Here’s a little web flier I whipped up for a band I’ve been working with, Archie Powell and the Exports. Oh yeah, and I play keys for the band too. So check us out on myspace . We’ve got a record launching in June and some gigs lining up in Madison and Milwaukee. Hopefully some cool gig posters as well!

Hand-printed custom gunslinger trading cards. Collect all 3!

After a long break to actually get some more work done, I’m finally going to get back to posting on the blog.  Above is a poster I designed for the advanced painting workshop exhibition. The three paintings I made for the exhibition have been added to the Painting Gallery.

Madison film maker Eric Lim has gotten a lot of internet buzz lately for  Zero Trooper F and his upcoming project, Greenside. I have been fortunate enough to work on some design that will appear on screen in the form of propaganda posters for the fictional police state of Greenside. These designs which feature images of the Zero Troopers themselves as well as the dome which encloses Greenside city were heavily inspired by the designs posters of Shepard Fairey as well as Communist propaganda. Trailers for Zero Trooper F and Greenside can be seen at zerotrooper.com

Whew. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. But I’m back from an amazing fishing trip,  and ready to start up my summer work. I recently started working for Heartwood Creations, a local company that specializes in inlay design for wooden boxes. Their work ranges from classic jewelry boxes, to western/outdoors crafts, to some very artfully designed pieces worth taking a look at. Definitely an area of design outside the normal realm of print and web and an interesting combination of 2d aesthetics on a 3d final product.

Poster design for the UW Design Club show in the red Gym. There’s a lot of great stuff in the show, and I’d suggest checking it out. It’ll all be up until the 13th.

Here is a one-page comic I made for the B-Line, a student-made magazine put out by the Wisconsin School of Business. I guess they have problems with people talking on cell phones in the Grainger Hall Library, so they wanted me to illustrate their frustrations.

Here’s my first attempt at making an image using 3-D modeling software.

What I’ve realized about the whole 3-D process is that trying to render stuff that’s organic and natural is hard and takes a lot of time. But, (and this is a huge but) 3-D programs are AWESOME for making anything colorful, shiny, or with a clean look. So with that in mind, I decided to make a retro-future campy shrink ray advertisement. If the software is good at making things look shiny and plastic, why not just go with the flow and use the medium for what’s appropriate. Hey, it worked for Toy Story.

As I get more experienced with the software I’ll probably figure out a greater variety of capabilities. I’m especially excited for the potential to design 3-D logos and text with much greater ease than with the 3-D tools in Illustrator. Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll have something cooler, like a character model or something.

Here’s the latest project I’ve been working on for Hillel. I don’t often get the chance to do posters in full color, so it was a lot of fun.

Above is my proposed cover design for one of my favorite movies, Gangs of New York. As a movie, it has some super interesting characters, a top-notch script, and above all, it looks amazing. For as much time as they spent on art direction and costume design, you think they would have done a better job with the DVD cover.

Granted, some of the motifs chosen for the cover are completely appropriate, (the American flag against the skyline works well) and I kept them for my re-design. But, smack dab in the middle, there’s some serious ugliness going on. First of all, I think there’s no reason why every single movie cover needs a bunch of floating faces of the actors. Secondly, a big cheesy looking plaque bragging about award nominations cheapens the DVD, rather than making it something you’d want to own. Typographically, the title font isn’t terrible. It’s just too busy with too many effects that cancel out each other so that the title just looses out to Leo’s glowing mug.

Rather than design something selling awards and the reputation of the actors, why not design something that sells the MOVIE itself? With my re-design, I tried to pare everything down, while playing up the bold colors and textures that look so stunning in the movie. I used a similar period font for the title, but went with a one-color weathered design to look more like a poster from the era. Ultimately my goal was to make a “special edition” type cover- a complete package that would look good and stand out on a shelf full of DVDs.

So, next time you’re renting a movie, take advantage of the huge gallery of design in front of you. Give some a critique. Pick out ones you like. Whether they’re perfectly designed pieces of art, or ugly, thrown-together rental fodder, you’re likely to find some inspiration for what to include, or not include in your next design.