I spend a good amount of time making ads. Sometimes, while making ads, I accidentally make some art. Other times, I set out to make some art, but only end up making a mess. Sometimes I stay up late and design posters for bands and musicians. Sometimes I stay up late and take photos. Sometimes I stay up late thinking about how much I don't really like mornings.
I know a handful of guitar chords.
13" x 19" 4-color - Uncoated stock
Do not attempt to fold the origami Titanic. The horrible truth is I made up all the steps.
Lots of fun overprinting and faux-bad trapping in this poster that was a bit more subtle in the final print due to ink gain, but still turned out well.
The "Built to Spill" type is hand-done and, if I could do it again, I would of increased the size of the halftone screens I used in the 3D shading a bit. With the ink gain on the uncoated paper stock it lost a little of the analog halftone look. That all said, it still printed quite well and I have a great reference for faux-halftone size for future posters.
Mid-century stereo console design including cabinet, controls, and electrical layout.
Dimensions:
L 34" x H 34" x D 14"
Specs:
8" front speakers (200 watts)
8" subwoofer (300 watts)
Bluetooth / RCA channels
3-color serigraph hand-printed on French Off-White Butchers (100lb cover)
26" x 26"
A short while back I did an art print inspired by my favorite retired film type: Kodachrome 40. Well, I really liked this process so I decided to create another print working in the same way.
Like many starting photographers, I spent my time in high school and college shooting and learning with Kodak Tri-X black and white film. And, as much as I love Kodachrome 40, the ubiquity of Tri-X makes it both unavoidable and nostalgic.
Like before, this print was created by separating the original color plates from a 1961 package of Tri-X medium format film (bought off eBay). Then, the color plates from every side of the package were repositioned on a single plane in various directions. The result is something that's part pop-art and part dadaist.
The 50 prints are hand-numbered and signed.
It had been two years since my last Fillmore poster and despite saying I had “retired”, I couldn’t pass up doing something for PUP.
Being a big fan of this band, I wanted to do something that was a nod to the messy, drunken subject matter in their songs. An empty and crushed beer can with the band becoming the brand and the show info replacing the boilerplate marketing copy just felt right.
The PUP logo is an homage / amalgamation of all the classic low-brow beer labels you’d see at any dive punk bar (like the on-the-nose use of the gothic “German” type in the sub copy and the vintage-y character fill in the PUP logo).
I also felt like I needed to do something I hadn’t done in previous Fillmore work and this concept allowed me to incorporate not just design, but original photography.
13" x 19" / 4-color - Uncoated stock
Probably one my favorite bands that I've had a chance to do some work for.
3-color screen print 18" x 24" on 100lb cover.
13" x 19" 2-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
My first Fillmore poster in a while and such a cool band to get to do some work for. The simple thought here is that – with two synth / multi-instrumentalists in the band – the patching cables of all their equipment seemed like an interesting visual starting point.
And, as a departure from a lot of my previous Fillmore work, I decided to construct the bulk of this typographic solution in 3D and let it feel something closer to photo-real rather than graphic. I had a few people even ask if I had photographed this (which feels like a massive compliment).
As I experiment more with product design and what’s possible with CNC cutting and 3D printing, I set out to design some lighting.
I think “collection” is a strong word, but what started off as designing a single tension lamp turned into a multi-month project that eventually led to multiple lamps.
The original tension lamp was designed with some influences from Arts & Crafts, Frank Lloyd Wright interiors, and obviously the mid-century roots where this type of lighting originated.
The table lamp was a byproduct of all of this as well as some leftover steel.
HotelTonight, part of the Airbnb group, came to us and was looking for ways to get people thinking about travel again. Our campaign turned the attention on your house (which may be kinda tired of seeing you hanging around all of the time).
My original deconstructed film packaging screen prints were simple, pop art pieces highlighting my favorite film stocks. Using one art to celebrate a small part of another.
For this new print, I wanted to see where else this could go. To focus on both the art and the mechanical parts of the photographic process. To lean away from deconstruction and towards amalgamation.
I also wanted the screen printing process to be – and feel – very self-aware. That the texture, layers, and order of inks are all part of the story. And to let there be tension between the abstract layers of white and gold printed first, and the more precise photographic halftone overprinted last: The freedom of seeing and creating living under specific, technical processes.
One art to celebrate the many aspects of another art.
20” x 26”
(50) on French Paper “Red Hot”
(25) on Mohawk Carnival Red
For this Fillmore poster, I wanted to do something to highlight the unique nature of this group – a duo of twins. I also wanted to step back from elaborate and technical digital processes and make something a bit more analog. The poster was done with only two colors, vintage wood type, and the glitchy, stretched microphones were created by simply dragging the images while scanning.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is San Francisco’s iconic and free music festival that happens every year in Golden Gate Park. For their 20th anniversary, they made the decision to redesign their logo and branding for the first time since the festival’s inception.
To begin, this new logo had to work with existing materials and typefaces. It also had to have flexible alternatives that could work both horizontally and as an abbreviation.
My main inspiration and starting point for this was classic music festival t-shirts. Something that would have seemed right at home being silkscreened in 1968, 1988, or today.
The logo includes a modified form of Modesto type designed by Jim Parkinson balanced against a custom script loosely based on the work of Maximiliano Sproviero. This combination helps the logo retain that bohemian style of the festival while having a mark that’s also a bit elevated.
These two typefaces were also chosen so that the original name “Strictly Bluegrass” and the now-colloquial “Hardly Strictly” could both work as individual marks.
We updated the colors and introduced new marks in 2021 and again for 2022 when HSB returned to Golden Gate Park for the first time since the pandemic.
I first discovered Pinback in 2001 right when I was starting my career in design and art direction and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. They are one of those bands that, although usually slotted into the “indie” category, really defy any simple genre. I described them once to a friend as the non-Euclidean geometry of indie rock and it’s a weird comparison, but I’m sticking to it.
This poster became the first time I used AI (MidJourney) to generate a whole range of 1950’s-style UFO’s that I then worked into this 19th century engraving look.
The type, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of AI and I spent hours assembling all the pulleys from bits and pieces of scanned technical engravings.
13" x 19" / 4-color - Uncoated stock
There’s a large conversation happening in this country right now about police and the role they play in our communities. I believe it’s time we reimagine these forces and direct funds to address root problems and systemic injustices. Part of that solution is disarming our over-militarized police forces and creating new rolls that interact differently within our towns and cities. Roles that don’t always send the same people with all the guns to solve every problem.
Correcting these issues require a strategy of long-term civic engagement and voting.
In the short-term, to raise funds for initiatives that can start doing some good today, I created this print. 100% of the proceeds will be split donated between The Loveland Foundation and Danielle Calibird Fernandez’s GoFundMe campaign to build an urban farm right here in the Bayview neighborhood of SF. There are only 10 numbered and signed prints available and each is 28” x 28” (yes, it’s quite big) printed on 32# matte stock.
Fregio Mecano was a modular typeface designed sometime between 1920 and 1930 in Italy. Instead of designing each letter, this was a series of simple blocks that could be used to then build any character including various sizes and weights.
I became interested in the almost pre-fab, architectural-ness of this and felt like it deserved to have a three-dimensional iteration.
Using the renders and the alpha channels from the renders, I built out more traditional color traps and layers for highlights and shadows. The hope was that this final poster felt more in keeping with the period of the original.
After many years, it was great to work with Gaby Moreno again. For this album, she came to me with a list of concepts that flowed through her new music including dreams, new beginnings, dusk, dawn, Guatemala, and Los Angeles. It was varied, but contained so much imagery. She also pointed to some great Constructivist, Bauhaus, and Dadaist references as a visual starting point.
With all of that, it felt like this needed to be a collage, but not completely constrained in those early 20th century works. Although the color palette was limited and the custom typeface hinted at Bauhaus typography, the final layouts did not shy from feeling modern or digital.
In the end, this culminated in cover art, CD packaging, custom type / logo mark, and additional assets for promoting the release.
Sutter Health wanted a campaign that elevated the brand and differentiated it from other hospital networks. Our campaign approach – to highlight all the ways Sutter Health helps patients and the community – allowed us to tell serious stories as well as share lighter moments all under the tagline, “It’s a thousand things, big and small.”
Small Agency is a band with two members. Matthew Wyne and myself. The two of us had discussed recording music together for years. And, as the pandemic dragged on into its second year, we decided to finally act on this. Luckily, my office in downtown San Francisco had been sitting empty this whole time and became the best place to set up a makeshift recording studio.
Matt is also a designer so, when it came time to design our album cover, the project became a full-on collaboration. We liked this visual of musical instruments being hauled into a corporate office via an elevator, but were looking for a unique way to present this.
Enter Su Blackwell. I worked with Su on her amazing book of fairy tales previously and there would be no one better to create miniature paper instruments to place into a miniature elevator to photograph. A literal “small” agency. A diorama that (hopefully) captures these intricate and reflective songs as well as the quiet world of recording an album in an empty downtown office during a pandemic.
I built and photographed our elevator scene while Matt worked on the the vinyl packaging and logo marks.
The Racket is a writing series based in San Francisco where every month a new topic is chosen and a selected group of writers will read short stories they've written on that subject.
For this, my main goal was to try and avoid the well-worn visual territories like clocks, longs shadows, or hourglasses. After a good deal of failed sketches, this idea of using the rings of a tree in some way started feeling like the best route.
This was also my first work in a very (VERY) long while where I used Cinema4D to generate the simple lighting and shadows as a way to let this have a little more depth than my usual 2D illustration work.
Each of the hosted writers have been placed within the rings based on their age with the younger writers closer to outer edge.
The team behind some of San Francisco’s most well-know eating and drinking establishments including Bourbon & Branch, Trou Normand, Bar Agricole, and Prizefighter got their hands on a large, new space and wanted it to be a sophisticated wine, oyster, and charcuterie destination.
The name “Nommo” comes from an ancient amphibious god (a nod to their menu of charcuterie and oysters), but the client wanted the identity to mainly take influences from 20th century design styles. Specifically, early poster work and an air of subtle European-ness.
The result was a custom logotype that borrows from both Bauhuas and the greater art deco poster style while using a decidedly mid-century color palette (which allows it to be a little less period-specific).
"Sports Alphabet"
Bleacher Report, the scrappy digital sports news and content maker, needed to go BIG for their first national TV ads. To do this, we recruited Blackalicious to cut a new version of their hit "Alphabet Aerobics", but this time written entirely about sports and sports culture.
The whole track was then matched with 26 original animation styles and aired during major NBA, NFL, and college basketball games.
Across San Francisco and the Bay Area, you can still find numerous bars holding onto and actively using vintage cash registers. For reasons ranging from speed and simplicity to tradition, these bars have held off converting to any iteration of a modern point-of-sale system.
This photo series hopes to capture some of these overlooked antique machines and the worlds they inhabit.
To read about each bar, check out the full collection on FLICKR.
Saw these vintage oil cans at a car show and traded some old parts for them. They were a bit too beat up for display, but I thought they'd photograph well.
I was right.
After some focus stacking and a couple quarts of Photoshop work they kind of look like pop art done by Norman Rockwell.
20” x 28” digital archival print
Approved poster for Aimee Mann / Jonathan Coulton at The Fillmore, SF, CA.
©2017 The Fillmore Corporation F1491.
The opening track on Aimee Mann's newest record is called "Goose Snow Cone" although it has nothing to do with snow cones or geese. The title is actually referring to a friend's cat (the aforementioned "Goose"), but the song is really about being lonely and homesick.
Additionally, there was this overarching narrative to Aimee's new album, "Mental Illness" that Pitchfork described as "one populated by ordinary people struggling against operatic levels of existential pain . . ."
It was this combination of cynicism and her lyrics, "Gotta keep it together when your friends come by." that began to form this illustration. A lonely snow cone in an unfamiliar place and surrounded by questionable strangers.
13" x 19" 4-color
3-color serigraph hand-printed on French Off-White Butchers (100lb cover)
26" x 26"
Something outside the usual concert poster. I wanted to start doing more art prints and picked one of my favorite now-extinct film stocks as the subject. This is the separated and enlarged Kodachrome 40 packaging color plates with the registration skewed 90º (creating something that's sort of dadaist and sort of pop-art).
The 50 prints are hand-numbered and signed.
The Racket is a writing series based in San Francisco where every month a new topic is chosen and a selected group of writers will read short stories they've written on that subject.
This was my first poster project after doing a good deal of Fillmore work and it was not only a nice change to do something totally different, but also nice I was able to incorporate my own new photography.
The 9mm bullet shell was purchased off eBay and the pencil was hot glued inside (after I spent an unmentionable amount of time sharpening it by hand with an x-acto knife). All of this was shot in my dining room with a 100mm Canon macro lens with a single soft box and bounce card.
Toto asked barrettSF to convince Americans to stop using toilet paper. At first we were reluctant, but then they told us about bidet toilets. That made more sense.
Although I still consider myself “retired” from making Fillmore posters, there are always reasons to ignore this self-imposed retirement. In this case, it’s Neko Case and being a fan of this band for nearly 20 years.
For this poster, I wanted to do something that leaned on the Morse code theme of their newest album. The large 3D dots and dashes spell out “THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS” and we printed this in 3 colors to make sure those oranges and pinks really popped.
The second poster here was my alternative design sketch where the ENTIRE poster was done in Morse code.
13" x 19" / 3-color
After a few drinks over Memorial Day weekend, I had a thought about making a political ad. After a few more drinks I had rendered thousands of body bags and juxtaposed them against the President’s own words.
This could have all ended right there, but after a few emails with the Lincoln Project, the video hit the internet. It reached 2 million views on Twitter before the next morning and was covered across much of the political and news web.
I’ve gotten to collaborate with Ivan Cash of Cash Studios on a few projects in the past, but this was by far the most involved. Ivan had approached me to create custom packaging for a pair of sunglasses that, when worn, would block TV screens that he was launching via Kickstarter.
The package design turned into an elaborate 3-piece box which included an internal glasses mount with silver printing, a lenticular box with 4 animated frames of TV static, and a clear acrylic slipcase with white printing.
The Kickstarter was an instant success and was funded within 24 hours while getting written up in Wired, Vice, the BBC, AV Club, Boing Boing, and more.
Typeface designed for a poster series. The typeface would be pretty severe feeling if it wasn't for the random lowercase characters with capital ascender heights and oddly low x-height (which makes it more playful).
You can download a version HERE
In an act of rage-induced Photoshopping, I created this poster about a month before the 2018 elections. My sentiments played as I hoped. Here’s what I wrote then:
I used to imagine the revolution with all the originality of a bad action film. Overwrought James Cameron or Jerry Bruckheimer boilerplate bullshit where you replace the giant fighting robots with kids pelting capitalist oppression with paving stones.
The barricades. The tear gas. The dragging of the rich old white men by their collars into the streets.
But that vision had a problem. The script seemed to cast a whole lot of men.
Men throwing the tear gas back at the riot cops. Men burning the McMansions. Men pushing the desks out the windows of faceless corporate offices. Men – without recognizing the irony – somehow overthrowing the patriarchy. It's a tired script with a lot of senseless destruction and plot holes.
And that's why my hope for next month is this script gets a much-needed reboot. That this boiling hot rage I see from so many women becomes the burn-it-all-down-and-dance-on-the-ashes moment this country desperately needs.
A new and improved script. A much better cast.
Bombs away.
Download PDF
(CC License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International):
The Treehouse is a brand new bar and lounge at the Oakland Coliseum. The request from the client was to create something that communicates not just a great place to drink while watching an A's game, but also something more sophisticated than just another sports bar.
The logo has multiple forms including logotype, 3D "neon" logotype, and a version mounted to a wooden home plate (that, obviously, does double-duty as a treehouse icon).
I’ve played drums for nearly my entire life and it was music – and the art attached to music – that got me interested in graphic design in the first place. So, when my previous band asked for a music video I quickly agreed.
I partnered with my good friend, illustrator, and skateboard artist Jason Warne to produce a one-off illustration for the band. The whole process was shot in time lapse, in one sitting, over the course of 5 hours. The illustration is a play on San Francisco’s (terrible) flag.
Then, through the power of computers and masochism, I integrated live action video of the band into these scenes to create a frenetic and constantly active single-shot video.
Custom 7" vinyl record design for Cables & Arms included original photography (of a vintage life jacket purchased off eBay for $5) and printed in 2-color with only black and PMS172 inks. To get the colors to overprint correctly, the life jacket had to be hand-trapped and die-lines for the packaging were custom built.
Since the two songs on the record both deal with the sea in some metaphorical way, the ship on the vinyl is either safe or sinking depending on how it's placed into the sleeve.
BTW, if you're looking for custom music packaging, the folks at A to Z Media are the people you need to deal with (as none of this would of been possible without them).
Magazine / Newspaper
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
During an evening that probably involved way too much caffeine, I put this illustration together. It seemed rather insulting to me that the richest corporations, the ones with all the power and tax payer bailouts, needed to be rebranded by some as "Job Creators". It's a stunningly cynical word play that wants us to bow our heads in complete reverence to these hyper-wealthy entities and not question their motives or dealings (less they take away all our jobs).
Shortly after creating it, the Occupy Wall Street movement started grabbing headlines and I made the poster free and available for download. Shortly after that I was approached to include this, as a hand-made print, in a collection of political art related to the event.
It has since been included in the MoMa and the Smithsonian / Cooper Hewitt in various exhibits dealing with art, design, and politics.
As a side note, a person who saw this illustration asked me if I believed corporations truly hated America. I actually don't think they hate America at all. I think they're just too busy playing the capitalism game to even notice America.
This image has a Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike CC license.
Download the poster HERE
:60 Audi brand TV spot first aired during Le Mans and highlighting Audi's commitment to safety.
Full color on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
48" x 48"
I was approached by my old colleague Adam Larson (Adam&Co) for a commissioned piece in the vein of the vintage film prints I had done and create a piece for a new boutique hotel in Boston.
This is the biggest piece like this I have ever done and I also think it’s the most successful.
Like the other film packages, the original color plates are separated back out and placed at various scales and in wholly new orders. Also, I opted to show the ionic Polaroid color bars from the packaging as loosely painted lines which makes this feel a bit more dynamic.
13" x 19" 2-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
Proposed posters for Aimee Mann / Jonathan Coulton at The Fillmore, SF, CA.
Aimee Mann's new album is titled "Mental Illness" and Pitchfork succinctly wrote that it's, "populated by ordinary people struggling against operatic levels of existential pain at odds with their humdrum lives.."
This has been true of most of Aimee's work and I also felt there's a duality to it as well. A soft delicateness on the exterior, but always (always) darker and more cynical with a closer listen.
And that's where this design came from. A deeper internal darkness.
I also felt that Aimee's music tended to progress like short stories and decided to treat this design like I would had it been the cover of a novel.
For the second design, creating a fake fashion advertisement for straightjackets and overprinting the show details seemed the appropriate level of sarcasm in the face of misery.
13" x 19" 4-color
Audi's performance line of vehicles shot for Audi North America.
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF (plus four alternate posters)
:60 TV for extra spicy Slim Jim "DARE".
The Racket is a writing series based in San Francisco where every month a new topic is chosen and a selected group of writers will read short stories they've written on that subject.
Posters are handed out at the event for the participants and attendees.
Originally, I had this grand vision of shooting a very moody image of a typewriter floating in mid-air draped with a white sheet. It involved an elaborate lighting and photography rig that, despite fighting with it for most of a weekend, never lived up to my original concept.
Nevertheless, I still had this vintage typewriter on hand and kind of like where this ended up even more.
11" x 17" digital print
:60 Brand TV spot for Audi borrowing from 100 years of archival footage and a poem by Edgar Albert Guest.
It's always nice doing something super minimal that still communicates everything that's needed. For Bob Mould, someone who has been carrying the punk rock banner for decades, a flag seemed fitting. But there is also a sense of a struggle in the new material and I liked the ambiguity and mixed messages with the flag in this position (is it half mast? is a white surrender flag being raised? lowered?).
Bob Mould actually says it best in a song off his new album, "The War":
And all these songs I write for you. They tear me up, it's not hard to do. Listen to my voice. It's the only weapon I kept from the war.
And I can soothe every ailment you endure. And I can see into the future most assured. I don't have a choice. It's the only life I know after the war.
Everything we made, reduced to dust. You were the one who taught me most. I carry your remains. Your emblem and your name. Nothing left will ever be the same.
And this war we fought was violent and long. Weeks turned into years but we keep on keeping on. The ringing in my brain. Is what remains.
This war has worn me down. Broken dreams and a hole in the ground. Don't give up. And don't give in.
13" x 19" 2-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
Poster design for (RED) Nights, a concert series to eliminate AIDS in Africa. Art was used nationwide at all concerts as well as on GAP / (RED) merchandise.
Proposed poster for Blind Pilot at The Fillmore, SF, CA.
Since their newest album features a good amount of references to the moon, the night sky, and various types of darkness, this felt like a nice, simple execution. This was designed to be a 3-color print with the hope that the 3rd would be a pass of glow-in-the-dark ink.
13" x 19" 3-color
Wine packaging for new product exploration and consumer testing. Bottles featured silkscreen-style typography on the bottle and wood veneer capusle label.
Digital art print on canvas
40" x 40"
A-Treat is a regional soda brand from Allentown, PA. A product that, for me, is trapped in a vaseline-lensed nostalgia of summer picnics with Dan Hartman on the FM.
I picked up a six pack carrier off eBay for a few bucks and built this from separating the original color plates (much like the Kodak work I've done).
40" x 40"
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
A long while back, my good friend Jim asked me to help him with some art for the little Flash game he was developing. This "little Flash game" would go on to win at SXSW and the Independent Games Festival. This "little Flash game" spawned 2 complete versions, over a thousand Photoshop files, years of work, and thousands of players around the globe.
:30 TV campaign to announce the new Slim Jim Monster Sticks (which are just incredibly large Slim Jims).
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
(RED)Nights / (RED) partner poster for Converse®
(A unique poster made to highlight each product partner).
24" x 36" 3-color on 80lb French Pale Gray
A typeface based of an obscure and mostly forgotten Letraset headline type from the 70's. The new characters were recreated by hand and aged to match the soft edges of the original.
Uses: Not quite sure.
2 color silkscreen poster for Boston rock show featuring: The Debutantes, The Luxury, The Information, and Taxpayer
Omaha Steaks has been in business for almost 100 years and had never done a national TV campaign. It was time to change that.
Using Father's Day as our launch event, we worked with Oscar-winning director Errol Morris and 13 families and got them talking about their dads. The videos ran on national TV as well as a large online push and gently reminded our audience that maybe this year a steak would be a better gift than a tie.
Approved poster for Ingrid Michaelson / AJR at The Fillmore, SF, CA.
©2016 The Fillmore Corporation F1439
"The frightening and most difficult thing about being what somebody calls a creative person is that you have no idea where any of your thoughts come from, really. And especially, you don't have any idea about where they're going to come from tomorrow." - Hal Riney (from the documentary "Art & Copy")
Every time I start work on a new poster for The Fillmore, I'm reminded of this quote. You would think, after all these years, the process would come naturally, but instead it always starts with a good amount of self-doubt and uncertainty. Even after I settle on a direction, I still need to convince myself I possess the skill to get the idea out of my head and into the world.
As for Ingrid Michaelson, I stared at a blank sketchbook for quite a while. Going through her discography, it became clear that this poster needed to be about connections between people. The executional challenge, then, became finding what would convey this quickly. At first, I didn't entirely like the idea of hands reaching for each other as it felt saccharine and expected. But, having the hands' silhouette reveal a storm and posing a dilemma – that we don't know if this connection is good or bad – felt like a worthy story.
13" x 19" on uncoated stock.
For the holidays, we built fully interactive window displays in San Francisco and New York City that allowed shoppers to donate toys directly from their phones (with a little help from eBay).
The Racket is a writing series based in San Francisco where every month a new topic is chosen and a selected group of writers will read short stories they've written on that subject.
For this poster on Celebrity, I bought a handful of cheap “movie star” sunglasses and mangled them to create the individual letterforms.
One of the things I like about this poster series is it gives me a chance to combine some photography work with my poster work.
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
eBay wanted auto enthusiasts everywhere to know that no matter what they were working on, eBay had the parts they needed.
To demonstrate this, instead of 30-second TV spots, we made an entire reality show spanning four different garages, four unique cars (all bought off eBay) and, over the course of 10 episodes, transformed them into four incredible vehicles - all BUILT from eBay.
On top of the video series, BUILT was a fully-integrated campaign that included a rich online experience with 3D models of each vehicle along with the parts used, multiple "advertorial" print spreads in six major auto magazine, pre-roll ads, and banners.
Movie poster for Lemonade, a short documentary about advertising employees who lost their jobs during the recession and how they reinvented their careers and their lives following.
Letraset dry transfer type was popular from the 1960’s through the 1980’s (before all typography was done on computers). You would simply use a pen or burnishing tool to force the type off the plastic sheet and onto paper. I designed my first ever band flyer using Letraset in 1993 and continued to find uses for it on multiple Fillmore posters (as the tedious process creates these great human imperfections that would be hard to recreate digitally).
So, as sort of an ode to this highly anachronistic tool, I took a partially-used character set I had laying around and made this print. The tool is now the art.
24” x 36” 4-color
Custom logo and wine packaging for new product exploration and consumer testing.
Poster for Boston Derby Dames roller derby team and their bout on St. Patrick's Day.
8" x 22" 4-color silkscreen
Most designers will tell you they have an affinity for the typography found in film and TV intros. So, when the directors of Refugee approached me to help them with the intro to this amazing documentary, I couldn't say no.
Refugee is a documentary by Joyce Chen and Emily Moore that tells the story of Aicha Diop, a West African refugee who made the biggest sacrifice of all when she boarded a plane for the US in 2003, leaving her 5 children behind.
Through a simple animation of Aicha's actual asylum form, the intro tells the story of her losing her home, her country, and her children. The animation eventually rests on the single word, "Refugee" as it was typed in the form.
Learn more about the film at refugeedoc.com
Refugee is a documentary by Joyce Chen and Emily Moore that tells the story of Aicha Diop, a West African refugee who made the biggest sacrifice of all when she boarded a plane for the US in 2003, leaving her 5 children behind.
After helping with the title designs for the film, I was honored to be able to also contribute the poster. We used Aicha's actual asylum form in both the credits and here in the poster. The "Refugee" title typeface was also pulled from the same form and just enlarged to an extreme.
Learn more about the film at refugeedoc.com
The website for eBay Motors’ BUILT mini-reality series was a huge part of the experience in itself. While users watched the YouTube episodes within the site, eBay links to the exact parts being installed were displayed in real-time along side the videos.
Additionally, so users could dive deeper into the content, we created individual 3D car models of each phase of the the build process (36 total car renders in all). This required hundreds of reference photos while shooting the episodes so that the models were be identical to the real cars and you could easily watch the transormation take place.
To take advantage of the high percentage of mobile users, BUILT also had a fully functional mobile site that also allowed real-time voting, garage exploration, and of course watching the episodes.
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
The Keystone State & California
The places we come from and the places we end up will always be connected.
18" x 24" digital archival print
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
Custom EP packaging with an hourglass die-cut that's either full or empty depending on how you insert the booklet.
WWE 2K15 is the most realistic WWE pro wrestling video game ever made. And, to tell that story we brought together not just the current WWE superstars, but also some of the greatest superstars from the past. Our launch TV involved no cheesy explosions or over the top dialog. Just a classic poem and our WWE stars reflecting on their careers.
Custom CD packaging with slide rule-type decoder that, when rotated to "EP" on the outer edge, displayed "THE INFORMATION" in the die-cut window.
To get fans excited about the new WWE 2K16 video game, a new character was added if you pre-ordered: Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator. This, obviously, is a big deal and to promote it we did the only thing we could think of; a shot-for-shot recreation of one of the most iconic Terminator scenes done with Arnold and a cast of WWE superstars.
Approved poster for Blind Pilot / Margaret Glaspy at The Fillmore, SF, CA.
©2016 The Fillmore Corporation F1440.
"I started working as a dime store clerk, I thought it would make me the kind to put you first. My only dreams were in fluorescent light, My only goal was to forget what I was worth."
It was these lines from the Blind Pilot song "Packed Powder" that became the nucleus of this idea. But that wasn't the whole of it. As a band, their multi-instrumentalist approach and Pacific Northwestern folksiness has this feeling of a stocked curio cabinet full of things; little pieces of genres and styles that make up a wonderfully interesting whole.
Beyond this, though, Blind Pilot is special to me as they were the first band I ever saw when I moved to San Francisco. I saw them in a tiny venue playing to a small crowd supporting their first full length. Two albums later, it was a honor to get to do this poster for their sold out show at The Fillmore.
13" x 19" 4-color
The process of buying 500+ radio tubes off eBay and building some wall art.
Mount Joy is an indie film about a small town rock band, The Living Daylights, and what happens when the insular world around them starts falling apart. This was one of those mini-dream projects since I grew up no more than an hour from the part of PA where this was filmed (and spent most of my life in similar bands).
This art was all proposed for various uses from shirts to posters.
The first full length by Cables & Arms is titled "Framing Defeat for the Critical Eye" and for the album art, a perfectly framed white surrender flag, in a white frame, on a white gallery wall, holding a white vinyl record seemed to make perfect sense.
The photo illustration was built with original photographs and a lot of heavy Photoshopping. The final record sleeve was also printed with a spot UV gloss where the glass of the frame would be for added effect.
Listen to Cables & Arms on Spotify and iTunes or buy a limited edition white vinyl via Wiretap Records.
13" x 19" 4-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
I had previously done work for Gaby via The Fillmore and it was great to work directly with her on this CD.
The title "Illustrated Songs" refers to a type of promotion done during the early 20th century at movie and vaudeville theaters. Singers would perform songs while slides dealing with the theme of the piece would be projected behind them. This was done in an effort to sell sheet music to the audience.
Gaby had a solid vision for this going in and the main challenge was to combine the early 20th century concept of "Illustrated Songs" with the mid-century design style she was looking for.
Final art produced on 4-color Digipak with 4-color pocket insert.
Marine Layer takes old t-shirts and turns them into really cool new-ish t-shirts. Each with a unique origin story. We thought people would like those stories, so we designed tags to tell them. Copywriter / ACD : Meredith Karr
The power of the Yellow Pages is now in the palm of your hand with the YP app. And, to let people know they can pretty much accomplish anything with it, we put together a campaign that highlighted some pretty diverse tasks and tackled them all with YP.
The first poster is the approved 13" x 19" poster for The Fillmore, SF. The second is an alternate design using the classic dynamite blaster image (seemed to fit well with the whole "Get down stay down" thought).
3 color print for NYC show with : The Hot One & The Information. Printed on 100lb French paper. (Print run of 50)
Nice Hat wine packaging for new product exploration and consumer testing. Each varietal would feature a different die-cut hat that revealed a unique fabric pattern printed on the reverse side of each label.
3 color silkscreen on French 100lb Whitewash (20" x 26")
13" x 19" 2-color poster for The Fillmore, SF
One of my favorite times to take photos is late at night. There's something I enjoy about artificial light and how it makes everything theatrical and dramatic.
This is just a small collection of low light night shots in no particular order or theme.
Many more can be found on FLICKR
19" x 25" – 2-color silkscreen
In advertising, one very unscientific benchmark of success is if consumers actually proudly display your ad. In my opinion, beer companies (with maybe the exception of Guinness) have butchered this opportunity for decades. They create a product which needs no real explanation and that is universally respected. And yet, when it comes to posters, these companies have been putting the same girls in bikinis on them for at least 30 years.
The result?
The only places you'll find them is dive bars and in the bedrooms of 13-year old boys.
The art above was an in-bar poster concept that unfortunately never made it into production (lack of cleavage I'm guessing). For those of you who aren't from Pennsylvania you truly can just walk into any bar there and say "lager" and you'll get a Yuengling.
Oh, and if I still lived in PA I'd petition to annex those parts of New York and the Great Lakes so the state would actually have a beer mug handle.
For Cables & Arms' 3rd EP, I was just looking for a way to represent "3" and infuse a little tragedy into it (as the EP deals with that in various ways). This nearly-sunk battleship from the board game of the same name seemed to be both iconic and hint at imminent doom fairly well.
I have two cameras on my desk at the moment. A modern DSLR and a late 30's Leica III. And although it's impossible to ignore the flexibility of the former, I will always gravitate to the latter.
I learned to love photography through film. I learned patience and finding my shot through film. And although I don't do it any more, I loved the quite art of a darkroom and bringing light trapped among the silver halide back into something tangible .
Here is a just a small collection of shots I've captured with various film cameras from bulky vintage medium format units, to 35mm, to fun things done with expired film.