The Sketchbook Project by Art House Co-op

While I was working at SBux, some studio mates and I contributed to the Sketchbook Project created and organized by the Art House Co-op. All sketchbooks were placed in the Brooklyn Art Library. Here is my submission. Please keep in mind that mine was a little rushed — it wasn't my finest sketchbook. Also, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to share with the rest of the world, since I had to surrender it to the Brooklyn Art Library once I was finished. The sketchbooks are archived into their system — you can check them out like other books.

My new site on Cargo Collective

For the past 2 weeks I have been working on a new Tape site, hosted by Cargo Collective, feel free to check it out here. Cargo is a web publishing creative culture network meant for creative professionals — specifically artists, designers and filmmakers.

Bonnie Raitt CD for Starbucks

This past spring I designed a CD for Bonnie Raitt. My initial focus was to find photos of Bonnie that weren't common (since we didn't have the budget for a photo shoot), nor used in any of her other previous albums. Her label, Capitol Records sent tons of photos and assorted contact sheets for me to review. After a long and arduous day, I found some amazing black and white photos from the 70s, (that we eventually used on the interior with the liner notes) but the cover photo was the one that was obsessed over the most by Bonnie and our internal music client at Starbucks. Bonnie ended up choosing the cover photo, shown above, which shows her iconic red hair that obviously wouldn't pop on any black and white photo. Bonnie was actively involved in the process, and was great to work with!

There are a few cover ALTs on my Cargo site.

The disc was a 16-song collection of Bonnie's music as part of their Opus Collection series. This limited-run CD was only available at Starbucks stores for the month of April (US only).

Theo Chocolate: T-shirt contest

I just entered into a T-Shirt contest for Theo Chocolate during a recent "pocket of time" in between clients. The winner receives a year's supply of chocolate (Theo equates that to 144 chocolate bars in 4 shipments of 36). The winner will be announced on June 6th, apparently. Here are some designs/alts that I didn't submit.

Branding: My favorite part of the process

I must say, my favorite part of a Branding Process is the "Mood Board" stage. Mood boards communicate the personality and tone of the company by exploring design, color palette, typography and photography (content, style, focus and color). I usually like to create 2/3 directions (budget pending) — these help direct (among others) the Brand's essence, communication and touch points. Here are some I have created.

Iconography & Information Graphics

I recently had a request for Icon Design and Information Graphics. As such, I needed to show a potential client that I have created these types of visual systems. These examples are up on my Flickr site.

Goodbye Starbucks Creative Studio...

This month I have decided to leave the Starbucks Creative Studio, located within the 2 million square foot Starbucks HQ. The people and culture were fantastic and I have fond memories from just a year of exposure to it.

One massive project I was apart of was the 40th Anniversary of the company. As such, there were hundreds of projects to deliver upon. Here are some photos showing several of the pieces my team and I created and obsessed over. There are many others that I will share once I can properly share them.