Presentation mockup, national parks theme.
student & Mentor Work
This section contains work by designers I have mentored as well as some of my own early, student work.
Click any image to enlarge.
Mentoring - Anti Bullying poster campaign - School Specialty
As creative services director for School Specialty I hired and mentored young creative professionals in their first real world designer jobs. Going through the process of iterations, asking questions and presenting ideas to other invested stakeholders was all part of learning to deliver a successful product. This first example was an anti-bullying poster campaign, which was part of an anti-bullying program. The designer was challenged to create multiple ideas with different impact feeling. The most interesting of these four example is the fourth one, the idea which is on the bottom right. A terrific design, but in looking like a movie poster feels like it is highlighting the bad behavior and so it may not be the correct solution for the assignment, an important distinction.
Travel Guide Book Covers - Sparknotes
Mentoring a junior designer to create a fully complete book cover, these were two of a series for students who were traveling abroad to study. Part of the solution was choosing colors to represent each location, having unified look across the series while maintaining unique presence for each specific book. These book cover designs won first place in the New York Book Show 2009 for the Travel series category.
Sparknotes Products
Group of products produced at Sparknotes from 2007 through 2009. Although a couple of these were my designs, the majority were produced my junior designers whom I mentored through the process of design ideation, review, presentation to marketing teams, revision and final production.
My Student Work
During my growth years as a designer in New York CIty in the late 90's and early 00's I worked full time as a designer and production artist while taking evening classes at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League of NY. I also joined AIGA, attending lectures and seminars to further my knowledge of contemporary rock star designers and the classic masters. I was lucky enough to take a class at SVA with master graphic designer Milton Glaser, an experience I describe in greater detail in this blog post, Having been a neophyte designer at the time I did not feel like I belonged around real artists, but I did the work and took the critiscisms. I've managed to locate up a few samples of my work from those years.