FALL WILD 2010: POSTER
September 17, 2010
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Team 31′s W.I.L.D concert is only a few weeks away, so i decided to design a vintage-ish poster to help promote the event. I originally planned on having the Whale be a t-shirt design, but I unfortunately missed the submission deadline. The concept is a play on words with the artists’ names. For first time listeners, Wale (pronounced: Wa-Lay) is oftentimes mistaken for Whale. The laser beam gun coming out of the whale’s blow hole represents Major Lazer. There’s nothing too fancy going on in the poster, just a couple cute characters and an awesome paper texture to give it that concert poster look. At the time of this post, the Team 31 website has been skinned in a similar fashion to give a consistent and identifiable aesthetic.
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SUMMER UPDATE AND WORDS OF WISDOM
September 12, 2010
So I’ve managed to neglect this blog for the past couple of months, and I finally got the urge to start it up again. Unfortunately (and fortunately) things have been busy to say the least, and before things get even busier, I thought I’d take some time to give you all an update on what I’ve been up to for the past few months and what my future plans are.
First off, I some how managed to land a summer internship at CollegeHumor. It was, hands down, the best internship experience I could have asked for. Not only did I get to work with an incredible group of people, but I had the privilege of working in the IAC building, quite possibly the most beautiful office building in the world.
Contrary to popular belief, they run a tight ship over at CH, and I had the excellent fortune of learning from some really great mentors. I would say I spent a good 30% of my time in one of my mentor’s office just learning about how web companies operate. While I don’t consider myself a guru when it comes to monetizing a website, I would say that after my summer internship at CH, I now have a pretty damn good idea on how the industry works and operates.
In regards to Royal Rascal, I’ve decided to shut it down temporarily. I know… I’m heart broken over it too, but the good news is that I’m starting a completely new project! It’s kind of a secret for now, but let’s just say it involves helping people on a large scale! Hopefully, I can get it off the ground before December.
So some time in early June, I was approached to with the proposition of joining a team to help lead up the front-end GUI for an iPhone application called Cloudy. At the time, it was simply an idea. Three months later, we stand a team of three with 15K of invested capital and a bitching aesthetic.
Note: The above image is simply a mock up of what the landing page is going to look like. Gizmodo has not actually commented or rated the application… But when and if they do, I’m sure they’ll have something very similar to say. Hopefully…
In regards to current progress, the back-end is almost completed, and it’s simply a matter of migrating the graphics into Xcode and getting it approved by Apple. Despite having insanely busy schedules, the three of us have agreed to put aside our Saturday mornings and afternoons to work together on Cloudy until it launches.
Above is a screen-shot of my work area document for Cloudy. I’ve managed to design everything out of a single Illustrator file without going crazy. When the application is finally complete, I’m planning on having three copies of the work area printed and framed for myself and the other members of the team.
Be sure to look out for Cloudy in the app store in the next couple of months! Oh and by the way… It’s FREE!
I’ve also decided to work for Moosylvania again this year. Or should I say, Moosylvania has been so kind as to have me back for another year. The creative talent that enters that building everyday is absolutely incredible. My time at Moose- has been quite humbling.
Since I’ve been back at Moose- I’ve been working on a white paper regarding recommendations being the new online currency. I’ve also been working on expanding the reach of one of Moose’s more recent projects, Hot Sauce: Deals of the Day.
If you live in St. Louis, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t have this site bookmarked. They offer daily discounts of 50% off at some of the best restaurants around the area! It’s an awesome way to break free from the monotony of visiting the same restaurants and an affordable way to try out new places.
While I’m not one to preach, I feel like this is an appropriate time to share some of the wisdom I’ve gathered over the past couple of months. I have recently adopted the motto of “all things happen for a reason, and if you work your ass off and constantly seek new opportunities, good things will happen.” If you’re the slightest bit interested in seeing how this motto has impacted my life over the past couple of months, continue. Otherwise, feel free to scurry off and explore the wonder that is the interwebs.
As most of you probably know, life is full of sacrifices and disappointments. And it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself when things don’t go exactly as planned. But I’ve found that by reminding yourself, “everything happens for a reason” whenever shit hits the fan, you’re immediately able to snap out of any negative mindset.
Now let me start at the beginning of when I started to adopt this motto that has landed me to where I am today.
Let’s begin in February. I had just enrolled in an entrepreneurship class called “The Hatchery”. During one of our classes, we had a number of local CEO’s introduce themselves and speak to the class about their companies.
Among the dozen or so successful folks to drop by, one CEO in particular caught my attention. His name is Norty Cohen, the CEO of Moosylvania. During his introduction he he mentioned that Moose- was starting to offer classes in SEO- Search Engine Optimization. He continued to tell us that an info session would be going on in the next hour or so and that anyone who wanted to drop by was more than welcome. A few days prior, the topic of SEO and it’s importance had made its way in my marketing communications class. So I thought, what the hell, ask this guy where the classes are taught and maybe it’ll be a good learning experience.
So at the end of class, I walked up to him, and he gave me the address for Moose-. I set the address into my trusty Garmin and headed over after the reception. Now prior to this, Norty had told me that Moose was located in a newly renovated church. So with this in mind, I followed my nav until it told me I had arrived at my destination. I had actually ended up next to a 7-Eleven and gas station. Apparently I had written down the wrong address. So I continued to drive around until I found a church.
When I arrived at what I thought was Moose-, I got out of my car and tried to enter through the front door, but it was closed. I decided to sit in my car for 10 minutes just in case I was early. No one showed up, and I was extremely confused, cold and ready to give up and head back to my dorm room. But then I figured maybe it was the wrong church.
After driving around aimlessly for a few minutes, I arrived at a church with huge banners that read, “Moosylvania, the great state of design!” At this point, I was just completely overwhelmed with feelings of both excitement and uncertainty. I had no idea what to expect. I had managed to stray from campus and was about to enter a church/company that I knew nothing about. But once I stepped inside, I realized I had arrived somewhere very special.
So I sat through the SEO info session, and afterward Norty dropped by and introduced himself to the group. At the end, the instructor announced that the class was a few hundred dollars which was a bit out of my price range… I wanted to learn SEO, but not THAT badly. So as I slowly made my way to leave, I just couldn’t help but ask if there was any possible that I could possibly intern/ work part there part-time.
So I grew a pair, turned around and asked Norty if there were any opportunities to work at Moose-. And I’ll never forget that moment… Without any hesitation or asking for a resume or transcript, Norty told me to shoot him a reminder email the next day and that he would set me up the following week.
I left Moose- that night with a new perspective on life. Had my marketing professor not put an emphasis on SEO that week, or maybe I put off that Hatchery class another semester, I would have never met Norty and I would have never found Moose-.
So that’s when I started thinking about how every decision we make, good or bad, risky or safe, they all give shape and essentially end up defining us. But what I’also discovered was that by taking a little initiative and living life with an optimistic expectation that what I do today will hopefully benefit me tomorrow you wake up every morning looking for opportunity that would otherwise not present itself.
When I returned to my dorm after visit Moose- I felt this weird sense of accomplishment. While I had done nothing to deserve such an offer, I had done everything by just asking a simple question. That internship led to several months of experience shadowing THE most bad ass creative art directors I’ve ever met and opportunities I had yet to discover.
So lets fast forward a bit. A few months later I find myself overly committed and stressed. I had joined a student group called Team31 as the webmaster, and I remember staying up until 10 AM finishing the layout for the website. Looking back I can’t remember why I was so inclined to finish it, but I do remember the unfortunate consequence being that I had sacrificed precious time that I should have spent studying for an exam.
I remember thinking to myself, wow, did I really just put off studying for an exam so I could finish an unpaid website for a student group? But then a few weeks passed by, and I received an email from a freshman named, Will. He writes to tell me that he saw the Team 31 site a few days ago and that he was pretty impressed. He says he’s done some web development work and that he’s trying to meet all of the creative talent on campus. At first I was extremely skeptical as to what this meeting would have to offer, but after having that experience with Norty, I thought why not indulge in some conversation with a fellow web developer.
So I shoot hum and email and a few days later we meet at the library cafe. Twenty minutes into the conversation he says “so I’m thinking of starting this iPhone app called Cloudy.”
Hopefully you’re starting to see how these pieces fit together.
So at this point I’m feeling pretty damn good. I’m working at an awesome Ad agency, and I’m part of a team working on a pretty cool iPhone app with carte blanche in regards to to aestetic and GUI. Come towards the end of the semester, I begin talking to an old family friend who had previously mentioned that he would help me land a summer internship at the ad agency he worked for. Now this wasn’t just any ol’ agency, we’re talking #1 voted ad agency of the year… I had a great interview , and I had a SVP backing my name, what could possibly go wrong?
Come June, I receive an e-mail saying that there weren’t any spots available for me this summer… I was completely crushed and I felt like such an idiot for putting all of my eggs in one basket and banking on the fact that I would get this internship just because I knew someone.
So I spent the first few weeks emailing every ad agency in NY that had an email address posted on their site. I didn’t receive a single response. It was the summer, I was jobless, and I was looking for any opportunity to get out of the house. I was so bored, that one day, I actually volunteered to hang out with my friend’s mother in the car while my friend interviewed for an internship.
While I sat in the car with my friend’s mother, she asked what I was doing for the summer. When I had told her that my plans for my dream internship had fallen through, she told me that she does some recruiting for her brother’s company through Craigslist. While I appeared to be nodding, I was really thinking, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” Craigslist is a way to connect innocent and lonely people with rapists and crazies, or so I thought…
That night after I had successfully completed the second season of LOST, I turned on my laptop and began perusing the jobs section on Craigslist. What I had initially dreaded had soon become a sick addiction. Every day for 2 weeks I would sign online, read the newest postings and send out a couple emails with a cover letter and resume. Looking back in my sent messages, I had responded to a total over 35 ads. A week later, I received 5 interview offers which I booked all on the same day.
In the interest of saving time, I’ll just share my favorite interview story with a marketing firm called Polaris…
So the interview with Polaris was kind of last minute. i didn’t have time to prepare the nigt before so I looked them up on my blackberry as I was walking to their office and apparently it’s a scam. They claim to do direct sales and sell product for large companies like Staples. I was literally reading this website as I walked int the building for my interview. The office looked like a rundown 2 bedroom apartment with some thrift store furniture and a off-brand 20″ lcd TV. While I would have normally walked away from a situation like this, I wanted to go through with with the interview just for shits and giggles.
So after I filled out this 3 page personality test, I got called in for the interview with this young guy wearing a cheap suit. I sat down, knowing full well that the place is a joke and began to answer his questions. He seemed all to smug and loosely described his B.S. operation. When I asked him, “what’s the average commission per sale” he stared at me blankly and didn’t respond. I assumed he was confused by the word commission, so I reworded my question and asked, “what’s the average amount of money you guys make per sale?” He defensively responds, “I went to Harvard Business School, I know what commissions are…” While I didn’t doubt this man could figure out the meaning of “commision” from the context of my question, there was no possible way that this scam artist could have ever set foot in HBS.
So the day of interviews was a complete waste of time, and I was beginning to think I was going to spend my entire summer at home.
Then I received an e-mail from Noah of Chiddy Bang telling me they wanted me to design their album cover for their official EP! They gave me a rough idea as to what they wanted, and I came up with this.
Obviously it needed to be tweaked, but when I sent this over to get their approval of the concept, it was shot down. They had a certain vision, and I wasn’t able to deliver what they wanted. While I was extremely bummed, I was completely understanding. It’s part of the job. Sometimes these thing just don’t work out…
But seeing as how I didn’t have a job and I failed on the Chiddy Bang artwork, I was beginning to feel pretty miserable. While things were going great back when school was still in session, life seemed pretty awful back home.
However, a few days later, I get another email response from a Craigslist ad. While I was really looking forward to a summer internship, I was convinced that this would be the last interview I would respond to.
When I realized that the internship position was at IAC’s College Humor, I nearly jumped out of my chair. I have been a HUGE CH fan for years and the opportunity to see the cast in person blew my mind!
I replied enthusiastically, did my interview and apparently they liked what they saw. During my time at CH, I worked my ass off and as a result was asked to drop out of college by Ricky Van Veen himself to work for CH full-time. This was undeniably the high point of my entire summer.
SPRING WILD 2010
May 1, 2010
It’s been a long couple of months leading up to a single night. Spring WILD, one of two concerts at Washington University in St. Louis, was originally scheduled to start at 4:15 P.M. with our main acts, Shwayze and Cold War Kids, performing at 5:45 and 7:30 P.M., but due to poor weather (tornado warnings, heavy showers + thunderstorms) Team31 (the student group responsible for putting on WILD) decided to move the acts up and end the show by 7:00 P.M.
The result? An amazing example of how quickly word can spread around campus. Through Twitter, Facebook, the Team 31 site, e-mail, texts, and phone calls, students were quickly notified of the time change for the night’sline-up.
Expecting the worst I spent 25 minutes before the show waterproofing my gear with gaffers tape and garbage bags only to find out that it wouldn’t start raining till 8:00 P.M. The timing of the event was perfect , and the acts killed their sets!
click here for more pictures
click here for more pictures
For the days leading up to WILD, I thought it would be interesting to work on a non-traditional promotional project to get students excited about the Cold War Kids and Shwayze. I ended up creating a remote controlled robot that played music named Jukebox Junior. It took two days to design, build and paint. Running for 6 hours over the course of 3 days, I believe I went through 40 AA batteries.
MUSIC CREDIT: Cold War Kids- Hang Me Out To Dry
COMMON COMES TO WUSTL
April 12, 2010
Two week ago I had the opportunity to shoot, Common, AKA Lonnie Lynn at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium at WUSTL.
For this assignment I brought my strobes with me as usual. Once I got the “okay” from his publicist to set up lights, I quickly scrambled to set up two Vivitars at 1/16 just to add a little more light to the scene. Once I started taking a few test shots I realized my white balance was completely off and that the strobes were making my shots look boring and flat. It’s been such a long time since I last shot without strobes that I forgot pictures could be taken without flash! Unfortunately, since I was shooting without strobes, I had to bump the ISO to 800. I normally shoot with controlled lighting and keep it at 200, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the D90 was able to keep the noise to a minimum especially in the darker regions where I expected to see some purplish pixilation.
CHIDDY BANG: AIR SWELL ALBUM COVER
March 24, 2010
For the first time in a long time, I approached a client. Yesterday afternoon I contacted Noah A.K.A. Xaphoon Jones of Chiddy Bang to see if they were interested in hiring me to design their album cover for their new mixtape, Air Swell. Sure enough they were, so I set off to work and finally came up with the design featured above.
It’s a very clean and simple concept especially for a mixtape, and I was afraid they wouldn’t like it, but it was getting late and I decided to email it off to Xaphoon to get critiqued.
The next morning Xaphoon contacted me and told me he loved the design. To my surprise I checked out the fan page around 2 A.M. and saw that he had posted the album cover for everyone to see. 
Within 6 hours, 115 people liked the image and 22 people posted comments!
There’s obviously alot of excitement and anticipation building for this release, and I’m glad that I was able to contribute to it.
I sent Xaphoon an email about a really solid promotional idea that I think would take Chiddy Bang to the next level. Hopefully I’ll wake up tomorrow to an e-mail telling me to run with the idea.
If you’ve been living under a rock and have no idea who these guys are, I strongly suggest you visit their myspace page and give them a listen.
They actually just released a track off of Air Swell a few days ago. It’s a remix of Ellie Goulding’s “Under the Sheets.”Click here to hear it now.
myspace: [chiddy bang]
facebook: [chiddy bang]
VISIONLAB WEBSITE LAUNCH
March 23, 2010
Visionlab Studios is a video production company operating out of both Boston and New York City. They brought me on as a graphic consultant to give their brand a complete facelift. Over the past couple of months we have been communicating through Facebook to redesign a new logo, business card and website. The guys over at Visionlab Studios have produced some really solid work over the past couple of months, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for the summer!
check ‘em out: [visionlab studios]
TECH:001 WHAT’S IN THE BAG
March 19, 2010
So this is my first video post, and hopefully the first of many to come. I’ve been meaning to post a “what’s in my bag” video for some time now and finally locked myself in my room, set up a floor lamp, flip cam, moved around some furniture and began shooting. The limitations of the size of my dorm room made positioning the camera a little difficult, but I made do with what I had. Interestingly enough, the black table in the video is actually the top of my mini-fridge. Whatever work, ey?
So why did I shoot a “what’s in the bag” video?
A photographer’s camera bag is essentially a bag of gadgets and gizmos accrued over time that help define and capture a photographer’s style of photography. My current set up is very simple, but at the same time it’s extremely powerful. I created this video to serve as a resource and show aspiring photographers that a basic setup like mine can produce the types of images you see in my portfolio. I currently shoot using a D90, which is a prosumer level dSLR, a single 24-70mm lens and a few strobes. The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t need 10′s of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to take beautiful photographs. If you’re looking to get serious about photography and you don’t really know where to start, my suggestion would be the following: Get your hands mid-level dSLR body used or new (perhaps a d80), a 50mm nikkor 1.8/f lens, two Vivitar 285′s, and a set of Cactus 4-Channel Wireless Flash Triggers. For around a $1000 you can have a comparable camera setup to mine, and start taking pictures with off-camera flashes. Everything else that you saw in the video is just icing on the cake.
MUSIC CREDIT: Al Keita- Interlude