The pure excitment of participating with the whole team as we came together to create a super edgy and deeply psychological campaign, and going through the creative proccess, was a reminder of why I love the design industry and why it pays off to spend countless hours in front of a drawing table and computer to experiment with many art mediumns.

While the project was stressful on everyone, and the team from Europe even survived a close-call with a hotel burning down around them, and the creativity and great attitudes stayed elevated.

I'd absolutely love to show off the work I got to do, but the campaign is not yet public for a few months. However; I can show my depiction of the creative jokes and offbeat humor that comes during the times of stress, late hours and constant great attitudes.

Project Humor at mid-day

Project Humor at mid-night

I've always been a fan of Deco, with its bold lines, rules of simplicity mixed with chaos and of course the heavy shadows cast by gradient noise. There is so much going on in the old Deco drawings but the messages are so clear. 

As a creatve brainstorming session for a large series of Deco design I'm about to dive in to, purely to add to my digital library for future projects, I thought I'd post some of the proccess.

INSPIRATION

Initial Cinema 4D Layout

Initial Import to Photoshop/ add some color

Add Depth

Add Some Background and Brush Effects

AND I HAVE A LOT MORE TO GO WITH THIS........

 At the time I was a file clerk in Seattle, moonlighting as a graffiti artist and spending my hard earned cash on brushes, canvas, and still-life sessions at a seattle art gallery. I visited the San Francisco office in 1998 at the request of the MD at the time.

I spent a week hanging around watching some amazing digital artists making some amazing cutting edge digital design, and they were actually having fun. The MD of the office would drop by the office at 11pm and have kick people out of the office so they could get some sleep. These designers were my new found heros.

I met with the Art Director at the office and picked her brain on how to get in to this. She recommended I go to art school, study my ass off to learn HTML, Java, macromedia products, etc, and to look at this new venture as a lifestyle, not a job. 

3 years later, I found myself hanging arounf the razorfish office again, with these skillsets the AD had recommended to me. As I was getting ready for a sweet internship job... the dot-bomb dropped. There was a mass-exodus from Silicon Alley and the opportunity was shut down. I found myself immigrating to China to work with  software company instead...

I've always followed Razorfish from the days of i-cube/ Plastic and Spray to the SBI/ Avenue A and Microsoft handoffs. It's been an amazing brand to watch grow over so many platforms.

I certainlty look forward to this meeting even if nothing comes of it. Pretty rad designers.

(yes, old logo)

Here are some basic rules I read before a project to get me thinking:

TOUCH SCREEN INTERFACE DESIGN THEMES:

OPPOSITES/ MOVEMENT/DIFFERENCES
- HOT TO COLD
- VOLUME (AREA/SOUND/CAPACITY-PEOPLE)
- DARK TO BRIGHT
- TUNE A FREQUENCY
- LEFT-RIGHT-UP-DOWN
- LARGE TO SMALL
- OPEN/ CLOSE
- FORWARD/REVERSE
- FRONT TO BACK/SPIN
-FOREGROUND/MID-GROUND/BACKGROUND
- ADD/ SUBTRACT

SHAPES/TEXTURES/FADES
- SQUARE
- CIRCLE
- TRIANGLE
- RECTANGLE
- ROUNDED CORNERS
- OUTTER GLOW

ESSENTIAL BUTTONS
- BACK/ FORWARD
- REFRESH
- HOME
- UTILITIES

SIZES
APP MODE/ 320px X 460px
WEB MODE/ 320px X 356px
BUTTONS/ 44px X 44px
(designing for the 320 x 480px screen size and then sizing up to 640 x 960px is the better option)

Preparing Files for the Developer
Before handing your files over to a developer, it’s important to understand their capabilities with regard to slicing and dicing your file. If your developer is experienced in slicing and exporting, it can be a huge time saver to offload that task. Personally, I prefer to cut up all of my files to ensure all images are sliced out properly.
When saving out your final images, try using intuitive file naming conventions that will make locating and referencing the correct image files easier for your developer. Here are some example prefixes and suffixes I use:
    •    “btn-” for all button images
    •    “tab-” for all tab bar images
    •    “bkg-” for all background images
    •    “-up” for in-active state buttons
    •    “-down” for active state buttons
    •    “-hover” for hover state buttons
    •    “@2x” this is a standard suffix required for all retina display graphics
Another tool I use to communicate with developers is a .pdf file that includes all screens plus notes regarding the design. I define the typefaces, sizes, line spacing and all other styling so there is an easy reference that the developer can use without having to open Photoshop. Yet another resource I provide, especially when I’m working with off-site developers, is a screencast (ScreenFlow and iShowU are my favorites) of the app, walking them through every aspect of the design. This is especially helpful if the app contains animations and/or transitions that are better illustrated in a video.

Basics of touch screen interactions to think about/

I've followed the success of the brand for quite a few years as I knew it was new, and I thought it had a great start right out of the blocks in retail, and I watched the brand keep a great consistency to it's branding and marketing efforts year after year. When I worked at TSL Jewelry, I kept files of tear sheets on all of the jewelery brands to keep track of thier marketing efforts, and I would constantly evaluate new campaigns with the old to watch the building or breaking of a brand. Carat* kept standing out to me as sleek and sophisticated and lots of open avenues of opportunity to grow with creative marketing campaigns.

Here's to hoping that I get a collaborate on some future projects with them!

The bright side of these, is that a client was visiting the studio, and now wants these as wrapping paper... Sweeeeet!

I chose a Rives bright white "Rives Design", 350 gsm recyccled paper for this.... it's with no gloss or UV overlays. Just raw with the texured paper.

So this is what we decided on in the end. I'm happy, he's happy.

FRONT

BACK

The folks over at Thirsty Horse gave me this brief: The bottles need to tell a story of being somewhere tropical, but upscale and far away. One daytime shot and one evening shot/ 70s to 80s/ not too sharp. Exotic.

So, without the use of the usual large studio tricks in LA or the depths of Hong Kong's Chai Wan photo studio mecca, I managed to pull this off on the balcony of the studio.

It was a marvel of engineering how I managed to light the wine bottles with 2 mini-sunbounces, 2 Profoto 1200w compacts, and a couple black cards. It worked well and the client is happy.