Magazine advertisements for Chase Global Services.

As no doubt you have been monitoring my being naughty or being nice this year — which brings up a whole other thing about online and offline privacy, we can discuss that later though — I’d like to pose a question, does your standard for being good come strictly from the song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town?” I ask because I want to be clear.

If this is the case, the concept of good seems to linked to the phrase “for goodness sake.” So, being good is good because it’s the right thing to do. Yes? The right thing to do?

In that vein, let me take this opportunity to talk to you a minute about your branding. Because why? Because it’s the right thing to do. continue reading …

pda is a night of dj’ed electro, indie, retro music and the kitchen sink at Elysium that happens semi-regularly. Its title is based on the song by Interpol.

For this design, I wanted a bright piece that would stand out in a dark nightclub. I wanted the turntable/mixing graphic to look like what mixing sounded like, using the grooves of the record to splice into one another and then the dj’s arms to resemble turntable arms, almost robotic. But simple yet warm.

The type used for the logo and body text are Chunk Five (Adobe) and Skia.

Event info:

• doors at 9:30, free before 10
• Sept 25, 2009
• Elysium, 705 Red River
• $3 cover, 21+

Creation of Orenda’s first round of print advertisements. Number one is more brand based while the second and third ones are more product based.

As an eco-friendly solution for algae, stain and scale prevention, it was important to demonstrate their core proposition of “prevention science in harmony with nature, without compromise.” We chose the underwater shot as a way of showing the results of using products like Orenda rather than telling. One of the biggest ways that a lot of people relate to pools and chemicals is in an unnatural way; the smell, feel and taste of chlorine, and we wanted to show something different — like the clarity of a glass of water, the pool from below was blue, natural and calming, demonstrating everything we wanted to communicate about the Orenda product line.

One other thing about Orenda’s products — unlike other green products — is that it’s actually less expensive over time. And that message was very important to my client, and so it we used it in the copywriting of our first comp.

For font, we used Futura for these pieces because they need to be straight, clean and to the point.

pda, a night of dj’ed electro, indie, retro music and the kitchen sink at Elysium that happens semi-regularly. Its title is based on the song by Interpol.

For this design, I wanted to have a display of vinyl record sleeve spines like you’d see a shelf of books, to demonstrate the variety of music. I setup two photo shoots, one at my friend John Gross’ house and then one at Backspin Records but I had a problem with the readability and clarity of the spines — some were just old and battered and some were still in plastic — and then not having all the records I’d need to have. So, I did what anyone’d do in my situation, I created it from scratch.

Some are based on actual spines, some are based on the cd spines, some are just completely made up. Some of the logos were found (Röyksopp, Bjork, the Sisters of Mercy overbombing graphic), some were traced (Depeche Mode, elastica, TV on the Radio), some were created from thin air.

The type used for the logo and info are the Maple Origins (created by Last Soundtrack) and two flavors of Condensed Futura.

Event info:
doors at 9:30, free before 10
May 29, 2009
Elysium, 705 Red River
$3 cover, 21+

Postcard front and back for a semi-annual night of music at Elysium.

Stockholm Syndrome is a night of Swedish music and so I enjoyed making that side in the colors of Sweden using the backdrop of legal paper. Scribbling followed — naturally — and the heart candies seemed like the perfect finishing touch. Almost cute.

The blueprint was an esoteric way to explain what kind of music to expect, this kind of electronic rock — like M.I.A., Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Le Tigre. I can only hope that Pulp’s “Common People” makes an appearance because I think that brings the dance like nothing else, and I say that as someone who has a very high dance tolerance.

For Stockholm Syndrome, the title font is FG Starlet. For pda, the body font was Flux Architect and the title font was Oil (created by Typo5).