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Create and maintain a complete branding package (logo, business cards, letterhead, document styles, etc.) for an in-home daycare facility.

In late 2017 my wife decided to transition out of her full-time day job to running an in-home daycare facility. Branding work for the business started with a list of roughly 15 names that we both felt were not only playful and kid-centric, but conveyed the approach we wanted to take as an affordable in-home facility that operated in a similar manner to larger learning facilities. Out of the original list of names, we found we were most drawn to the phrase Ants Marching, eventually completing the business name as Ants Marching Child Care.

Once the business name had been established, I started work on the logo by laying out the text and working through a number of font choices before settling on the combination of Gotham and Supersonic Rocketship. Work then shifted to creating a simple, easily identifiable vector 'ant' that could be reproduced and easily modified to look like a line of marching ants. Initially both red and black color variants of the ants were tested, but my wife and I both felt that it didn't fit the cartoon feel of the ants, so I changed the color to a neutral brown.

Create a minor branding package (logo, business cards, and letterhead) for an in-home daycare facility.

The client approached me to create a logo and business cards for her after seeing the work I had done for Ants Marching Child Care. I was given free creative direction over the project, with only a small handful of requests for the finished design:

• The design should include a tree.
• The design should include animals.
• Gray and red colors should be used if possible.

Given these directions, I knew I wanted to start by looking at the colors, then working out the logo design. I knew I would have no problem accommodating the gray and red color request, but I felt that an accent color would be needed to "pop" and play off of the other colors. As per my usual process for color, I went to my color wheel and started by choosing the complimentary green to the red color. Playing around with the color combinations a bit, I wasn't incredibly happy with the initial results, so I tweaked the red color slightly towards orange, and pulled a split complimentary color sample on the wheel. I was much happier with the results this time around, as the split provided a rich, deep, teal color that was incredibly eye catching and fit nicely with the gray and red.

Create a party invitation, themed from the Halo video game series, for a teenage boy's birthday party.

This project came around shortly after my wife and I had been watching a period television show set between the 1940's and the 1960's. Since I knew that the invitation was going to be themed from the Halo video game series after my initial contact with the client, I began formulating ideas that would merge the Halo series with ephemera from the US military during that mid-century time period. As I was unsure if the client had any additional requirements, I reached out to gather additional information about their needs for the invitation. I was told that it needed to contain standard party information (address, time, RSVP information, etc), and that the boy it was for was a fan of Halo 4. As there were no other specific requests I needed to follow, I began digging through a few ephemera websites and Instagram accounts looking for some inspiration that fit my idea of merging Halo and mid-century US military documents. After seeing a few different military base boarding passes, I came across the below image, and knew that I had found what I was looking for.

Create a flamingo themed party invitation for a toddler's birthday party.

The requested turn around for this project was incredibly quick. On most invitation projects like this, I try to ask for a least a day to create the artwork and proof it at least once before sending the final copy to the client, but the request was to have this completed in less than 4 hours. When asking the client for information about the project, I was told that it should contain standard party contain information (address, time, RSVP information, etc), and should have a flamingo on it somewhere.

Since I didn't have much to go off of, and was trying to work everything within the deadline, I began looking for backgrounds on a clip art website. I came across a fairly standard, art-deco inspired, repeating circular pattern background, and felt like with the right color and cropping, it could feel very beach-like. I took out most of the art, leaving only a handful of the repeating lines, and used a couple of different opacities of a teal-blue color to make it look like water. I created a fairly flat looking flamingo in Adobe Illustrator, included this over top of the water pattern background, then added a few pink color variations to try and add the same level of depth that the water had. As there was still some dead space to fill, I ended up back on the clip art website looking for a palm tree that had a similar feel to the rest of the art.

For the text I tried to keep things similar to the art and use fonts that had a simple art-deco inspired feel to them. In the end, the whole thing felt a bit too monotonous, so I substituted in some script fonts, and a much heavier "eroded" font for the emphasized numbers (the toddler's age and date of the party). After making these substitutions, the proof was sent off to the client.

Create a skateboard design based on the Mr. Sparkle character from The Simpsons episode In Marge We Trust.

There's something amazing to me about the idea of designs that are meant to be destroyed. While the vast majority of the design world is propped up on creating designs that can stand the test of time, skateboard graphics are unique in that they're meant to be disposable flashes of brilliance.

The idea for this skateboard actually started back when I was in the beginning stages of my design degree, learning the fundamentals of Adobe Illustrator. We were working through a lesson on what our instructor called "Base Black" drawing, where every piece of art starts with a black base, and every compositing piece is built on top of it until you reach your completed piece of art. After going through the lesson, we were tasked with using what we had just learned to create a personal project. I'd been binge watching The Simpsons at the time, and had recently seen the episode In Marge We Trust, and the idea of using the base black process to recreate the Mr. Sparkle soap box from the episode seemed hilarious to me. While I don't recall what grade I got on the project all these years later, I do remember printing the recreated design out and taking it with me from job to job, always posting on the wall next my desk.

A few years and few job moves later, my Mr. Sparkle printout was looking worse for wear, and I needed a new one. As I still had access to the original Illustrator file, I opened it to see what was was a very low quality piece of art. As my work process and skills had advanced tremendously since I originally created it, I decided to recreate the artwork for a second time. While I was in the process of rebuilding it, I decided I wanted it to look less like the Mr. Sparkle soap box from the show, and more like the Mr. Sparkle commercial from the show. After completing the rebuild, I showed it to a friend and fellow skateboarder who casually mentioned that it would look good on the bottom of a deck. Taking him up on the idea, I spent a bit of time tweaking the design to best fit the format of a skateboard, and the Mr. Sparkle deck was born.

Create background graphics for a skateboard design collaboration.

After the success of my Mr. Sparkle skateboard on DeviantArt, I had a number of people message me through the site asking for commissioned pieces, or asking to collaborate with me. While working my way through all of the messages I received, the idea of a collaboration became more and more intriguing to me, as I loved the thought of trying to meld styles into one cohesive design. The problem was that none of the artists who'd reached out about collaborating seemed to work out. I did end up creating one or two commissioned designs, but honestly, most of the requests fell away just as quickly as I'd received them. Internet fame, such a fleeting mistress...

Still excited about the idea of a collaboration, I set out looking for another artist who's style I liked, and who's work I felt I could meld with or work my style into. Just a few short days after my artwork was featured, I came across another featured artist by the name of AugustC4, whose digital character paintings, based in the Jet Set Radio Future video game world, were garnering a lot of attention. I reached out to him almost immediate to discuss the idea of a collaboration, and while he was initial opposed to working together because of the differences in our styles, I eventually talked up my idea of a design based around the idea of old war propaganda posters enough that he decided to collaborate.

After a few discussions on how we wanted to approach things, he mentioned how he had been working on a number of different paintings for a new character series he was going to call the Red Doll Army. He had a few preliminary sketches done for the series, and after working though many of his ideas, he had tossed a couple of the sketches to the side, as he felt they didn't quite fit into his plans for where the series would go. He showed me a few of these sketches, and one immediately caught my eye. It was the very early outline of a woman in a flight attendant's uniform, facing forward and saluting. It felt perfect for the design idea of a war propaganda poster. He spent the next week or so finishing out the painting so that he could hand it off to me to complete the rest of the background and layout of the design.

While I waited for the finished character painting, I spent some time looking through old war propaganda posters, and was awestruck by the stark colors and and contrast of the Russian propaganda posters from both World Wars. After seeing the completed character painting, with its generally neutral brown tones, I knew I could use the opportunity to create a stark color design of my own. I initially attempted a drastic red and white combination to mimic what I had seen in the Russian war posters, but it never felt quite right with the character, so I went about refining the design, and would work on the colors later. By sheer accident, when I was using the Illustrator pen tool one afternoon to create some of the background vectors, I accidentally switched to the eyedropper tool and sampled a 5x5 square of the character's flesh tone. Since it had picked up some of the darker browns around it, it gave a deep orange color that immediately popped against being the character. From that point out, I knew I was going to be using varying orange colors within the same range to create depth, as well as white and black to create the contrast.

Once the design was complete, I showed it to August to get his thoughts. He was blown away by it, saying I had done it more justice than he thought I could when I was originally selling him on the collaboration. While we had originally planned to co-publish the piece on DeviantArt, he felt like my contributions had been greater to the project than his had been, and he gave me permission to publish the piece by myself, as long as I credited his contribution.

Create a flyer that can be handed out or posted centrally, for a 4th of July community block party.

When I first moved into my current neighborhood and started getting to know my neighbors, I found that many of them wanted the same thing I did for my family, we all wanted neighbors that we enjoyed spending time around, and could call our friends and family. After a simple 4th of July barbeque turned into an impromptu block party, a couple of families in the neighborhood decided that work together to start an annual 4th of July block party. When planning for our first year, we drew heavily from the block party scene in The Sandlot movie.

Create a poster for a community Halloween event that can be posted at various central points throughout the community. Additionally, create a 2-piece "Boo You Neighbor" flyer that homeowners in the community can use to get their neighbors into the spirit of the season.

About 2 years ago, a friend and neighbor asked me to join the event planning committee for our community. While we've always had a decent turnout from the 300+ homeowners of our community, as a group, we decided we wanted to try and draw in new people by creating posters for some of the larger events through the year. The first event that I was asked to create art for was our Halloween Spooktacular. As the decision to create the art for this event was incredibly short notice, I had a number of challenges and constraints. I had to build the artwork, proof it with the school and the planning committee, and get it to the print shop in just a few days. While we also hold a house decorating contest, the main focus of the event has always been geared towards safe activities for children, because of this I wanted the focus of the poster to be a group of children. Admittedly, with the short time constraint, I took the quickest route possible to the end product, and sifted through various pieces of clip art until I found one of a group of 'trick or treating' children. After this, I went about piecing together a background for the children from additional pieces of clip art mixed with my own created artwork. For the typeface, I knew I wanted something that "felt" like Halloween, and chose to use Feast of Flesh for the emphasized items, while Open Sans was used for everything else. Both the committee and the school approved it without any hesitation, and the committee got numerous compliments on the art from homeowners in the community.

Create a custom, dog-themed, version of the Tsuro board game for a Christmas gift.

As a hobby gamer, I own my fair share of board games, and partly because of my involvement in the hobby, I've gotten involved in 3D printing. During a board game night in mid-2017, I was introduced to Tsuro: The Game of the Path. With it's simple mechanics and game play, and it's gorgeous design, it became one of my go-to games for introducing new players to the hobby. During one of these introductory sessions with a close family friend, she fell in love with the game, and it quickly moved to the top of her favorite games list. Since she travels for work frequently, our family and house have become a second home for her dachshund when she's away. Most dachshund owners deeply love the breed and collect various trinkets and items showing this. While dropping her dog off after one of her business trips, she asked when we would be able to play Tsuro again, mentioning that she really wished she had her own copy to play when friends and family were over.

Hearing her say this instantly flipped the switch in my brain. I could make a custom version of he game for her that utilized my design and art skills, my tinkering and crafting skills, and my 3D printer. As I was hoping to have the completed game ready for her on Christmas that year, I set to work almost immediately in my spare time, looking at the mass-produced version of the game, as well as custom versions other players had made. When working through my initial ideas for what I wanted it to look like, I drew my inspiration from the thing she loves most, her dachshund, since she's an incredibly unique and quirky dog, with an identity all her own.

With dogs, and specifically a dog park, as the theme for the game, I set about creating the variations for all 36 tiles with things that can be found in a dog park. Each tile is built on a grass green base, while the paths on the tiles are made up of sidewalks, dirt, sand, paw prints, and overgrown grass edges.