designer. artist. builder. dreamer.
This is a project that I am currently in the process of designing. I was asked to design a custom display that would showcase a pin and keychain collection. The client currently has an Arc Display, shown in this gallery, and wanted the pin/keychain display to compliment the Arc Display. The shadowbox display that currently houses the collection was purchased from a craft store. Check out the gallery below for the original shadowbox, concept drawings, and renderings for this project.
A freelance designer doesn’t always get the same type of work. That’s part of the fun and excitement of being a freelance designer! Over the past 7 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with an athletic apparel manufacturer designing apparel for many different sports teams, primarily rugby. A lot of the work revolves around creating designs, whether complicated or simple, for rugby teams around the country as well as different continents! Some days I’ll be asked to create new team logos from scratch and some days I’ll be asked to digitize a logo from a very crude hand sketch. Other days I’ll be asked to put together team kits featuring items like jerseys, shorts, track suits, socks, polos and other branded items. Sometimes I even develop graphics for game balls, tents, and hats. The work is primarily created using Adobe Illustrator and some Photoshop. Take a look at some past examples!
At the time of this project, Dremel Power Tools, a division of Bosch Power Tools, was achieving great success with the launch of their newest tool, the Multi-Max. This tool performed such operations as cutting, sanding, and scraping by using oscillation, a very fast vibration. It didn’t have spinning or reciprocating movements, so it was impressive to most people. This type of tool was currently on the market and produced by another manufacturer, but its starting price of $300 made it an unreasonable purchase to the average consumer. So Dremel came out with this tool for $99. However, the price tag alone was not going to sell the tool. This was the kind of tool that needed to get into the hands of the consumer, in order for it to sell. I was asked to develop several designs of in-store demonstration merchandisers to be used at The Home Depot. The merchandisers would not only serve as a demo station, but they would also stock the tools and accessories. These merchandisers were going to be used as examples for the sales staff to build right there in the store, so the materials included needed to be available in the store.
Back in 2008, an Apple retail store was looking to organize some items used by their creative team in the store. These items included digital keyboards, microphones, webcams, iPods, etc. (The creative team is responsible for teaching customers how to use Apple’s creative software; GarageBand, Final Cut, etc.; basically any applications dealing with music and video.) I wasn’t given a direction other than the cabinet “needed to have big drawers and it had to be white.” I had a timeline of about 4 days to complete the cabinet.
Every year, Dremel holds a North American Sales Conference near their headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. Sales representatives from all over the country fly in for a week to review new products. They also participate in hands-on building exercises where they get to use current products as well as products of the future. I’ve been fortunate to have been given the opportunity to not only develop the building projects for the exercise, but also build sample projects to be used as inspiration. In all of the projects, I built 3D models of my ideas before construction. I then submitted the 3D renderings for final approval. The images are then used by Dremel’s marketing team and sent out via email to all the sales representatives as a means to generate excitement for the project in the weeks prior to the conference. The goal of the projects is to use a variety of Dremel tools and accessories to build the project. The sales representatives are usually put into teams of 15-20 people and have an elaborate selection of materials that each team can select from in which to build the project. The following gallery includes images of the final project as well as computer renderings that I created. Enjoy!
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always had a fascination for cars, particularly the high-end italian type! I’m an avid Formula One racing fan and die cast car collector. I started collecting in college and it wasn’t long before I had amassed quite the collection for myself. I was running out of room to display them and I came up with the idea to build a special display case to showcase the cars. It wasn’t long before other collectors, enthusiasts, and owners started contacting me about creating displays for their collections. However, it didn’t stop there. Soon I was being asked to create replica items and single cars displays, and other miscellaneous items. Building these custom items is nice change of pace for me after spending most of my time in front of the computer. Enjoy!
I have always enjoyed working with lights, especially LED lighting. Working with LED lighting allows me to take some projects to the next level by incorporating the compact power of an LED light. This is a small sample of LED displays that I have created in the past.
This gallery contains a variety of artwork created by digital software. When I first started out on my artistic career, I never imagined that I would use the computer to create. I was heavily focused on airbrush before I quickly realized that I would have to master the skill quickly in order to make a career out of it. To be honest, I didn’t know how long it would take before I would master this technique and I didn’t have the patience. At the time, everyone else I knew was considering using the computer as an artistic tool, so I figured, why not me? It all started with Painter. I had an instructor that was very good at using the computer, but horrible at teaching the software. He was particularly fond of shortcuts, which at the time, was way over my head. We were using Apple computers in the classroom, and had projects that had to be turned in every week. In order to turn in the assignments on time, we had to spend time in the computer lab outside of the class. There were two problems with this. The first problem was that there were not enough computers for everyone to use. Every time I went to the lab, it was always full and your only option was to wait for someone to leave, which didn’t usually happen for me. The second problem was that the lab was only open certain hours during the day and night. That didn’t correlate with my school or work schedule. So…..I decided to invest in my own Apple computer. For a college student, that was like buying a used car. Even though that was back in 2000, I remember paying almost $5,000 for my first computer. It was one of the best decisions I made in college! I now had freedom to learn this new skill at my own convenience. View the gallery for samples of digital art created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
This is a collection of some of my favorite caricatures and portraits that I’ve done over the years. Before you view the gallery below, I’ll give you a little background on the origin of these drawings. When I was in college, I worked as a bartender. When someone had a birthday, anniversary, or other special event, I was usually nominated to create a unique caricature-style drawing of the individual. Each drawing would highlight specific features about the person or humorous points of their life. Sometimes the humor came from things that they said, things that they did, or things that were obvious to others and not to them. It was always a lot of fun and when I was finished, everyone would sign the poster/card and we would present it to the person.
This gallery contains a variety of artwork created by hand….in the traditional sense, that is. I have always liked experimenting with different mediums and while I haven’t tried them all, I do have a few favorites. These include airbrush, hand-brushed acrylic, and colored pencil. I also don’t stick to flat surfaces, as you’ll see in the gallery below!
