APPLIED GRAPHICS

This is where you will find graphic design work like: posters, cover art, labels, logos, custom lettering and digital art. Not so much to show here these days as I've been more absorbed with the game making business for several years which tends not to leave a lot of spare time in its wake.

As you can tell from looking at my portfolio, I love custom lettering, logo work and T-shirt design. I think posters are the perfect thing to work on as they tend to combine imagery and type/text in an eye catching way; it has to say what it has to say very succinctly and effectively. That appeals to me as an art form and a puzzle.

I like the simplicity and direct communication of graphic design. Boiling down an idea or concept into the simplest, most effective way of visually communicating that message. Everything that doesn't help convey that message is extraneous and possibly taking away from the essence.

DESIGN PROCESS

I've always been visual. My parents still laugh about me as a kid taking phone messages. I'd use pictographs to sound out the names and words I didn't know. To this day I'm a poor speller, but I am quite fluent in the vocabulary of drawing and creating imagery to tell a story.

I'm a big fan of working through a good design process when taking on an illustration or graphic design project. It's so important to be able to isolate and define your core idea and goals.

Setting up filters and criteria to screen the work is always useful. And working in stages from thumbs through roughs, through comps, into the final product is best.

Ideally there is a constant cycle of generating ideas, producing samples, evaluating, choosing, refining; rinse and repeat until the desired results are achieved. I've found these principals can be applied to most creative problems.