State Farm typeface design and wordmark system

You've probably seen it around town on signage, or on TV during an NFL game. I was commissioned by Creative Director Gary Alfredson of DDB Chicago to design a new typeface for the State Farm brand identity. The mandate was to create an open, friendly, contemporary and progressive look. Shown along with the main wordmark are other examples of how the brand extends to other parts of the company's services. Feedback on the design since being in the field is that it has helped infuse new life into the venerable company also exemplified in their new TV commercials.

Typeface design is more about structure, subtleties and letter combinations than the effects and impact of my other typographic work - equally satisfying when developed successfully with measurable results for the client.

The series shown together

I've posted these individually over the past 3 years, but I thought it would be interesting to show the series together. Concepting and detailing these image is a labor of love to be sure. The small size doesn't do them justice though - these images work best at large poster size

New York Times

Art Director Minh Uong at the New York Times commissioned me to create a cover for the Sunday Education Life section. The visual challenge was to come up with a solution which presented the university genre, but emphasized the "you" part of "U" since the feature was a series of essays written by students about their experiences in college.

Bud Light Bowl 2011

I was commissioned by the Shaw Company in St. Louis to design the logo for the Bud Light Bowl, a Budweiser promotional event held in Texas around the time of the Super Bowl. It was great fun working with Greg Litwicki at Shaw, who despite having an in depth client review process and legal scrutiny (the nature of the beast with these logos), gave me much creative leeway in the development process with pretty cool results. Shown below the final logo are several of the preliminary designs

Website design experiment

http://www.9surf.com/typographics/

This is my take on an anti digital age website for 9 Surf (if there ever was such a thing!). My admiration for paper and classical design is front and center. Unfortunately, my limited ability to code a website is front and center, too. But that's not my thing - there are many good coders out there. My intrigue is creating a site with a particular look, then building is so it functions well with a minimum of technology. After all, it browses fine on all platforms including mobile.

Alberta Venture magazine

Art Director Kim Larson contacted me to design the cover which claims that if you buy this issue, it will be the best investment you'll ever make. The design brief: give it a little attitude and flare without being audacious.

MultiChannel Merchant

These two images are from a recent cover design for MultiChannel Merchant magazine. The first is the tight design build in black and white. I work this way first because I don't want to be influenced by color in the early stages. If the design works in b&w, it will work that much better in color. This also serves as the proof stage to check size, proportions, spelling, etc., before going to final. The second image shows the fully rendered piece with color, texture, dimension, shading etc.

Happy Holidays...

..and a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Savor Dining Club

As someone who loves the art of food and dining, I was right at home designing the brand to launch and market the Savor Dining Club on the New Jersey shore. It was a top to bottom effort, from brand ID to marketing materials, advertising and website. SDC offered restaurants an avenue of exclusive marketing while diners received percentage discounts at the participating restaurants. Despite the fact that there was no marketing program in the area with this kind of sophisticated and integrated offering and tremendous cost savings, it wasn't enough to weather the bad economy, and SDC had to close it's doors as the industry took a heavy hit.

Killer VARS

A cover illustration for a special issue of Accounting Technology magazine, a Source Media publication

Paperless

An image commissioned for a magazine feature about banks and financial institutions going paperless. Shown along with the final piece is the initial rough concept sketch.

IVD (In Vitro Diagnostics) Technology Magazine, a UBM/Canon publication, commissioned me for a distinctive anniversary logo for their 15th year of publication. I wanted to capture the technology in a contemporary, warm and celebratory way without alluding directly to specific science.

Wise Crunch Crew

Source Communications commissioned me to do a logo for their client Wise for a cross promotion of Wise products and the New York Jets football team. Because of the requirements of the various reproduction sizes (including a 60-foot display), the logo had to be created in vector (top image). The bottom image represents a test version of the logo in true 3D

Baylor University

This image was created for Baylor University. Their publication featured a story about Extended Learning Groups (ELGs) where students of diverse backgrounds and studies live and study together in groups. Studies have found that these students learn and assimilate more while enjoying a fuller college experience.

National Engineer's Week

I've done several posters for Engineer's Week with Hugh Moore of Hugh Moore & Associates. This is the first one I did for Girl's Day, a special event during Engineer's Week where the variety of engineering careers are presented to girls who are considering college studies. The texture of the images makes up the girl in the poster while presenting a visual reference to every kind of engineering. This sort of image works great large. That's the downside of a computer monitor.