Poster for the theater show the Long Now by the Shrewd Productions, opening May 21st at the Blue Theatre. Written and directed by Beth Burns, this story considers the turbulent nature of time, and the impossible hope of capturing a perfect present.

The challenge in this poster design was creating a piece that was at once technical (Time is one of the characters in show), organic with a bit of danger that looms just on the edges. We went through several iterations — one was too whimsical, one was too serious — before settling on this one. I think that the paper texture that I used for the background works well in the scope of the show, the puppet that plays Time has that same kind of rough hew to it, projecting on a canvas sheet.

The font for the text is Gotham. The background is a found schematic and I drew the birdcage, tracing and referencing several photos online. The girl and the bird are stock.

You can find out more information here.

Promo posters for the gritty indie film Cherry Bomb — not the one with Ron Weasley — about an exotic dancer who exacts revenge on a man who rapes her. It’s due out in 2010.

You can find out more information here. You can also become a fan on Facebook.

This is a preview sticker for We Hate Your Site for SXSW. In thinking about this job, I thought about what kinds of things indicate a written kind of critique — which is what We Hate Your Site is all about — I thought about grading or scribbling comments but that didn’t seem strong enough. I needed something pretty esoteric, so much so that it bordered on being difficult to read.

I used Andale Mono and Helvetica as my font set for this piece.

The title for the 2009 play festival — choices ranged from Flashback Dance to Ya Mama Don’t Dance — clearly informed the poster/postcard design. With limited time, Time Steps — also a type of dance step — became the title and I really liked the idea of demonstrating time running backwards in a kind of reverse hourglass series. I also tried a clock face with backwards text but it didn’t quite establish a backwards time line as clearly.

Every year, the plays written and chosen have to follow three rules — this year, they were:

• The play must go backward, from beginning to end
• Include a sudden dance break that causes a shift in the action
• Include three things your mother told you not to do

I’m not sure what kind of dance can made from the steps I drew in the poster, but it looks like a lot of fun, eh?
As the copy font, I used Gotham. For the title, I used Sketch Rockwell.

Collateral design for Shrewd Productions’ annual burlesque Christmas show in 2008. The font used was Gotham, the title was created in Illustrator. The photograph was shot by Cory Ryan.

Card/flyer design for pda event at Elysium.

Small World Labs, a company that provides social networking solutions to businesses and organizations, wanted to develop leave-behind sheets for sales calls that detailed the totality of their services. And so together we created two systems — one of general information and one specific to a dozen different kinds of possible communities. The image taxonomy — the school of fish photo deemed the most apropos — was developed collaboratively. Counting the fronts, the package numbers 16 pages total.

Futura was used as the title font and the body font is Minion Pro.

I set out for the 2008 play festival collateral to use Futura as the copy font, for its simple geometric forms, for its clarity, for its optimism. This then set the tone for the icons and the layout.

Every year, the plays written and chosen have to follow three rules — this year, they were:

• A character with a secret they are trying to hide
• A piece of music, some of which may have been forgotten
• A radical physical transformation (be it of person, place or thing.)

Collateral design for collaborative project between Austin Script Works and Teatro Vivo.

Collateral design for Shrewd Productions’ annual burlesque Christmas show in 2007. The font used was Futura.