My Design

My friend Molly and I had a different beginning to our friendship than anyone I've ever known. We met in Richmond, VA for a two-week copy editing seminar that was part of my summer internship back during my junior year of college. Molly lived in St. Petersburg, FL, and knew that someone (out of the 16 of us) in the seminar was going to St. Pete for their internship. When she learned it was me, she glommed onto me in hopes that I would drive her back to Florida when I left. Concerned that her intentions were just about getting a free ride home and possibly killing me and leaving me for dead on a roadside in Georgia or some shit, it was a weird start to a friendship that has happily been going on for almost 13 years.

When she came to DC in October for some work training, we got to have dinner and catch up after not seeing each other in several years. During all the chatter I asked her what date her wedding was because I couldn't remember her telling me previously. "Funny you should ask," she said. "We just decided last week to not wait and it's going to be in about 7 weeks." That was OK by me, until she started mildly panicking because with the nuptials about two months away, very little had been done to plan the grand affair.

Being the (foolish) nice guy that I am, I offered to help with with the wedding invitations since I could tell she hadn't given it any thought and she was going to end up paying out the wazzoo because of the tight deadlines she was under. We talked briefly and then over the course of about a week got design comps for her to choose among and started printing. It was pretty crazy to work with her in such a short time frame, but I have to give her and John (the lucky guy) kudos for focusing in and knowing exactly what they wanted and how they wanted things to look, which made the process move smoothly. They wanted to emphasize Florida, orange groves and didn't want straight photos. They wanted the artwork to be more of a painted look, so that was a nice challenge to find the proper photography that leant itself to some creative photoshopping.


In the end I was really pleased with how everything turned out considering how we had to get it all done and printed and mailed in 11 days. And considering how we hadn't spent a lot of time talking to each other over the years and had a lot of catching up to do, it was very brave of Molly and John to put their trust in me to do right by them, and I don't underestimate that at all. So I thank them for believing in me and after the compliments I got from her family and friends at the wedding, I couldn't be happier with the end products. Congrats, Molly and John.

Friday Funnies

This is nothing new, but I'm a big Apple fan. And when someone shared with me this video talking about how Microsoft would have completely screwed up the iPod marketing, I had to share. This is just a microcosm of what it's also like to be a graphic designer. We often make beauty and the end product sometimes rarely resembles what we had initially envisioned.

My Design

One of the great joys of being a mildly competent graphic designer is that you occasionally get to do something special for friends and family. Thus is the case when my good friend Leigh told me that she's getting married.

As I've often done with others, I offered to do the design and printing for their invitation suite as a means for the married couples to get a unique and custom-designed set of pieces, as well as save a little money on the printing and supplies cost. It adds a lovely touch of personality and homemade goodness that takes advantage of the single discernible skill I possess.

So Leigh, David and myself spent several weeks figuring testing and printing and testing ideas before coming to rest on a bunch of materials, many of which are shown below. We settled on a clean look that blended some modern elements with traditional accents. Sounds like I'm describing a bottle of wine, or some bed sheets on QVC. Your call. It helps that Leigh took a picture of them for me since I was an idiot who just printed everything and turned it over to them without hanging on to any copies for my own safe keeping.


It was an honor to put this together and be, even if small, a part of their wonderful day in September. Maybe this will lead to more wedding-related work, or perhaps this will turn people off to the idea of me offering my services to them. Nonetheless it was a joy and privilege. Thanks, Leigh and David.

My Design

I've been trying to learn Adobe Illustrator in a more advanced way. I'm very comfortable with InDesign and Photoshop, but my skills with Illustrator are not bad but not where I'd like them to be, especially in the sense of being able to create things from scratch. I've been working on some tutorials by several websites, and this project is the result of one of them. It's just a basic mosaic, but with some added in textures to give it a stained glass look. Again, not trying to win awards here, nor is it the most complex design, but it's just a small project that definitely taught me a few new things, which is always a satisfying feeling. Click to biggie-size and get a crisper look at it.

My Design

When I first created this blog, it was mainly centered around the fact that my life is filled with pixels (hence the title, for anyone not keeping up). I've posted about my photography and also my video game column, but that does exclude the one other part of my life that I actually get paid for, which is my design work. It's still using pixels, so it counts!

I'm going to try and bring that element of my life into this blog as well, sharing with the eight of you who actually pay attention to me some of the work that I have either done in the past that I am particularly proud of, or recent stuff that I have done. Just giving you all a well-rounded look at me, which is I know what you clamor for.



First up is a report I recently finished for my organization, CFED. For the past year I have been working with my colleagues on a series of reports detailing the financial security of 11 cities across the country. It's amazing work, very detailed in its focus on what areas a city is succeeding (and, sometimes, failing) at when it comes to the economic security of its residents. We've been finding that municipalities are more and more becoming the epicenter for economic solutions for low- and middle-income residents, and so in doing this work we are trying to highlight some of the best and brightest innovations that are succeeding there and can be replicated in other cities.

After we finished with the individual city reports (which you can find here), we combined a lot of that research and made one huge report out of it all. It's not going to win any design awards I know, but it was a labor of love and I'm glad to see it finally come to publication. So check it out if you wish (or if you know someone who cares about the economic status of NYC, Newark, Savannah, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, San Antonio, Miami, Hawaii or Providence. It's good stuff.