…endorsement might be a better word, but ultimately I think this was one of the most fun projects I ever got to work on. Spitfire Wheels are made by a company in San Fransisco called Deluxe Distribution, a company that makes a lot of products I’m a fan of, and is run by a number of people I consider friends.

I was given the opportunity to speak about and demonstrate some of the qualities of the Spitfire F1 Streetburner urethanes (my favorite skateboard wheel since they came out). As of this moment, the video is located on this page (click here then click on the “video” link at the bottom-center of the page).

The video was filmed in 1080, 60i (HD) by my friends Kerry Simpson, Gnarly Trey, Joshewz, Jordan, with some tripod filming of my own. I’ll make an HD version of this video available after it’s taken down from the Deluxe Distribution site.

I edited the footage using Adobe Premiere (for capturing, clipping, and composition) and Adobe After Effects CS4 (for color correction and enhancement). I did the narration for this video in one of many ways it could have been done… I edited the skating, then while wearing headphones, I watched the edited video and commented while filming myself watching the video. I imported that video, and had no issue with syncing up my narration because I had the best visual cue as to where to place my audio… the video itself!

The online catalog that the video is featured on is always updated, so here are some screen shots of the page it’s on as well as some review screen caps for my own compulsive need to archive:

I didn’t create the above page, this was created and is the property of Deluxe Distribution.

…when you click the video button, you get me.

Some skate shots:

At one of the first conferences I ever helped put together, we did something not seen in most conferences of this nature… I created a virtual host, a digital puppet as it were. On the big screens, this little fella was a virtual MC that did most of the announcements, introductions, and segues into other portions of the event:

…on the back end, I had a library and menu that I used to control him in case the conference went off-schedule. He was also built flexible enough so that I could reprogram and animate him (which actually happened) on the fly. Keep in mind, this character had a voice (my own, digitally modified), so some of the emergency tracks were recorded in my room at the conference hotel, then fitted into the animation modules I’d built for the character. It was way more work than I ever expected, but the audience was really responsive… and most importantly not bored. It’s hard enough to get people to go from morning to night non-stop, but I think this added an element a lot of people had never witnessed (including myself).

Statistically, most experiments fail… but when they win it more than makes up for it.

Illustrator, Flash, Swift 3D, and a lot of audio programs to change my voice… I’ll upload one of the movies later on (and try to provide some context).

Some designers are split when it comes to web-based graphics and print media, but I personally enjoy working within the limitations and possibilities with both mediums. When it comes to print, I really like doing the bigger stuff… there are few things that are more gratifying than seeing an image you’ve stared at on your monitor forever become something big, shiny, and real.
The key is planning everything out, and plans can be as different as the design itself.

Currently I produce one to three table top displays for national, regional, and statewide conferences, which are very similar to trade shows (with booths, networking, etc).
When I work in larger dimensions, I try to fill as much space as possible without losing the message inside a barrage of imagery… as with any design project, the artwork should push the message and make it easier for the viewer to digest.

Here are a few sample pieces, detail shots, and descriptions:

This is a four-panel work-in-progress shot (right, center, left, and center banner) that went to print about a year ago (as of this writing). Most of the art on the site panels was created  in Illustrator, but everything was composed in PhotoShop (at scale, 300dpi). The general height (not including the center banner) is 22 inches, printed on foam board with a gloss finish, and velcro’d onto a four-panel fold up backboard (the center piece takes up two panels). Once velcro has been attached to the back of each panel beforehand, set up and breakdown of this display literally takes less than three minutes:

One thing to keep in mind is that during trade shows or events like the ones these displays are used for, people are constantly moving. The goal is to create something striking, and not be dependent on handing out free trinkets with your name on them (pens, mousepads, etc). Remember that like billboards, too much text will make people look the other way… with displays, people will read bullets, but rarely paragraphs. Displays should be outlines, and usually the table top should have supplementary material (pamphlets, even photocopied documents) that expand on the points made visually.

The “Battered, Unbroken, Ascending” display below is my favorite for two reasons, the first being that it was the most personally-charged, and secondly because I was allowed full control over the visual assets. This display was shown at an education related conference soon after hurricanes Katrina and Rita… for those of us here in the state, the storms are scorched into our minds forever… but for a lot of people outside of the gulf south, what happened really is still sort of an abstract tragedy.

This was printed on one sheet of polystyrene (22″ h, 90″ w) and composed in PhotoShop at 300 dpi. The PSD file for this was done at scale, and weighed in at over 8 gigs in size. Every time I nudged something, it took my old machine between five and 10 minutes to render the new image. File size strain is one of the biggest problem for large format printing with raster files, but it’s all about the end goal:

Here’s a detail on the left and right sides of the display… of note, the different pieces of paper on the left were regular household items that I ripped apart and scanned in at roughly 1,200 dpi, then artificially weathered and distressed in PhotoShop. The paper pieces were scanned in at such a high resolution because they needed to appear large on the display… had I scanned them in at 300 dpi, they would have been printed at their real-life actual size (tiny scraps). The paper products used (from top to bottom) were a paper bag, a sheet from a steno note book, a chunk of cardboard, and envelope, some corrugated cardboard, and a paper towel:

The same display in use:

…the logo on the table skirt is a design I developed nearly seven years ago, in this case the table-skirt vendor simply needed a vector file (.eps).

One last display, simply because the ones presented so far are basically the same, they both attach to a paneled backboard (though with the long one-piece polystyrene print, the four panels become one curved surface).
On this project (San Francisco, 2006), I opted out of using the altogether. I had a basic idea in my head… I wanted to create something that the panels would hang from instead of being stuck on to.
I went to Lowe’s, and initially built a framework with PVC pipes (right there in the isle), but the weak plastic caused instability, and I knew there would be no way to use them to support any weight whatsoever. Luckily, Lowe’s had steel pipes, elbows, T-shapes, and bases. So again, right in the isle, I constructed a booth-like frame that looked just like the one I’d made with PVC, but this time it was incredibly stable. I bought spares of the smaller pieces, and even came up with alternative ways of putting the frame together (in case we were put in a corner or in the middle of the room):

…I was really excited about the way this one came out. The graphics (aside from some photos) were all vector, and the little airplane flying up in the center panel was a 3D model created in Animation: Master, exported as a .3Ds file, imported into Swift 3D and then rendered as a vector image. One of the funniest things about this display is that people were approaching me, asking me where I’d bought the blue “feet” for the display. All they really are were some little one-dollar garbage cans that happened to be shaded pretty similarly to the table skirt!

Here’s one last shot with a detail of the steel on top:

Each of the panels had two holes poked in at the top, and were literally strung up around the pipe with steel wire I’d bought at a craft store. Although this display was very successful at drawing in people, I probably won’t do another one like this for an out-of-state conference because dealing with over 100 pounds of pipes is a real drag (when you consider that you’re also packing other work materials, personal luggage, and the fact that you have to get it all back home, too).

One very important note:
Although I do the layouts, designs, and concepts for projects like this, I don’t do the actual printing. I have a friend at the main Kinko’s in Baton Rouge (on Airline Highway) named Gia… we’ve been working together for over six years, and she’s awesome. She treats print like a craft, and she’s a great designer and artist as well. Glad to have her as a friend and frequent working partner. Whenever you any large print jobs on this site, my friend Gia’s the one who made it go from digital to tangible. She understands the art of printing, even when it’s production stuff.

This is a really old piece that wasn’t so much designed, as it was a series of experiments that I hobbled together.
I mention “mixed digital media” in the post title because it should be noted (to the non designer/techie) that there are nearly as many digital approaches to art creation as there are in the analog world. Inside our computers we can paint, sculpt, construct, and modify anything just like we can in real life.
I’ve come across some people (proficient in some of the traditional hands-on genres of certain artistic disciplines) that were  under the impression that doing stuff on the computer is just “easy,” as if the computer just makes stuff up by itself.
Truth is, if you can’t draw in real life, you’re not going to be sketching masterpieces on your machine any time soon.
Granted, while in the digital realm we have the luxury of hitting “undo” to correct past actions, when you consider that you have the power to adjust each and every pixel inside an image, it’s easy to spend hours simply making adjustments that only you would know about. In many cases, creating art from the ground up in a 100% digital environment may take as long or longer than making the same piece by hand… just for different reasons.
So, digital mixed media:

As one can plainly see, the image is divided into three irregular sections (from top to bottom):
1. Arial (bold) written out to say something that I thought sounded cool at the time, a 3D Studio Max model (color, render and text in 3DS-Max).
2. Another 3DS model, rendered at three angles inside of Swift 3d (it converts several 3D formats into vector images/animations). The background for this section is a collection of made-in-photoshop textures, colors,  and manipulations layered on top of each other.
3. Though I don’t still have it on me, this bottom panel was a photograph I’d taken of a stack of quarters. I attacked the photo with nearly every tool in PhotoShop until it both no longer looked like change, and fit with the other panels.

Illustrator, on a canvas of 33″ by 9.5″. Four color print on a white-dipped board:

I’ll be sharing pics and talking a lot about photography in the future, but as far as my own photos are concerned, I decided not to create a photo gallery. Rather, I decided to put them on the main page of the site… the images are randomly generated from a library of about 150 photos (and growing by the day).

I will feature photos here in the blog, but I’ll dually add them to the library on the splash page. As I mention in another section of the site, if you see any photos you’d like to use, feel free. Often times I can even provide a larger resolution version if you prefer… the only thing I really ask for is that you let me see what you’ve done with it, whether it’s been used for a flier or a website, I just like seeing stuff being used in ways I probably never will. You don’t have to tell me, but it would be awesome if you did. Again, I still have most of the photos on this site in higher (or plain super high) resolution. Just ask!

I only charge for commissioned pieces, not pics I plan on sharing anyway.

The assignment: Create a cover page for a program pamphlet.
The limitations: The cover should be done in black and white, as the pamphlet may be photocopied multiple times as well as sent over the fax machine.
What I don’t want to do: Make a boring cover, use clip art, or miss a chance to make something fun.

Solution:
1. Ask a student worker at the office to pose his arm and hand in a few different positions and start taking photos.
2. Grab a white sheet of copier paper and another sheet of paper with a lot of contrast. Take a photo.
3. Bring both pics into PhotoShop. Knock out a hole in the paper rippage, desaturate both photos them so they become greyscale, then increase the contrast a lot.
4. Clean up the images, trim away the edges, and cut the student’s worker’s shoulder and upper arm into two pieces (so part of him is inside the hole, and part of him pokes out).
5. Draw a thing that fits the layout in Illustrator, then import it into Photoshop and chip away parts of it (where the thumb is located).
6. Throw some words behind it, drop it in Word, and you’ve avoided all of MS-W’s limitations.

This is a selection from an animated Illustrator-manufactured logo, imported, extruded, and animated in Swift 3d, and eventually imported into Flash as part of a much larger project.

In the footwear world, the Nike Dunks probably outrank everyone when it comes to special edition shoes and an eager market of skaters and shoe-fanciers to buy them.
I had this idea that I knew would work: create a hurricane-related shoe (post Katrina and Rita), and send money to the state or the Red Cross or something like that. As it turns out, you have to have a lawyer just to give Nike a peek at your design. Either that or know a Nike rep.

The three main segments of the process for this image: photo for (some) anatomical accuracy, vector line art, and PhotoShop for the color, shading, and magic: