Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

This event was in the same venue as the Fast Company Grill, so BMF had to transform the venue quickly and completely. Most of the dimensions were familiar, but the design was completely different. Alternative Apparel had lots of fun branding collateral to work with. Strings and paper textures (graph, craft, art) all over the place, with unusual font choices. So, it was a lot of fun to play around with what hey supplied. I think the end-product was something within their branding, but a bit unexpected.

For this event, I made digital collateral (save-the-date, evites, rsvp, rsvp confirmation page), large print signage (backdrops, logo, step-and-repeats, contest signs, interior and exterior banners) and small-to-mid-sized print elements (credentials, table tents, menus, etc). We also blew up their campaign imagery to put up around the space.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

Just like all the events I have worked on in the One Night In series, this event was a blast to design for. There is room to be just the right shade of quirky. The design is influenced by some time I spent looking at the work of Saul Bass just prior to brainstorming. I don’t know where it is exactly, but I know it is there. Maybe in the “austin hills” in the background, or in the coloring.

There is a video recap of the event on Youtube you can check out if you feel the urge.

I made elements (banners, step-and-repeats, window decals, backdrops, column covers, etc) for three sponsor areas (Carrera, Twonky, Samsung) as well as quite a few elements for the general event (interior and exterior signage and banners, menus, credentials, step-and-repeat, stickers, etc). There was also the standard digital promo material (evites and promo graphics for perezhilton.com and a web rsvp form).

Another neat item in this design was the photo backdrop for the Carrera area. I took the sunglasses illustration I made for the Carrera Escape at Sundance and made several versions in an array of colors, then spread them all over the wall, so to speak.

This event was a lot of work, but enjoyable work.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

For this event I started with several different brainstorms on the themes of winter, escaping and chicago. The stylized snowflakes were one of the elements we kept from the brainstorms. In addition to using them in the graphic design, the client also chose to use them in the space design, making cutouts of them and hanging them from the ceiling.

Also designed a bar menu, evites and a printed invitation, a stage banner, and a bar decal. I also created the logo, though I was closely mimicking the design of their other event logos.

Kudos to BMF for putting all of it together.

I also created some video elements, reminiscent of the banner on vitaminwater’s social club website, to be projected onto a wall. There ended up being no walls without windows in the room, so they weren’t used. I included some short low-resolution clips of them here just to get an idea.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

To accompany the Video Music Awards, Perez Hilton threw another of his “One Night” events, this time “in Los Angeles”. BMF Media Group, the firm producing the events, asked me again to design the event’s graphics. I jumped on board.

The last few events have all used a similar design, with localized variations based on the hosting city. This event veers a bit wider from those designs. Instead of a silhouetted skyline, we chose to go with stylized architectural images from Hollywood and LA, some real, some fake. I also added a pattern, color stripes and lighting effects which added more depth of detail then the simpler color fields of the other designs.

The step-and-repeat is large, like the one for Perez’s birthday, as 30 feet wide by 7 tall. BMF likes to go big with their signage, increasingly bigger with every year I work with them. Big design elements create environmental effects in the room, which interests me. I decided to use the diamond/pin stripe pattern on a larger scale than it was used in the other elements, creating more texture to the logo field and to the wall in general. Then we added wings with the LA imagery and event logo, creating different posing stations. If you see some of the event images on wireimage or elsewhere, the step and repeat creates a tangible mood.

I also made bar menus, a basic web graphic, evites, rsvp forms, various outdoor signage, DJ booth and bar decals.

I used the sunset from at http://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/2160218875/sizes/o/in/photostream/ as a background coloration to the diamond pattern. I really liked the images of the Hollywood Hills by Laura Bittner and used those. They can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsavard/3463560457/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsavard/3464385548/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsavard/3463558285/. The “Coffe Bea” building was made up of a coffee cup at http://www.flickr.com/photos/srslyguys/1077817244/ and an image of Brewster’s Coffee & Deli, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_mcmt/3948994791/ . The chinese theatre was composed of about a dozen photos, then stylized and vectorized.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

This is another of the “One Night in” events that I’ve been designing for BMF Media Group and their friend, the Queen of All Media.  You can take a look at my One Night in Toronto post or One Night in London post for any more info about the design scheme in general.

For “Chicago” in the logo, I took a famous sign in Chicago and sort of flipped it around. It was bertical, then vectorized it with a sort of hand-drawn look. In the background, the image of sunset over Chicago is a great image by Kevin Dooley. I vectorized an image of the Chicago skyline looking south from North Ave Beach by Monika Thorpe. The Perez logo and the Perez Presents head were supplied from the client. Jenn from BMF suggested we add a Chigaco Perez’s ballcap, which was a great detail.

I particularly love the step-and-repeat on this one. The skyline and sunset effect look great as a backdrop for the logos. It appears someone else may also think so.

I also made evites, a web rsvp, bar decals, bar menus, door tags, vertical sponsor banners, a stage banner, sponsor banners and a sign for the help desk.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

This was a pretty standard project. The client delivered some logo collateral and the album cover and asked me to create certain elements for the event. They also asked me to make a few original pieces including a replica of a Jersey Shore welcome sign and a header for a tattoo station sign. They wanted the tattoo sign to have an “Ed Hardy” feel to it. After searching the web for creative commons tattoo elements (a few of them coming from the vector artist Ben Johnson), I felt I had a decent collage. The “Jersey Shore” font is called Freebooter Script and the “Tattoos” font is called Tattoo Ink.

I also worked on banners, decals, and other signs.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

This is another of the “One Night” events that I’ve been involved with. Feel free to look at my One Night in Toronto post for any general notes about the two designs.

For this event, I went London-moody and decided to desaturate the elements and go with a grayer color palette. I also added a glow effect to several of the elements. In order to reference London’s literary history, I applied a sort of etching or lithograph effect to the head image and title logo and chose a cool free font called Mido for the type.

The Union Jack image in the background is from a vector of a UK Naval flag and the skyline is composed of vectors of London landmarks. Unfortunately, I no longer can tell you where I found the constable’s helmet.

I also made evites, a web rsvp, AO boards, an all-access pass and a sponsor poster.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

The “One Night” event series has been going on for a while now and I inherited an aesthetic concept, namely the skyline with the Perez Presents head peeking over it.

For my part, I chose to create a rich night sky using a blue gradient and two Creative Commons photos from Flickr, one of the aurora borealis and the other of a starfield. I also wanted to change the hair color back to pink (the file I received had green hair). For the “One Night in Toronto” typography, I chose Benton Condensed for a clean, modern look. I found a simply illustrated silhouette of the Toronto skyline at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1115557 and a great vector of a flapping  Canadian flag at http://www.vectortemplates.com/vector-countries-canada.php. I just turned the Canadian red into a nice PH pink.

In addition to the examples shown here, I also threw together evites, a web rsvp, bar menus and a sponsor poster.

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Client: Jiujitsucalendar

My Role(s): Designer, Developer, Data Architect, Copywriter

This site is a searchable database of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu tournaments. It has numerous fun useful tools including numerous search methods (by promoter, by date and by a radial location search), a manageable calendar for registered users with the option to import the calendar into other ical readers like Google Maps or Apple iCalendar, and a map showing various data (events in a user’s calendar, search results, whole event database).

This site is probably beating the Battery Plant Database as the most useful site I have created so far, and we have several updates to the site’s functionality in the works.

This was a full-fledged design project for me. Apart from help from a couple open-sourced codebases (see below), I designed everything myself from the graphic design through the data architecture to the site’s code.

The visual design went through numerous drafts. The color scheme was based on the floor mats (tatami) used in many American Jiu-jitsu tournaments. Good old red[, white] and blue. The logo is again based on the tatami, namely the way several tatami are placed together to create the larger grappling area. The text section of logo uses Arial Black as the font. I created the banner ad from an image of the site owner in a  tournament, did some effecting and (as a sort of joke) threw in the exciting splattery stuff in the background. I think it came out pretty well.

The site uses a few open source chunks of code for some of its heavy lifting, such as PHPICalendar for the site’s calendar interface and the Google Maps API. I custom-coded the rest (MYSQL, PHP, XHTML, CSS, ICS, XML), creating both a backend CMS and the front-end user  interface, and it was quite a load to get through. I love projects that really make me learn, and this one really pushed me to expand my skill-set even further.

I am glad we finally got something up. Now it’s time for the analysis.

Link: http://www.jiujitsucalendar.com

Client: Personal

My Role(s): Developer, Designer, Writer, Editor

Notasgoodasthebook.com is a pet project of mine. The site was live for a while early in 2009, but I felt that I needed a drastic redesign, so I stopped posting content and spent months tweaking it whenever I could find a moment away from my other work.

In addition to designing and coding the WordPress theme, I also came up with a fun set of flash banners depicting the pleasure of reading a book and the ugly disappointment one finds when reading/seeing/hearing its less-than-worthy adaptations. The logo is a simple type treatment over a bookmark.  The inspiration for the colors/shading/textures of the visual design was a mingling of the favorite hardcover books of my past.

I am the editor and the main contributing author to the site, but hope to see many more public submissions and posts from a group of regular contributing authors as the site grows.

I used numerous great free open-sourced plugins for WordPress to accomplish much of the functionality. The category icons are modified versions of inages from several open-sourced icon sets.

Link: http://www.notasgoodasthebook.com

Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

This was an experiment in expectations.

Winter Music Conference is in Miami. I wanted to try something different than other event collateral from Miami-based events, which often portray palm trees and variations of a wide-open, clear sky. In this design I still used the palm trees, but from an angle less often employed. I also used a fair amount of muted, dithered shading to imply a softly lit, overcast day. Warm overcast days on a tropical beach are my personal favorites. I also added “Oasis” to the brand name to design the event logo. I tried to avoid the treatment one might expect from the meaning of the word Oasis. The pool shape is my take on the inner section of the Raleigh pool, a beautifully-shaped bucket of water.

I worked on an evite, a web rsvp, two-sided food and drink menus, signs for the stage and credentials. As always with BMF, I was only responsible for the graphic design of the web RSVP, not the web design.

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Client: The Battery Conservancy

My Role(s): Creative Director, Designer, Developer

The Battery Conservancy is responsible for many things, one of which is the design, planting and upkeep of one of the best urban gardens in the nation. It is truly inspiring to walk the gardens at the tip of Manhattan, looking from the harbor and the Statue of Liberty down to the blooming flowers and grasses.

While doing various projects for the conservancy, it became very apparent that there needed to be a centralized location for all the plants and specific information about them. To make a long story short, I created a custom database with a back-end CMS and, after the horticultural staff entered in all the plant data and images, a front-end for users to access all the information.

The project is only in Stage 1, so to speak, and there are plans for extended and improved features and usability, but for the most part, I am very happy with the way this turned out. The database opens up useful information to a large population of urban horticulturalists and gardeners in general.

Users can search through the plants in the gardens of the Battery by either a single quality (name, bloom months, zones, light requirements, families, etc) or by combinations of qualities. They can also simply browse through all the plants. Users can also view visualizations (aka charts) based on the plant data.

This project wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Steve Lagerstrom, Sigrid Gray and Alyssa Siegel of the Battery Conservancy.

Link: http://www.thebattery.org/plants

Client: Empesar Showroom

My Role(s): Designer, Developer

Empesar Showroom is a fashion showplace in the Fashion District of New York City. I was referred to them by one of our mutual clients, Madison Harding. They approached me wanting a simple website that not only allowed them to show people who they were currently showing, but also show any press they may have acquired for their designers.

I set up a custom CMS, so they could add and edit their designers as well as show their location in the physical space of the showroom. To make the listing of current designers on display a little more interesting, we created the Designer Index, basically a souped up version of their floor plan, and via CSS, styled it to be used as the current designers list.

Link: http://www.empesar.com

Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

For a few months in 2009, BMF Media Group programmed numerous events with Carrera (Sunglasses) as a sponsor; including product launches, the Carrera Cafe at Moonshine and the Carrera Summer Escape (a rooftop VIP escape in Manhattan). Taking supplied artwork from the client, rearranging and refreshing it, I threw together several elements, notably a VIP card to the Carrera Summer Escape, a recap of the Carrera Cafe at Moonshine, evites to the product launches and an RSVP web page.

I only graphically designed the web RSVP page, I did not code it.

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Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

BMF Media Group throws great events, and this year they tackled the 13th Winter X-Games by turning a house into a VIP escape, sponsored by Fuze.

I designed the one-sheet for the event, the logo for The Fuze Haven and the Cafe and Spa, the invitations, the Web RSVP page, the Step and Repeat, Credentials, Signage, etc.

I was particularly happy with the explosive nature of the pink and blue background elements and the geometrically wiggly nature of the step and repeat.

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Client: Delarosa Style

My Role(s): Designer, Developer

When I was asked to create a new website for Delarosa Style, I was really excited. I had worked with the owner on another job and knew she had an interesting eye. She gave me the colors she wanted to use and after a draft and a few minor revisions, we had the visual design.

I built a custom CMS for the gallery and text content. She wanted animation in the header, and even though I was hesitant, I ended up creating, what I feel, is a really cool rollover effect, utilizing a 2D-for-3D blur and parallax effect. If Flash is not installed, or Javascript is disabled, the main navigation is still visible.

I also added a WordPress blog and made a trimmed down WordPress theme.

Link: http://www.delarosastyle.com

Client: Jackson Martin

My Role(s): Creative Director, Designer, Developer

Jackson Martin is a long-time friend of mine. He is also an extraordinarily driven and imaginative artist. When he came to me to design his website, I was honored and thrilled.

As with almost all of my web projects, my goal was to create a page navigation that receded into the background as the content came out at the user. The color scheme was based on Jackson’s trend to dress in blue and brown, almost all of the time.

In addition to a custom CMS I developed for the rest of the site’s content, I used WordPress to drive his news page, using a very stripped down theme template, removing comments and other blog features (search, tags, etc).

Jackson is learning HTML and now maintains the site.

Link: http://www.jacksonmartin.com

Client: BMF Media Group

My Role(s): Designer

BMF approached me to do an invitation and T-shirt design for a sweet 16 birthday party they were planning. The birthday girl had an interest in the artwork of Takeshi Murakami. Luckily, it so happened that there was a Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

So, a friend of mine who was visiting, Brad Reagan, and I took a field trip. After the trip to the museum, we discussed what elements we absorbed from the work, and what we wanted to try and use in our design. Brad drew out the design on paper. I then looked at the logo and drew it and colored it in Illustrator (no tracing either).

The invitation was printed on thick card stock at 5″ x 5″. There was also information printed on the back. The logo was printed on T-shirts for the attendees.

I know it’s no Murakami, but I like to think that we integrated at least something of his spirit into our own conception.

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Client: Hi Fi Marketing Group

My Role(s): Designer

Hi Fi set up Stereo at Sundance as a location for both daytime and nighttime activities. Day was for a gifting suite/cafe and night was for a nightclub. Both had several sponsors. We chose to go for a line-drawing style in the landscape elements so they would be minimally intrusive on the other content.

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Client: Stereo NYC

My Role(s): Designer

For the summer, Stereo turned a house in the Hamptons into a retreat for celebrities, performers, trend-setters and VIPs in general. They aptly labeled it The Stereo House. There were many events, from which here are two invites. I like the broken angles of text coming from the stem of the powder brush.

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Client: Stereo NYC

My Role(s): Designer

Stereo traded in their cosmos for mint juleps for a little southern racing.

There’s something I particularly like about this invite. The colors, the broken lines, the textured woman? I don’t know exactly.

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Client: Hi Fi Marketing Group

My Role(s): Designer

This was fun. I always love a chance to create a composite, and the snowy street background image is a composite of several elements (street, lamps, cars, snow, green lighting). I remember being inspired for the Open Late logo by a really simple television commercial. I just can’t remember which one.

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Client: Stereo NYC

My Role(s): Designer

For the summer, Stereo turned a club in the Hamptons into a summer vacation version of their Manhattan nightclub. They labeled it house Stereo by the Shore.

To make the logo, I took the Stereoboombox and typography, drew in an umbrella, sand, a sky and an old-Hamptons-ish “by the shore”. I then created a standard step and repeat template, with the logos flanking the sides, to use for all the different events, replacing sponsor logos as needed. I made numerous invitations throughout the summer, and this is one of my favorites.

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