Some examples of bad logo design… let’s see… The Detroit Zoo, the Orlando International Airport and the 2012 London Olympics… all bad. I chose to tackle the Detroit Zoo and see if I could come up with something better. My goal was to simplify the design and create something more iconic, recognizable and versatile. The main logo is up top, while the two below the text are examples of how the logo can be utilized for other reasons (i.e. business cards, hats, staff t-shirts, etc.,). If you’d like to read more about the essentials of logo design, or design in general for that matter, check out a guy named Paul Rand.

Here’s what the actual Detroit Zoo logo looks like… gross!

This piece is basically an attempt to reproduce the style of an Italian illustrator named Alberto Seveso. I find his work amazing and wanted to see if I could reproduce what he was doing. It seems like a simple concept but proper execution, I’ve found, was surprisingly difficult.

Finally! I’ve discovered an awesome name for my production company! It’s called “WeAreTheLight.” The logo is a conglomeration of doodles in my sketch book that I scanned into Illustrator for cleanup and then Photoshop for layout. I ended up turning the final composition 90 degrees to the left before it was finished… I thought it looked better.

This is a short film I did for my digital story telling class. The idea was to sell a product using story and emotion, as opposed to the traditional thirty second television format. I developed the concept and saw it through to fruition over one month’s time. It’s not a perfect product, however the point was to tell a story and not to get the production value perfect. Enjoy!

This is a Sony ad series I put together with my good friend and fellow designer Ben Phenicie. These were made for Current TV in San Francisco. After submitting these spots, I was contacted by the marketing department at Sony New York and was told that they loved them. However, we’re still waiting for them to be used for broadcast.

So this week we’ve been filming non stop. Thankfully I was able to get most of my shots finished at the beginning of the week. Above is a screen shot taken from some of the footage in my short film.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve produced videos before but I’ve almost always, to my own detriment, been able to get away with flying by the seat of my pants. It’s been an interesting process writing the script, sketching the story boards, working up a shot list and finally assembling a production check list… There’s a lot of work to do before you get boots on the ground so to speak. I think the thing that always hindered me from taking these preparatory measures was that I thought it would stifle my creative process, but what I’ve found is that I’m able to visualize the story in my mind and come up with cool ideas during the pre-pro process. I’ve posted some images of what pre-production looks like. Enjoy and stay tuned for the final product.

So this is the first time I’ve ever painted anything in my life… other than easter eggs when I was a kid… I may have also used finger paints as well. He he. Either way, I’ve never plopped down in front of a canvas with only the primary colors and white and black to work with. Basically at this point, I’m not really into the amount of time it takes to create the color I want. I’m just so used to the speed of the color picker in photoshop, that it frustrates me to spend so much time on that aspect of my creative endeavors. I won’t however go as far as to say that I hate painting or, for that matter, that I will never enjoy mixing paint. It’s just that my first time was really time consuming and that the end result didn’t justify the means. I’m pathetic. Ha ha.  By the way, I think I’m going to call this one “Creep,” and yes I did mean for it to look so strange.

So there are several different types of perspective. The first is seen on the bottom left, and is characterized by the fact that every thing in the image aims towards one point on the page. This, interestingly enough, is called one point perspective. The second type, aptly named two point perspective (we creative types are so creative), is on the bottom right and is typically used when looking down the corner of an object or more commonly a building. In order to draw each of the buildings sides, you would have to use two points. Last but not least there’s (can you guess) three point perspective, seen on the top of the page. It’s similar to two point, in that you’re looking at an object down it’s corner, but you’re also looking up or down at the same time. For instance, when standing at the base of a sky scraper and looking straight up, the shape of the building begins to look triangular. This effect is duplicated using three point perspective. Well that’s that.

This is just another try at using shading to create depth. The reason I chose to use a woman’s face in conjunction with rigid metallic structures was mainly to challenge myself, as they both require different processes when shading.