Design Log

2012-02-04T12:37:00.000-05:00

DIG VINYL? Me too! Decorate affordably by showing off your favorite LPs, and cut down on dust. Hide messy shelves with style. Have a lot of records? organize your collection by genre w/ choice covers. Or mount something and use Rekordit frames for whatever you'd like.

Rekordit will be made from aluminum, and should look snazzy paired with the white, birch, or black finishes, it will also come with hinges. For more information go here.

Runaround

2012-01-25T21:25:00.001-05:00

Runaround by Limpasen The Soundtrack to the great Documentary "The Black Power Mixtape" is up on soundcloud. This is my favorite track from the score, such gravitas. Badass.

3D

2012-01-22T00:00:00.004-05:00

By pilllpat (agence eureka) / Flickr

CMYK Gun

2012-01-16T18:13:00.002-05:00

New shirt available at Society6

New York

2012-01-16T10:29:00.006-05:00

Look Away

2011-02-06T06:23:00.007-05:00

Look Away from shane keaney on Vimeo.
Experimental project from last summer, finally got it up on Vimeo,
The track title and artist are at the beginning. I have yet to work out the
best balance of quality and file size, as this looks a little not so great
in places, but oh well, it's a learning process!

Some Work

2011-01-21T19:38:00.001-05:00

Photogenic

2011-01-20T19:43:00.000-05:00

Collected BAM Work

2011-01-19T19:52:00.002-05:00

I worked for the Brooklyn Academy of Music for about 4 years. Over that time I created thousands
of pieces large and small. BAM's Identity was designed by Michael Bierut of Pentagram, which
basically consists of using one typeface, and having the type crop off the page, that's it, a very
simple identity with few rules. Anyway Here are some samples from my time at BAM.

Seen Later

2010-08-20T17:23:00.005-04:00

I've been busy as of late with infographic work, identity sketches, and a couple other projects. Unfortunately the infographics won't be out for a while, and the identity work may never see the light of day, only time will tell.

So for now I don't have much I share! Anyway, till then enjoy some great stuff from a few old books I got recently. Also, I'll be going to China for about 9 months starting in Sept to be with my wife who's working there till next summer. So wish me luck!

The South Pacific

2010-07-25T19:09:00.020-04:00

This summer I've donated some time and design work to an organization called Habele. Some of you may know I'm fascinated by the south pacific, and that's how I came across Habele. "Habele is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of educational opportunities in the remote islands and atolls of Micronesia, an impoverished former American trust territory in the Central Pacific". One really cool project they've completed is a Ulithian-to-English and English-to-Ulithian Dictionary. Ulithian is the native language of people living on the Atoll of Ulithi. In my understanding, the dictionary simultaneously helps standardize the the written form of Ulithian, and also makes it easier for children to go back and forth with English, as English is a crucial tool in broaden their educational horizons.

Anyway, when it came to designing their identity, I felt it best to go with a wordmark. As a small organization, only a couple of years old, name recognition is important and Habele (which means "to realize a future; to wish") is unique to begin with. I started by finding a typeface that felt right, and ended up going with ITC Goudy Sans which I felt had a good balance of kid friendly-ness with out being over the top. After all Habele works with/for kids.

I also like the playful angles and curves, and I especially like the oceanic-without-being-cheesy feel of the curvy Italic cut, which I've used on Habele's site. The next element was the tribal pattern, which comes from the region, and is a nice contextual nod and graphic device. My favorite version of the Logo is the middle one seen above. In that version, which is the primary version used on the web, "OUTER ISLAND EDUCATION FUND" is cast to the side just like well, an outer island.

Other work included nailing down a color scheme, reworking the look of their existing website, and integrating their blog with their site. Next up I want to make an interactive map of the Islands Habele works with. This will be challenging as Micronesia is so remote and small it can be hard to get good reference maps or even satellite pictures. Even Google maps isn't much of a help, so wish me luck.

Special thanks to Neil Mellen for trusting and allowing me to work with him on this project.

Cheese Please

2010-07-21T10:08:00.007-04:00

This little guy was a logo sketch for a cheese company. (Kaaskop means cheesehead in dutch) I don't
normally have opportunities to work in this style, but I really like the result and it is fun.

Celtic Magic

2010-06-28T15:58:00.002-04:00

CLICK ABOVE TO SEE THE FULL VERSION ON FLICKR.

If you're like me you thoroughly enjoyed the most recent Laker—Celtic series. Inspired by the history between the two teams I've made an infographic comparing their Finals battles. Detail images are above, the full version is here. Not noted in the infographic, but interesting, the team with the better regular season record won 10 out of 12 times. Once LA had a worse record and won, and once Boston had a worse record and won.

Special thanks to basketball-reference.com, The Elias Sports Bureau would probably have more in depth information but unfortunately they don't seem to provide any information to the public, at least not online or without shelling out some cash.

2010-06-24T20:39:00.007-04:00

CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER

Hopefully this infographic I produced, with a little help from Andrew,

is self explanatory! It was a fun one, I wrote those headers too;
"Listen to the Music" etc.

2010-05-17T17:42:00.004-04:00

Just a unused sketch I liked from a project I was working on recently.

Is Your Mic Still On?

2010-05-04T13:13:00.014-04:00

Click on image for the full piece.

I was inspired by hearing about Gordon Brown the other day
to make this funny flow chart for politicians on when to be candid:
Saying something honest when not knowing the mic is still on is a new classic way to screw up and actually be honest. What does this say about politics, well nothing we don't know I guess, it says the only time we can really believe what a politician says is when they think no one is listening, or at least it's still that way at the moment.

I'm predicting it right now, some enterprising politicians out there will start to turn "the mic accidentally still on" on it's head by purposely leaving it on and using it to their advantage to seem genuine. I'll give you a scenario, a politician has a conversation with a man who's lost his job and is struggling, after, he walks away and has a conversation with his adviser, "see that man, that's who we're fighting for, we need to help him,...Oh my mic is still on". Can you picture it? I can.

Desk Job

2010-04-30T01:08:00.007-04:00

I'm constantly tinkering with my desk, most of the time I try and reduce down, but sometimes I add things.
Anyway I felt like taking some photos of the old gal today.

Yes that's one of those cheap Ikea desks.

I just rescued this guy this past weekend, I only have one so it's not functional. And I probably only have it 'cause I've been looking at
Scott Hansen's blog too much recently. It feels really nice and solid though, the colors are period appropriate brown bronze tan & silver.

Left to right, External hard drive, poop, Eiffel tower, Just added a head phone hook on the side of my desk the other day; I find it makes the
headphones last longer and is less annoying then always untangling; Bookend I made from a license plate, with a few choice books.

Josephine Baker coaster, I didn't know who she was till I looked her up the other day, pretty interesting woman.

Arrow prototype from my BAM days.

Left: Headphones are always close by, Right: Kodak light meter (I can't figure out if it works but I like it anyway) and statue from Thailand.

My Mighty Mac on top Blue Note record cover book.

Space man sitting in a little geodesic dome thing I folded up the other day, Obama presidential run Memorabilia.

A Caspar David Friedrich painting of polar ice makes for current monitor background, and I swear, I had a 2/3s less the shortcuts on
my desktop just a week ago! (for the really observant, Magic Johnson is there to motivate me, as I'm more of a Larry Bird character,
and I recently read their book detailing their rivalry)

Lunch Cycle

2010-03-31T11:46:00.006-04:00

This is an invite for lunch and a bike ride. "SCARS" is a reference to Scarsdale, where I live. I got the imagery from Ben Pearce's Flickr stream, and the bike made out of two plates and spoon/fork/knife is a logo from an

unknown designer and is only credited as "La Bicyclette" in a Chinese logo design book I own. In the space context though I think the bike sort of looks like alien hieroglyphics. Anyway just an invite, but I really had fun with it.

Entroducing

2010-03-30T16:10:00.004-04:00

DJ Shadow is currently working on a mix project; inviting people to remix his songs and inviting others to create cover artwork. I found out kinda late, and there are some nice covers already, but as I'm a big fan I had to submit something. I adapted a side project I've been doing for fun,

taking single images of mine and layering different sections of them in circles to make these little collages. This image of clouds was one of them. But of course in this context the circles look record like, and the lines could suggest a tone arm and needle, which I hadn't actually realized till now.

GOOD Hood

2010-03-22T19:53:00.008-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I submitted this infographic to a GOOD contest. As infographics go, I am relying a lot on text, I could have done more to graphically represent different pieces of information, but the idea is some what confusing to explain, so I wanted to keep it pretty simple. And anyway, that's the part I'm most proud of, the idea, one which I originally had on my lunch brake during a sunny afternoon in Brooklyn. The initial what if question just popped into my head. I'd say the odds I win are pretty low, but it's been fun to see the piece take on a life of its own; I'm loving the comments about it via cartophilia and strangemaps. It was also posted by Mr. Andrew Sullivan on the Atlantic and of course Brooklyn is picking up on it too.

And for the record I know the idea of that many people living in such a small area is pretty crazy, and would beget all kinds of problems and challenges. And I'm not saying that we should do it, but I would never say it was impossible. In my submission I included the following "I hope it surprises us just how small an area that (New Hamp.) turns out to be, and causes us to examine the current ways and repercussions of how we're currently spread about." Here it is on GOOD.

Cloudy, Chance of Piano

2010-03-18T19:36:00.011-04:00

Hello everyone I've got a new mix for you entitled Cloud Cover: tracks for overcast days. It's a lot of chilled out beats, very heavy on the piano and one slower paced hip-hop track.

Here's a skipping around preview to give you an idea:

The 11 tracks are set for gapless playback in Itunes to play smoothly, while still leaving the option of handling the individual tracks how you want.

The artist names and track titles can be found in the artwork of each track (just click the little arrow in the artwork viewer)

I really love making pixelated gifs with pattern dither, and blowing them up twice as big so you can see the gritty details, and that's how I created the artwork for these, here's the cover, back cover and a few track images:

Take a listen and Let me know what you think! Click here to download.

2010-03-17T14:27:00.003-04:00

Patriotism

2010-03-16T20:30:00.005-04:00

I just submitted this entry into the Green Patriot Posters campaign. Which is a cool project intended to "encourage all U.S. citizens to build a sustainable economy" and inspired by:

"During World War II the United States was able to mobilize industry and motivate its citizens in breathtaking speed. Factories were overhauled and consumption habits transformed. Strong, graphically compelling posters played a crucial role in the success of this campaign." Very cool project, check out the submissions here.

Lady Chuck

2010-03-16T20:23:00.009-04:00

Recently there was a contest to design a poster for the release of a new Chuck Palahniuk book via Doubleday. The book is entitled "Tell-All", here's a little copy about the book:  

"Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard–inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond"

The subtitle is ""Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy kills girl!"    so the book involves murder of some sort and they wanted the poster to be a little dark.

They also wanted to have a 50's movie poster feel since it takes in that era.

So I went with the following, a blood red color scheme, a simple but powerful typography, with the l's smearing almost like blood on a wall. And a female silhouette sporting a 50's hairstyle. Out of 110 people submitting 417 posters, my poster was among the top contenders, but ultimately another poster was chosen. Too bad! it would have been nice to give something back to the man who gave us FIGHT CLUB! (crap I just broke the first rule!) Plus the $1,200 they were offering would have been nice as well.

UPDATE, I just found out as a runner-up I'm getting a free copy of the book, nice!

Sign Language

2010-03-02T22:27:00.005-05:00

I recently completed this zodiac + planets icon set for a client. The project was pretty fun and I'm fairly happy with the end result. Here are a few of the icons, my favorite is probably Aries (the ram), I never realized till working on this project that rams noses are almost heart shaped, pretty cool!

Turning the Page

2010-03-01T15:27:00.006-05:00

These icons were designed for a contest for the BIEC, who are developing a system of standards for green publishing. Basically they are creating a system like the LEED certification of the architecture world for the publishing world. For the icon itself I went for a more geometric feel than what is often seen with these types of symbols, often times they employ imagery that looks a little more like the olive branches of film festivals, that sort of thing. My little reflected leafs could be seen as having the same relationship as two pages of an open book, but really it's mostly a straightforward approach meant to be attractive, easy to reproduce, work in any color and read small.

One of the challenges of this project was the fact that along with logos they wanted a naming system for their three levels of greenness. They are against using "silver, gold and platinum", and needed something else. I went with the the simplest thing I could think of, that being class A class B and class C. After all, with examples like "level 1 2 and 3, or tier 1 2 and 3, I feel it's never clear which end of the spectrum is the best, Level 1 or level 3? Which tier is on top, 1 or 3? I'm also not a fan of made up systems that need explanation, I could have suggested something like "Forest level, grass level, and seafoam level" (dark green to light green) but nobody would know what the hell that meant. With these naming systems the desire always seems to be to make every level sound good, that's why the silver, gold and platinum of LEED system works well, and in that sense A,B,C isn't perfect 'cause a C-student is only passing. But hey, maybe that would act as an added incentive to at least make it to the "B level".

Hey EU

2010-02-24T15:23:00.010-05:00

This is my entry into a contest for a new symbol/flag for Europe. The design is not actually going to replace the existing flag but "12 Submissions will be selected by an international jury and will be printed on flags. These flags will be shown during the first edition of Design and Government in 2010 in Den Haag and Berlin." which is pretty cool, and I felt left the door open for some fun ideas. I really wanted to make something a little unexpected and not as serious and plain as what we already have in the world. That said I still wanted to keep it relatively simple. Anyway here are the key points of my concept:

1. The three overlapping circles abstractly bring to mind the most geographically recognizable part of Europe.

2.
The outer circle can either represent the changing EU boarders and represents the possibility of growth, or simply a larger sphere of connection that extends beyond geographical boundaries with the world as a whole, through trade, culture, aid, design! family and friends.

3.
The overlapping colors represent the diverse spectrum of peoples, cultures, languages, history, ideas, and interconnectedness that is Europe. Also since The EU you is relatively young, the bright colors represent the youthful vibrancy of the future.

4.
Lower case “e” was chosen as for a friendly and youthful feel. The typeface is Avenir, French for “future,” and was designed by Adrian Frutiger. (Plus the Euro currency symbol already establishes a lower case e as representative of Europe)

I Needz Aziz

2010-02-20T01:13:00.011-05:00

A little ill of my man Aziz Ansari, you probably know him from the TV show Parks and Rec.
Anyway I'm a fan.

Check out Aziz as "RAAAAAAAANDY" an over the top stand up comedian character.
Fake bravado is the best!

Click the pic for the full size on Flickr

Funny Thing

2010-02-05T19:09:00.001-05:00

Another flyer for the Norwich Arts Council, For this one there wasn't much to go on so I just used one of comedian Steve Hofstetter photos and thought the line "Go ahead laugh it up" pared well with his expression.

Condom Anyone?

2010-01-17T21:03:00.001-05:00

My entry in to the NYC condom contest, of which the prize is, um nothing...other than being selected. I riffed off the previous design as I always thought it was pretty good; and tried to keep it simple.

Hungry?

2010-01-07T22:38:00.002-05:00

I produced this little guy for a dinner invite which I think ultimately never happened. But it's got some cool animal tooth examples, a diagram of the stages of human teeth growth and of course that awesome pic of the baby. Um appetizing.

Lovely Suprise

2010-01-03T14:26:00.010-05:00

This emusic poster was up a few months ago, and to my surprise they used the CD cover I designed for
Simone Dinnerstein. I took these pictures on a Metro North train, but I think I remember seeing some
posters on the subway as well. I like emusic and so I was honored. (Sorry for the quality of the photos)

Enhanced In Translation

2010-01-01T10:21:00.002-05:00

This photo is from China, occasionally translations can produce beautiful results.

Metro North Schedule Redesign

2009-12-15T15:02:00.009-05:00

My first step was to extract only the information I needed. So I got rid of the MTA contact info, the fare listings, ect. And of course I don't need any ads, so room for those gets tossed as well.

Second Leaving only the Schedule itself I set about condensing it as much as possible, the MTA has it laid out in two sections across 4 columns, there are about 10 different symbols, plus a grey shaded area, the key to which is on the back, meaning you have to open up two folds to find it!

Most of the symbols indicate train service on 2 days out of the year, holidays. Considering they are holidays, I expect service to be a little different and so I just check online to see what's what. The only real information I need is to know which trains are local, which are express, and which are considered peak.

I found it annoying to read the schedule across 4 columns so I cut mine down to two, Time of departure "L" for leaves, and "A" for arrives. Starting with 5:40AM a time which most of us would consider early morning, and ending with 2:34AM a time which most would consider late night. With the schedule on two columns I felt bolding PM time trains, which Metro North does, was unnecessary, so I simply broke up the schedule with PM at the appropriate place.

For local trains I didn't add any distinction, since most non-express trains are local, and trains that fall into a third category of semi-local, mine as well be local to me, since for me local mostly just means slower. So focusing on express I just bolded express trains.

Next up I labeled the peak time trains with brackets, an solution I consider more elegant than the shaded area, and clearly labeled it peak.

For the weekend and holiday schedule I put simply put Saturday only trains in Italicized and bold.

Lastly on the Metro north side, both schedules (New York to Scarsdale, and Scarsdale to New York) are nearly identical, which when you hurrying to try and catch a train can throw you off and cause a mistake. So in order for my schedule to have instant recognition, I gave each side a unique color scheme, typeface and small photograph, and reinforced the destination large in the bottom corner. With all those clues after a few looks I don't even have to think about which schedule I'm looking at, it becomes instinct.
It's funny but in this case with the schedule being much smaller and able to fit into a wallet I feel like most people would hold on to it longer. Most times you would think smaller would mean more disposable, but in this case I don't have a good place to keep the large annoying schedule Metro North currently offers. The average time mine lasts in my wallet: 6 months. My design is not completely realistic of course, but even if I doubled the size, making room for some ads and MTA branding, it would still be much smaller than Metro North's.

So there you have it, redesign complete.

2009-12-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

In the interest of having this blog be an open record of things I make, I present to you this simple flyer I made for the Norwich Arts Council, a community arts organization in CT my parents are involved in. I tend to use Clarendon when making pieces for the "NAC" as I feel it fits the area, the building (which was built in 1892), and the organization its self. Plus I really like it. On this flyer, a little touch I like is the little BYOB icon I made to put in the corner. Other than that not to much to say about this one. Just throwing it out there.

Decorative Vents

2009-11-08T04:58:00.001-05:00

These vent photos were taken in Bordeaux, France with the exception of the last one which was taken in Rome. Back in 2004 I first came across these things during the one day I had in Bordeaux. I was shooting film back then and only took pictures of three or four vents. This past summer finding myself in Bordeaux once again I took the opportunity to capture some. Unfortunately Bordeaux was again a one day stop over, but my wife was patience enough to let me take these photos. I love these vents, they're all unique and can vary in a myriad of ways. First of course is the pattern, like cattles brand for each house they have their own markings. Some are metal and new, while others are old and wood. The colors are usually subtle but beautiful in their own right. I have no idea what they actually vent. So far in my travels in Europe, Bordeaux is the best place to find them, these were all in the span of about 4 blocks. If I happen to find myself in Bordeaux yet again in a few years I plan on spending an entire day collecting pictures of them. Yup that’s right an ENTIRE DAY, I like them that much.

2009-11-05T08:44:00.003-05:00

I'm here in China and I have a fair amount of time on my hands. I've been taking pictures of cyclists here in Guangzhou specifically people transporting things. Anyway I made this graphic from a picture I took of a middle aged rider (as you can see he's balding). I was inspired to make a graphic out of him because I liked the shadow from the folds of his coat on his back. As for the typeface I've used, It's just some MS system font, I'm not on my regular machine here in China okay, gimme a break! I just like the bamboo feel of it so I used it, deal with that! *laughs*

2009-11-01T06:24:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I force myself to make something. I actually wish I did it more often as the result can be pretty fun. I randomly made this guy, a bear with a mustache a little while back. Deciding on the name “Bearstash” I then added some pseudo Japanese to have even more fun with it. The typeface I used was from an online collection my wife came across, the collection features decorative Japanese fonts with style matching English characters as well. Unfortunately I can't find the bookmark I had, so don't have a link, but as it was I couldn’t get all of them to work and ended up having to delete a couple ‘cause they would cause InDesign to crash. Lastly, if anyone who’s fluent in Japanese ever comes across this, does the Japanese I used translate to anything funny?