Our message to clients is to not be content with simply following trends. Don’t be trendy! Be steady, strong and confident in who you are. This will lead you into a place where you set the standards—where you set the trends for others to follow.

I was inspired by this slogan to create a personal art project which conveyed it. If you’re curious what I used, it was done in Photoshop using a photograph of an old grungy cafe tabletop taken by Caleb at Lost and Taken, a photo of cracked concrete taken by Jay at Bittbox and a photo of a ladybug that I found at iStock Photo. The font is Bree Extrabold from Type Together. I made adjustments/changes to all the source elements, for instance making Bree into a stencil font, adding a leg and doing some dodging/burning to the ladybug, plus lots of tweaks to the coloring of the concrete and tabletop photo.

I ended up using this as a free giveaway on Twitter & Facebook, making it into a computer desktop wallpaper and a printable greeting card.

I was not given the theme of “Presence”, in reference to the presence of God in the life of a Christian.  In describing it, I was told that the colors of heaven and earth: literally grass, dirt, sky and clouds were the preferred colors to be used in the event’s advertisements.  I decided to make “the colors of heaven and earth” part of the main copy because of the mystery it implied to the event.

This piece was followed-up with small postcards sent via direct mail to local area women with details about their specific event, costs, etc.

Matt Chewning, pastor of the proposed church plant Netcast Church asked me to design a prospectus for them that would appeal to a broad range of potential donors.  I was supplied with the data for the prospectus as well as a few photographs of the area.  I decided to use a key part of the church’s vision—clear unapologetic declaration of the truth of God’s word—as inspiration for the look of the prospectus.  I used large typography, full bleed photographs and a somewhat austere look to show this grand scale/loud/clear/declaratory theme.

The result?  That remains to be seen, as the prospectus has just been sent out to the team, but so far the response is overwhelmingly positive.  Several church planting experts have said that this is the best prospectus they have ever seen.  Hopefully that will translate directly into increased giving to this wholly worthy church plant.  I am honored to have been able to be a part of helping get this ambitious project off the ground!

This was a somewhat new direction for me, combining black and white photographs with vector illustrations and layering effects into a single unified whole.

The typefaces used include two of my grunge favorites, Megaxoid and Adler.  Can’t beat em!

The site serves two functions: to provide a store front to sell their products (both food and non-food items), and to give their customers lots of articles to read.  At first, I organized the site via two menus: Explore Coffee and Buy Coffee.  Since they used my CMS service, they began writing up all the “Explore” articles during development while I set up the store.  They ended up not using the simplified two menu system, opting for a less-organized approach.  To solve the usability issues of having unclear navigation, I added a section to the top of each page with two custom graphics that link to either the main Explore section, or to the Store Front.

The look of the site is based on the corporate identity that I created for the Captain’s Coffee, including the logo, logotype, color scheme and the overall “feel” of the site.

Because of the CMS service, the business’ employess and owners can change anything on the site that they like.  They told me multiple times that they love the way they are able to update the site, including all the store’s products.  They had been using an ecommerce solution called MonsterCommerce, provided by Network Solutions.  It’s a rather cumbersome process to get anything done on a MonsterCommerce site when compared with the system I give my customers.

So far, the feedback from both my client and their customers has been glowing!  Their older customers find the site intuitive and easy to navigate, and their younger customers enjoy the updated look and the security of the integrated credit card payments with SSL encryption.

Have a look and let me know what you think!

I had fun with this one!  You can see a detailed description of the design process in my portfolio.  I wanted to tie together the current fascination with Battlestar Galactica’s remake on the Sci Fi Channel and the still-raging retro futuristic design trend.  Obviously, there’s a big James White influence here, though I used a different technique to actual create the design than James uses.  The target audience is college students at local universities.  The church that commisioned me is an inner-city postmodern church that’s growing fast with the college students it’s dedicated to reaching.

I thought this was the perfect project to again use the retro futuristic look, and I had lots of creative freedom to come up with a fitting theme.

I really get a kick out of this new wave of futuristic styles. Maybe it’s because I’m a child of the eighties, but I just think it’s cool.  It’s not the most usable method in terms of advertising or branding, but if it’s put with the right message or event, it can be just what the doctor ordered.

Here’s three retro futuristic designs I’ve done recently:

After the Read More link, I’ll have three sources of inspiration for this style.  Click on!

There are a few real experts in this style right now.  One of them is James White, who’s work can be found over at Signalnoise.  Here’s one of his pieces, entitled “Robot Rock”:

It’s based on a work he did earlier for Daft Punk, an awesome electronica group.

Here’s another one of my favorites from James:

And finally, a piece from Chuck Anderson, another design heavyweight and source of inspiration for me in my work.

I don’t necessarily think this design trend will last another twenty years, but it sure is fun while it’s here!  I suspect in another thirty years, it will come back around in another form.  It’s that 1980′s vibe of fun, carefree, novelty and hope for the future.  All good things, if you ask me.