The TV spot for Town Radar is live!

This is a local commercial for the Alachua County area but it is available to view by clicking here. While making a TV commercial is not exactly something a graphic designer is know for, it is important to remain flexible and tackle any project that comes our way. With the help of Lisa Renshaw (Owner/Creative Director of Blu Dove Designs) I was able to work on the script and the graphics for this TV spot to get the word out about the brand new app for iphone and Android devices. This was an amazing opportunity to learn about what goes into a television ad and have some insight into that form of marketing.

If you are ever in downtown Savannah, GA and want to try some truly amazing, healthy food then I strongly suggest going to Kayak Kafé. The casual, local atmosphere and tasty health food ensure that people come back day after day. In my opinion, the best way to tell if a restaurant consistently holds up their end of the bargain is to see if the locals eat there regularly. I can tell you right now that Kayak Kafé has a local fan base that keeps coming back for more every single day because they can't get enough.

Recently, I was given the opportunity to work with Brendan Pappas (Owner/Manager of Kayak Kafé in Savannah, GA) to redesign their menu and website to create a more cohesive brand experience and to give the restaurant a fresh, new look and feel. Our main goal was to revitalize the already successful existing brand, to match the core values of the restaurant - Fast. Fresh. Friendly but to also keep the feeling of a casual local Savannah café. My initial ideas were admittedly a little too formal for what we wanted so I revised the ideas to include a fun, playful tone that connects the audience to the casual local atmosphere.

Overall, this project has been a huge success already and we look forward to seeing how Kayak Kafé will improve it's sales in the coming months.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PROJECT

Casavvy is dedicated to teaching people how to use checking accounts, credit cards and savings accounts to their advantage! This website is a great resource for everyone, especially young people, who need help when it comes to making financial decisions. People can learn how to be smart with their money and avoid losing their bank accounts to high interest rates and uneducated financial decisions. Casavvy also shows up-to-date credit card rates so if you are looking for a credit card then this is a great place to compare rates and sign up for the card that best suits you!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PROJECT

Since 1999 Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang have been collecting plastic debris from one beach in Northern California. Each piece of plastic Richard and Judith pick up comes back to their studio, where it gets cleaned, categorized and stored before being used for their art. The couple makes sculptures, prints, jewelry and installations with the plastic they find washing up, raising a deeper concern with the problem of plastic pollution in our seas.

Check out their website - beachplastic.com

This hilarious video is for all my fellow designers out there that occasionally have to deal with clients that are adamant on making bad design decisions. All we can do is keep a sense of humor about it so please enjoy this video and remember to just get a good laugh the next time this happens to you!

Thank you Agency Fusion for creating this hysterical video for all to enjoy.

Appreciate-it.com is a wonderful website where people from all walks of life post random things that they appreciate. This website is an excellent way to get some perspective on bad days and realize that there is plenty to be thankful for in your life.

Fair Warning... This website can be addictive!

Thank you Faust for having this wonderful idea and executing it so well!

Have you ever wondered where stuff comes from? What I am referring to is the production of consumable goods. What is involved in the extraction, manufacturing, selling and disposing of “stuff”? Well, this insightful video by Annie Leonard does a great job of explaining the whole process and while there are some arguments about the accuracy of her information I still believe the message is important to share. I am proud that designers are becoming more aware of these issues and trying their best to design sustainable goods to avoid the “cradle to grave” process.

CLICK HERE to view the video.

This was created as a project for Logo & Trademark class while attending SCAD. The assignment was to create a brand identity and packaging design for a fictitious apparel company that reflects the personality and style of a friend or family member. I picked my younger brother Kevin to base my company off of because he has a strong personality that is centered around skateboarding, video games and having fun so I knew it would be a great project for me. I decided that the logo had to be inspired by old school video games so I started there for inspiration. I sketched out a lot of ideas but the one I was continually drawn to was a mark inspired by the shapes within the game Tetris. This mark fits Kevin's personality the best out of all my ideas and will also appeal to the target audience of youthful skateboarders. I am also confident that this mark will appeal to the older audience because it has been influenced by tribal artwork that was indicative of Aboriginal tribes in Australia, which adds a bit of mystery and intrigue the company.

After I figured out the logo, it was time to design some products and packages for the brand. Part of the reason I wanted to design for a skateboarding apparel company was because I knew I could design some interesting packaging for items like belts, wallets and skateboards. My main goal was to pick items that were less obvious than just clothing. I continued my process by researching what conventional packages for these unconventional items looked like and then I challenged myself to think about the packages in my own way. I utilized SCAD's laser-cutting equipment to produce custom die-cut packaging for the belt, wallet and coat hangar as well as some tags to go on the other items. All of my packages came out exactly as I had imagined them so the final project was a huge success. I feel like this brand experience is amplified to reach the target audience, which was my main goal when I started this project.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PROJECT

You've almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.

You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you downloaded is less than 1000px in size.

You'd rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend's shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.

You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can't type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard.

You've had "software nightmares," when you've been working way too much.

You consider meals interruptions.

You've learned your lesson and stopped using the word "final" in any file name when saving.

You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.

You've intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers.

You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.

You'd rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.

When you heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia, you had a design orgasm.

When you look at album art all you see are grunge Photoshop brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple of minutes later)

You've Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.

You've actually paid for a font.

You've totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)

The amount of words you've written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you've read in novels.

You've had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn't part of the deal.

You've kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.

You've nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)

You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.

You've intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.

You can't go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.

You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper.

If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trilionaire 3 years ago.

 

Thank you http://designertoday.com/ for these funny (and true) jokes.