Magazine Layout

Practicing unique design for a unique audience

Submerge Magazine was a quarterly publication targeted to a unique demographic of fans of deep-sea themed fiction and art. Sometimes this project felt as mysterious as the ocean floor itself, but the challenge was a blast to tackle!

The magazine became more focused on the art features over time, but I wanted to avoid a visual overload. The goal was to take what little copy we had and make sure we didn't throw it overboard into a sea of bright colors. We wanted the artwork to enhance the fiction, and vice-versa. To overcome this challenge, I worked closely with editors to place wireframes in the InDesign document until the text flowed in a natural, easy-to-read way. And then the fun part began: organizing the visual assets!

One significant process I employed was to organize images by color compatability. Doing so helped to balance the magazine into a eye-pleasing composition instead of the headache-inducing jumble that it easily could have become. If possible, I would select a color palette at the project's onset, but the artwork itself would often do that for me instead.

eCommerce

Simple solutions for small business

BuffaloShark is a budding start-up in San Diego, CA. Their culture of "embrac(ing) everything that makes us happy" sparks a kind of euphoria in my creative mind that is unspeakable. My rational mind, however, does not like the idea of endless possibilities. This was the challenge of the BuffaloShark online storefront.

To solve this conundrum I focused on the culture in the city where this company resides. San Diegans love the outdoors (and bragging about how their "outdoors" are better than yours), so using the best images of Southern California outdoor culture that I could was a no-brainer. One result of taking this approach was that it gave BuffaloShark a direction to take their marketing and social media presence.

From a technical side the challenge I faced was not to simply create a shopping cart, checkout, and inventory, but to create these things in a way that could be managed and maintained by someone with little to no web design skills. I ended up creating the store using a consumer level point-of-sale software and a simple front-end drag and drop solution to add and remove merchandise without interfering with the professional touches that I created.

And with some of my artwork showcased at BuffaloShark, those little professional touches are important to me!

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Corporate Designs

Meatier solutions for large business

I began my time at the University of San Diego with a small group of three people, including me. It was our task to launch fully online courses and grow the university's portfolio of online course offerings. Though we had the backing of a prestigious organization, our task was daunting and had many of the painful attributes of a start-up. I wore many hats, most notably in marketing. Often I designed assets from concept to completion, or I would create templates for the less-creative to use.

After staying with the university for over five years, I had helped to expand the portfolio of online course offerings to over 300 courses, including 4 fully online Masters degree programs. Naturally, our team also expanded, but I still happily found myself designing logos, brands, and assets for all of our programs.

For example, we launched a Masters degree program in Cyber Security. After doing some research about what the Cyber Security world calls a "honeypot" (an online sting operation to catch hackers), I came up with options on a honeycomb design.

Illustration & Book Creation

Telling a story with effective composition

Behind the Shed was a labor or love that really began 25 years before it was finished. It is a story that my mother wrote for me as a Christmas gift in 1990. I spent over a year dedicating nights and weekends to illustrate it and return it to her as a Christmas gift in 2015.

I call this project my "study of composition" as I meticulously framed the action in every thumbnail sketch with pencil and paper. After getting a layout nailed down with pencil, I did some paintings until I found the right color combinations. Despite my strict attention to artistic details, the crucial element of this project was story. As the story had already been written, I constantly asked myself if my use of composition was reinforcing it.

As with all creative projects I undertake, I sought feedback at various stages of this project from diverse groups of people. I am a firm believer in the effectiveness of collaboration and feedback. I was even lucky enough to get a few people from Pixar Animation Studios to look at my illustrations (a big-time geek out moment in my life!). I didn't want any of this valuable feedback to go to waste, so I actually created a spreadsheet to aggregate all of the information and determine which areas were talked about the most.

eLearning Solutions

Continued Education for working professionals

In over five years with the University of San Diego I helped to administer over 300 fully online courses, including four fully online Masters degree programs.

My role on the eLearning team was to enhance the user experience and promote adult learning. I made key decisions about the general layout and navigation of the courses and carried out these decisions as a learning management system administrator.

One challenge that comes with fully online classes is a question of academic integrity. We employed a number of tools in the learning management system that could detect plagiarism, but what we really needed was a set of guidelines and penalties for failing to comply with these guidelines. More importantly, we needed a way for students to acknowledge that they are aware of the guidelines and penalties. The fix was to build in our own academic integrity pledge. The course content was hidden from the students until they opened the pledge and checked a box acknowleging that they have viewed it.

Similarly, course modules were set to open in weekly increments to prevent students from working too far ahead, thus improving student interaction in weekly discussion boards.

As an instructional technologist, I was also in charge of creating multimedia for our courses. This included video, images, graphics, audio, narrated PowerPoints, screen captures, and much more. I would create these assets and then organize them online in a way that assisted with the learning process and overall user experience. Every effort was made to be ADA compliant, offering disabled students the same education.

You can see more of the creative aspect of my eLearning career in the Corporate section of this portfolio.

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Logo Design

Capturing a company's culture

Designing logos for a diverse collection of clients is always a fun challenge. I like to start by selecting a color palette that best fits the client's product or service to give my creative lobe a little kick in the pants. Then I begin digital sketches of varying ideas to give to the client. The above images are just a small sample of the ideas I produced for J.Mere Floral as I was getting closer to matching their vision.

For example, J.Mere floral is a small business in a college town known for having a high rate of new marriages. J.Mere wanted to focus their floral business on that angle. The color palette was chosen based on data I collected detailing the most common wedding colors. This color palette attracts a vast majority of couples who are planning their big day, but is not outrageous enough to discourage other potential customers.

After completing a design, I will deliver a package to the client that includes variations of the logo, different file types, and all of the branding guidelines I created: main-color hexidecimal numbers, accent colors, font files, mockups for letterhead, etc.