiell Hammett is my favorite noir story/novel. However, many people do not know it in it’s natural state. They know it as one of Hollywood’s numerous adaptations such as;  Yojimbo, For a Few Dollars More, Millers Crossing and the poorly done Last Man Standing. While some of these films are good in their own right, in my humble opinion they do not hold a candle to the original story. This is my tribute to a great writer, who should be held in high esteem more often.

Dashiell Hammett

I may experiment with more color combinations, and also add more detail to the illustrations to give it a realistic appeal. Any other suggestions?