Power to the People

"Power to the People" graphic.

Our national leadership on all levels needs a re-boot. Regardless of what political OS you operate under it's pretty clear that our national leadership on all platforms needs to be defragmented. They all seem to suffer from a lack of mental RAM?

A national system isn't re-installed from the top down it's facilitated by the users. So when I thought of the saying "Power to the People" it cached this graphic idea.


"Power to the People" t-shirts.

So think different and restart your own convictions in a day and age of Compromise.

- View / Order Black Shirt Here
- View / Order White Shirt Here

Seek and You Will Find

Street Level Logo Design.

How do you motivate a group of stiff necked suits, or a room full of cubicle zombies, or any other garden variety form of corporate drone? Well, if you're "Street Level Adventures" you design custom treasure hunts to facilitate corporate team building for some of the nations largest companies.


Cycloptic Man.

The purpose behind the adventures is to help a team focus and operate in a unified manner. Because of that I decided to create a humanoid character with an all-seeing eye. A graphic nod to "E Pluribus Unum" if you will.

The adventures are fun and creative so I wanted the mark to be playful as well. The typography is all hand lettered too to go with the style of the artwork.


Unused Logo Concept.

This design approach played off of a man hole cover concept. Once again I kept the aesthetic playful and hand lettered the design.


Unused Logo Concept.

This business designs all types of adventures in various genres so I decided to play off a cloak and dagger theme motif. I liked it but felt it pigeon holed the perception of what type of genre adventures they offered, so it wasn't used.

Graphic Homicide

Another victim of bad design.

Rarely do I talk about local design issues. But recently an article in a local news paper about a logo design demonstrated a text book case of how design can go so very wrong.

In order for you the blog reader to fully understand the context in which I'll be critiquing this design, I encourage you to go read the short article here. Or if the news paper decides to remove it you can download a PDF of the article here.


Diagraming a graphic homicide.

Design Crime Notes

Overall: This is a bad design period the end. It's not "Kinda OK" or "Not that bad" it's a victim of bad design, a graphic homicide if you will.

There isn't a distinct graphic tone for this design. It's all over the stylistic map in such an incoherent manner that it's no surprise that a board DID facilitate it.

The lack of a distinct hierarchy in the design makes for a very schizophrenic end result as well. Everything is competing for attention, which kind of reflects the board approval process it's gone through as well I suppose. Various factions all playing art director trying to get their element integrated.

I think there is too many visual compenents to begin with, but if it's mandatory to include a mountain, fish, and flowers than spend the time to weave them together in a compelling well crafted manner. What you have here is at best a mishmash design, which again may just be a reflection of the board mentality?

But the blame cannot rest on the board alone. A designer has to play a proactive roll in any creative process, not be intimidated by a client and help steer a board in the right direction. So the problem is two fold IMO. No agency, just in house designers with very little leverage and a swarm of board members who fancy themselves as art directors.

A. Photographic Elements: These glorified web graphics are unnecessary saddle bags full of bad design chops. They've been fused onto an already poorly crafted motif like love handles on a middle aged balding board member. Sure, some might find them cute, but realistically they are just visual fat that impedes the design health.

B. Typography Choice: The choice of the Optima typeface adds to the visual tension since the font itself has been referred to as a centrist font trying to merge characteristics of serif and sans serif typefaces. The fact it's hay day was in the mid 1970's makes the mark look dated from the get go.

C. Clip-Art: Like water and oil this art doesn't swim with the rest of the graphics stylistically, thus repelling each other. The so-called native american inspired graphic looks like something a hack designer would pull from an Art Explosion CD. It feels like clip-art because it's poorly illustrated and executed.

D. Mountain: At first I didn't see a mountain. I saw a green shark getting ready to eat a black fish. The saw tooth graphic is another weak attempt at native american style, and instead it adds unnecessary complexity. The rendering of the mountain is lame as well and the graphic birth mark they inserted on it's interior will just look like a hickey at smaller sizes. Brilliant!

In Closing: It's only taken this board two years to get this design result. If government can't initiate a logo design, why do we think it can run health care? (I digress.) The board needs to stop playing art director, stop using hack designers, and hire a legit agency to produce a professional solution.

The eventual eye sore.

If any board member or local citizen reads this post I challenge you to encourage our local leadership to put out an RFP to local design firms and let us show you how the creative process can produce a well crafted and creative design solution for the water tower. It won't take two years and it'll look professional.

The following is an opinion piece I wrote and submitted to the local paper in response to the water tower logo story. I hope they run it, but I won't hold my breath.

50 Miles From Good Design

What separates good design from bad design? Apparently 50 miles.

One could argue that the Pacific Northwest is a design mecca when it comes to communication arts. Portland of all cities in Oregon understands and values good design. Just drive around the city and it's hard not to see examples of it everywhere you go. Because of this attention to design Portland is globally-renowned for it's design community.

When a graphic logo is needed local Portland leaders and businesses appropriately turn to the local design community and lean on professional agencies to create what they need and the end result is creative, well crafted, and this reflects positively on Portland as a whole.

Public transportation has a nice "TriMet" logo and when Portland developed a new premiere shopping center they turned to a local design firm and produced the "Bridgeport Village" logo.

But for some reason if you travel a mere 50 miles south the attitude towards design changes and you have a city like Keizer producing the antithesis in "Keizer Station." Don't get me wrong the shopping experience is fine, I'm speaking in regard to the aesthetic of their logo, the design is bad and doesn't reflect the quality of the shopping experience.

Like Portland, the Keizer and Salem community have many talented design agencies they could be calling upon to produce well crafted and creative professional solutions for their graphic needs. Instead however Keizer chooses to create a logo design for their latest water tower graphic without tapping any local agency. You can view it here.

If you compare the quality of this water tower logo with that of Portland's "Park Smart" logo, you'll see the difference between good and bad design produced on behalf of an Oregon city. Portland values it and Keizer leadership has no clue.

Why is it that Portland design trumps Keizer design?

Portland values design, there fore they value the designers producing it and depend upon them and their agencies to guide and facilitate the creative process.

Keizer on the other hand, didn't hire any agency and instead has taken two years of board meetings and a fragmented design process to create what they now have which is at best unprofessional and at worse will reflect poorly upon the city when it's plastered on a 200 ft. water tower.

The good news is this can all be easily corrected. Keizer and Salem like Portland can have the same high standards of design appreciation and benefit from it too. It just takes leadership who'll acknowledge their own lack of understanding when it comes to the design process and realize they need to stop playing art director and be wise leaders by hiring a local design agency to give Keizer and it's community what they deserve, good design.

Another Walking Portfolio

"Phoenix" custom tattoo design.

Bret St. Amour a fellow art school graduate and friend hired me to design this custom tattoo design for him. He'll be doing a road trip to Miami Ink to have the design applied.


"Phoenix" back tattoo.

Bret has fought and defeated cancer three times so he wanted something that represented freedom and had wings and I suggested a Phoenix. He loved the idea and loves his new design.

When I create custom tattoo designs I provide PDF Flash Sheets to my client that includes a thermograph ready version of the artwork to make transferring the design easier at the tattoo shop and thus ensuring a more precise replication of my art.

To see other custom designs I've created read my post "Walking Portfolios."

Molar Madness

Game graphics for "Ramp Champ."

My good buddies over at the The IconFactory have released another great app for iPhone and iPod Touch users called "Ramp Champ."

They hired me to create an add-on level which I named "Molar Madness."

You can check out more about this project on my primary design site here. Or head on over to the iTunes App Store and get more information.

I've had fun playing with it for a while now in beta and the final is even better, it's a blast!

The Saramond Quests

"Iron Dragons" book cover design.

A friend of mine by the name of Derek P. Gilbert is a multi-talented guy. He has done podcasting, worked as a rock music DJ on radio, hosting a FM talk radio show, a barber shop quartet member, seller of steel, and an author. He's like a utility player in baseball who can play any position he needs, to get the job done. And if that wasn't enough, he's also a really nice guy as well.

I finally got around to listening to his first audio book "Iron Dragons" about five months ago. I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of fantasy so that is why I put off getting into it for about a year. Well needless to say once I started listening to his book I was hooked, it's a compelling story with a nice twist and rich character development.

Since Derek has a voice for radio he also reads the book too, the fact it's FREE to anyone who wants to listen via Podiobooks.com is a no-brainer.

I was less impressed with the books cover however. I didn't think it did the story justice and felt the series needed to have a branded look established since this is "Book One of The Saramond Quests."

I had to tread lightly though, you see his wife Sharon designed the book cover and I didn't want to offend anyone, especially a friends better half.

Well, I never had to approach Derek because he beat me to it, and asked me to design a consistent brand for him. He's donated a lot of time sharing his work with everyone so I didn't mind sharing some of mine as well. If in the process I can help a friends work get the attention it deserves that is reward enough IMO.


"The Saramond Quests" brand logo.

Since these books will live online I kept the design streamlined. Each book will be branded with a new color but keep the same general format to create a branded coherent series. The first book is the crown jewel in the story arch so we settled on purple, this also had a lot to do with the fact that I negotiated a deal with one of the top fantasy artists in this genre Ciruelo Cabral. He gave us permission to use his dragon illustration on the cover. I was thrilled that he allowed us the privilege to use his art for this project, thank you Ciruelo!

Combine the incredible dragon art with a new branding for "The Saramond Quests" and we now have a firm visual foundation for future covers. Derek of course loves the new cover and I'll be helping him with his future covers as well.


"The Saramond Quests" brand logo.

I thought the iconic dragon looked pretty cool so I created a t-shirt design with it.

Derek has also just released another FREE audio book called "The God Conspiracy" which is in a totally different genre but once again another fun listen.

I didn't however design this latest cover, his wife did. Like Schultz on Hogan's Heros "I see nothing!"

Vidya Balan Photos, Images, hot Pics,Wallpapers

Celebrity faces, Pictures and Gossip, Amazing Creation

Sculptor Alex Queral, 51, from Philadelphia, US, has hand crafted some of the world's most famous faces...

President Obama
Jack Nicholson
Bob Dylan




the artist got his idea and started chipping away when he noticed piles of unused phone books just lying around

"It can be quite tense work sometimes because it takes a long time to finish and when you cut something away you can't get it back again"