Grill & Greet logo

Parenting Workshop flyer

Garden Party web banner

Stewards of the Kingdom sermon graphic

 

Men's Breakfast flyer

HUMC Smart Phone App design

After starting my job with the church, I realized how powerful good design can really be. Yes, when you think of churches, it seems a little stiff and traditional and doesn't leave much room for creativity. The opposite is actually true of my job here. We strive for the simple yet intriguing. No lack of expression here. These are just a few examples of the work I've been doing for the church. The website redesign is in process and looking pretty good. Be sure to check out hempfieldumc.com for more. My next objective is to add some more hand-rendered work into the mix. Back to the sketchbook!

Coral Skies

Good morning!

I have neglected this blog for months now, realizing that I should be posting more often about my current job.

I have been employed at Wellspring Gift now for about a year and a half. Over the past couple months our creative director had moved on and left the art department with 2. While we have been adjusting to the change, we have come to realize a great shift happening for our company and the products we design.

So for those of you wonder what kind of things I might be talking about..here is a sneak peak of our January collection of purse accessories.

Change Purse

Coupon Clutch

Jewelry Case

Organizer Clutch

Scrunchy Case

Wristlet

We had used a licensed artist for the patterns of the first 3 products and recolored and adjusted to fit our collection. The last two designs are mine. I can't wait to get my own clutch to carry around! Who needs Christmas presents?!

The line won't launch for a few weeks, but check out WellspringGift.com for more from our previous collections.

Designathon 2011

Logo redesign for the new name of 

Ephrata Performing Arts Center

Its been way too long since I have blogged. This logo was from the most recent AIGA event. The 24-hour designathon is an exhausting event in which we spent a full 24 hours working to help non-profits. Most non-profit organizations don't have money to spend on design work or advertising. This is where AIGA comes in. This year I was in a group with two other fellas to redesign the logo for Ephrata Performing Arts Center. This local community center has had about 10 different names and several logo changes. We were asked to design a contemporary logo to incorporate both the new name "Sharadin Bigler Theater" with the old umbrella name "Ephrata Performing Arts Center". 
My logo started in the beginning stages to develop as a ticket. The words worked as puzzle pieces, being precisly placed to fit on the ticket stub. With further exploration, I realized that the typography was strong enough to stand alone. The circles lined up represent the lights of the theater. The color scheme is based on the red colors used in previous logos that they seemed fond of. I wanted to keep the rich warm colors that play into the way the light hits you when you're on stage. When placing this logo on the building, I tilted it to give it the spunk that the theater shows.
Overall, designathon was quite successful. We recently went to speak to more board members of the Ephrata Performing Arts Center and present our logo ideas. No news back, but I enjoyed the process regardless.

A lovely bunch of coconuts for the Cure

Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Awareness Poster Series

This is a poster series that I created for my Adobe Illustrator Elective. If it's not obvious enough the icons on each poster are representative and the hint is to keep them juicy, or lovely, or breathtaking. These posters aren't necessarily informational but they are taking a lighter approach to such a heavy issue. They also worked well as a series of posters. 

Mirror, mirror..on the book?

Artist book. Seven sins. Aka: the longest/tedious project ever for an elective class. This book consists of the seven sins as road signs and a photo/graphic to represent that sin. The covers are mirror to signify a look into yourself as to what sin you see. The original assignment was to create 5 editions of the same book. So essentially I had 5 times more work than an average project. Lets take a look at the steps it took me to accomplish this book, shall we?
1. A trip to Home Depot to get mirror cut, whom couldn't cut mirror so they sent me to Lowe's who broke 3 pieces of mirror and left me with 5 rough edged pieces to sand down myself.
2. Midor-ing the white wood trim to frame the mirror (which meant I had to bring home 96 inches of this wood to use my parents saw over Thanksgiving break)
3. Printing the images created for the content of this book. (the worst mistake made: printing the 35 pages on $73 worth of 11"x17" cardstock instead of 8.5"x11". Ouch.)
4. Assembling the mirror and wood frame onto the book board. Obviously this was difficult considering my first time cutting and sanding wood on this small of a scale. The measurements were not exact so it took a bit of finagling. Its also a lot more difficult than you might think to sand mirror to make a nicer edge than what the Lowe's guy left me with.
4. Drilling holes in the covers and pages. Actually a pretty easy task, but time consuming when you consider the 35 pages had be individually poked.
5. Finally I got to bind the books using a coptic stitch. The most monotonous task and the most rewarding considering you actually see the final piece. 

Now mix this with the flu and the stress of about 7 other projects, and you'll understand the miserable disaster I have been lately. Things are slowly starting to come around with most of my classes so I'm getting out of this rut. To be honest, I think my crafting skills were lacking toward the end of this project but I was so anxious to finish that I wasn't caring much. And due to the impressive effects that this flu/cold has had on me, I haven't made it to this class to even turn it in yet. Oh the joys of college!

Stealin' the Show

Senior Show Postcard 

Concept

UPDATE!

I'm finalizing my concept for review on Friday. I ended up sticking with the crisp white background. After multiple attempts at painting the canvas, we discovered a little paint doesn't do justice but too much can look sloppy. So white it is. I'm not opposed to either although I spent a good bit of time on that painting. Nonetheless, here is my poster and the ending of my Senior Studio class!

I've started the Senior Show project to promote the end of the year celebration for PCAD. As you can see, the idea is to run through the list of things we have "accomplished" (metaphorically) and then use the popular idiom, now we're ready to steal the show. This concept is just the beginning idea that will be further explored. Considering this represents the entire school, I thought it would add a great quality to use a canvas texture in the background. I wanted to take that even further by beginning a hand-rendered painting of this text. Then I'll be able to scan in the canvas to use as the postcard and poster imagery. When I approached my teacher with the idea, he agreed that it would give it a great quality. He also suggested printing the canvas with the text to paint over. (Apparently he has a printer that can do this.) Its been a while since I've been able to paint for a project, so I'm very excited. I'll post the final once I finish. 

For now, its just about time for Thanksgiving break!

 

Connecting the Dots

Connect Session logo ideas for internship

During the summer, I was asked to create a logo for the connects sessions that Sheetz would hold for employees. Apparently the last logo was overly art directed and took 18+ months and nothing ever really came of it. When it came up again, they threw the job to me. I feel like these we're more of a brainstorming process but I doubt any of them would get used. My work seemed to be much too clean for their style. However, I do feel like I had a good exploration during the process of this. I thought I'd share a random thought from the summer, considering this past week in classes has been less productive project wise. (After a full week of projects being due, I seem to be at the beginning again in all my classes, not too interesting at this point.)