Working with our team’s Creative Director, and alongside the A.A. Brand team — we pitched ideas for dimensional mailers that would “put the viewer in the scene” … while also expressing “30% more.” This favorite was designed, to provide intrigue through imagery of an Italian coast-line, ask the viewer a question — then putting the viewer in this new world.
Baiada was rebranded to communicate to clients having higher end weddings and events, who care about having beautiful documentation photography. The modern icon juxtaposed with the traditional logotype and filigree provides a contemporary identity with all the classicism of a wedding. The website is a custom Flash site, utilizing SlideShowPro Director, allowing them to easily make updates. The front-end is an ActionScript 3.0 built interface, which interacts with Director. The mobile version uses HTML5 slideshows from Director, and a WordPress HTML custom theme. The Baiada Photography website was the winner of SlideShowPro’s website of the month in March 2010.
This project was completed during my employment at Barclaycard. My role was Lead Designer, and I worked with the Choice Privileges Brand team, in addition to their separate legal team. I was guided through the process by our in-house Creative Director. I re-designed the credit card, and saw the entire process through to production. I worked alongside the credit card printing company, participating in several proof tests, and on-site approval of the final press check. The entire process resulted in the successful printing of over 100,000 cards.
The catalyst for this project was the re-design of Choice Privileges brand identity (which was done by Choice, in-house). Because they had a new logo and style rules, a new credit card needed to be designed. Using the brand style guide, I created dozens of card designs making mock-ups in Illustrator and Photoshop. The colors of the identity are reflected in the orange core of the card, the pearlescent white top, that features a spot gloss varnish. The card bottom features a metallic coating with a matte finish. The sub-brand logos, of all hotel chains that make-up the Choice Privileges network, are screened in white set within the curve of the front. And on the back, each sub-brand logo is printed in full color.
The sub-brand logos were a particularly challenging point for this design problem. We had to find a delicate compromise between Choices’ brand team, and their legal team. The brand team, accordingly to the new guidelines required the sub-brand logos not be displayed on the front of the card (their old card had them displayed on the front). However, the legal team required the exact opposite — they needed the logos on the front. My solution was to display the logos on the front, but in a textural manner. The logos are small, screened in white, set within a visual element. These logos read more as visual texture and less as brand logos. The full color sub-brand logos were printed on the back of the card — the first time we had ever printed full color on the back of a card. This was a clever solution to this problem, and satisfied the legal and brand requirements.
This was a unique design project because I had never worked within this medium before. The challenge of solving a unique problem by finding a compromise between two different clients (Choice brand team, Choice legal team). Working with the credit card manufacturer was particularly interesting because I was able to learn about the unique process of producing credit cards. The approval sign-off of the credit cards determined the success of 100,000’s of cards — so, it had to be absolutely final and perfect. It was. The whole process was very rewarding and educational. Although I don’t typically work on designing credit cards — the medium isn’t important — this project was all about problem solving, and working with disparate teams to find compromise.
Woodin + Associates is a land developing and engineering firm in Middletown, Delaware whose main business is land surveying. In 2011, we revised their brand identity including their logo, signage, vehicle graphics, and redesigned their website.
Goals:
– Modernize the existing logo, making it look cleaner and more modern.
– Keep the general shape and aesthetic of the existing logo.
– Communicate the vernacular of the Construction industry, with the audience being industry professionals.
– New logo and colors must be able to be used alongside the existing logo and colors, during a transition between logos.
– Website contains various pages and projects sections.
The logo was redesigned from their original mark, which appeared dated and was geometrically uncomfortable. Using one of their tools of the trade: a land-surveying device, called a Philadelphia Rod Target Vernier device, I drew inspiration and developed several logo concepts that merged their existing logo with the aesthetic of the device. The “+” from their name was strategically placed to represent the crosshairs of this device. Because it was placed directly in the center of the oval, it creates a geometrically sound shape that is solid and stable. The old logo has the “+” to the right due to the sizes of the type, and makes it appear unstable and wonky. The new typography uses a very modern, futuristic looking face that has letters consistent in size. This allowed me to place the “+” in the center, which resulted in a balanced geometric logo.
During my time at Oak Knoll Books, I had the opportunity to work on many fine-press, artistic books, but none were more rewarding than the complete book design and typesetting for Jan Tschichold, Designer, The Penguin Years. This project was offered to me by the author, as a freelance project outside of my daily role at Oak Knoll.
This project was a daunting task, because Tschichold was a master typographer and laid the groundwork for typographic conventions. He was very interesting because his early years, he was an advocate for centered, serif typography. But, in later years, he changed and laid the groundwork for Swiss design conventions: namely left aligned type and sans-serif typography. He had made a complete 180 in his design style, and that which he advocated.
Because I would be typesetting an entire book for this master, I knew I had to pay tribute to his conventions. Due to the content of this book being his years at Penguin books, when he was in his early years, I decided to defer to his style from this period. The typeface I chose, Sabon — an elegant serif — was designed by Tschichold. Most of the formatting and typographical conventions used in this work are those recommended by this master.
The book is over 200 pages of dense type, elegantly set with generous margins, with a more considerable margin on the bottom, and outside. And margins of lesser weight for the top, and gutter. This allows for optimal visual balance. There are over 100 full-color graphics of Tschicholds’ book covers, with proper captions, and footnotes. The book type uses a hierarchy of type, utilizing small-cap titles, italics, and rules. The dense type was set with fairly tight kerning, and fairly open leading — with greater leading between paragraphs and sections. The entire text is fully justified, with careful attention paid to widows, hyphens, and gaps/rivers through the page. The pages were set to achieve an optimal, consistent texture across the page.
The typesetting of this book was capped off with an elegant title page, and book jacket design. The elegant design was a success, and had been the most in-depth typography project I have ever undertaken. While designing this book, I had become an eternal student of typography, and used this opportunity to hone my craft. It was a lengthy project with a massive Adobe InDesign file — and meaningful to the very end.
During my time at Oak Knoll Books, I had the opportunity to work on many fine-press, artistic books, but the most magical was Exploring Japanese Books and Scrolls. This book required a jacket, title page, half-title page, foreword page, and copyright page designs. The theme of this book is: books as art, specifically books and scrolls of old Japan — the designs I created needed to match the handsomely produced book, and attempt to pay tribute to the art of these old Japanese books. The cover jacket features a painting taken from a large album by various Japanese artists, circa 1810. The background behind the painting is a magical close-up of calligraphy from an old scroll, with a striking orange background. The bright orange catches your eye, and the magical calligraphic shapes are mesmerizing. The background color made it a challenge, as it required many proofs from the printer to get the color right. However, ultimately it became a beautiful work of art. The typography on the cover and title pages was set carefully with carefully kerning between every character. The font had already been chosen and used for the book typesetting, which I carefully matched. The typesetting on the foreword page was fully justified, and required a careful distribution of characters in order to avoid hyphens, and gaps or rivers throughout the page. The marketing collateral continued the same vernacular, but I contrasted the background color to the rich blue used on the cloth cover of the actual book. This blue background made the orange book pop off the page.
Lightwork Photography hired me to brand this new business, and create their first website. This client was specifically targeting female clientele — brides and moms. This female owner had experience connecting with this audience, and discovered they were most often the group researching, and making the final decision when hiring a wedding photographer. Because of this, our goal was to create a soft, feminine identity. The identity features an iconic logomark, vintage style logotype with a texture that provides a cohesive backdrop that highlights the design in a sparkly, flashy way.
The website was designed and developed using WordPress. It featured multiple slideshows, and blog articles.
These pieces were designed monthly to be inserted along with a customers paper statement. Because L.L.Bean’s target audience mostly received paper statements, marketing towards this group was ideal. Using the L.L.Bean brand standards guide, while working alongside the product owner and L.L.Bean, we designed monthly inserts that had a specific value proposition that changed on a monthly basis.
