This is one of the few times somebody told me to “go wild” on a project and they were not disappointed.

The project was simply to make the coolest high school graduation invitation I could. Given those directions, I found it safe to abandon my usual rule of trying to figure out what the other person is picturing and just have fun with it.

The letters were generated in Cinema 4d and exported with some cool trick that made it so you cold select just the letters in Photoshop without mucking about with pen tools, wands, and other selection tools.

The actual model in the photo was extracted from one of her senior photos with the good ol’ pen tool and then using some light smudging to take the edge off the extraction borders.

Background elements are mostly brush effects with outer glow effects thrown in for good measure.

Knowing people are invited is the major function

But if that were the only function, then why not 12 point Times New Roman? The other purpose this invitation serves is to give an idea of what Sage is all about– why you would want to meet them at this booth.

The reason is glass. Sage creates an incredibly striking and energy efficient glass that you can control the tint on with the flick of a switch– pretty neat, eh? The invitation works to clue the reader in as to whether they should talk to Sage based on how relevant the product is to them.

If the products are up their alley, they read below for the specifics.

The Olafsen Ethics Symposium

Is an event held up at UND every year with the intention of demonstrating ethics in business. It was my job to put together a promotional poster for the event and the only specifications I had were to get across the speakers name, and key event info (date, purpose, relevance).

The business administration turned me loose after that and what I decided was the most key information was what this speaker had done. Creating 1.6 million glasses just to help people out catches your attention and gives the reader an idea of what the presentation is going to be about.

I made the whole thing pop by using high contrast colors, a sharp font, and a clear hierarchy of information.

Sage Electrochromics opened a new high tech facility 3 times the size of a football field

Tours of the facility are a very common thing but they did not have a map yet so it fell to me, the graphic design/ marketing intern to come up with something.

I started off by digging through the facility blueprints which turned out to be total overkill as they gave details such as where every indivdual cubicle would go and lots of information for plumbing/electrical/ HVAC which would be nice if the goal were to plan some Mission Impossible style heist but less so when you are trying to put something together so visitors know where they are.

Part 2 was to walk the facility personally and sketch it out by hand, this wound up taking 3 trips around the facility in stiff business shoes resulting in my feet looking like they had started a scrap with a belt sander. The other result of my wanderings was a good idea of the layout and spacing of the facility which I then started putting into Illustrator.

The only tricky bit left was to make the whole thing feel up to the standards of an international high tech company. If you look over their other work, you can see they put a high value on simplicity and brightness and I reflected that in my work.

The end result was something everybody was really happy with and is still being used on tours to the best of my knowledge!

Here’s a picture I took of the building:

I know this does not really pertain to the map, but I’m really proud of the photo!

I don’t just do graphics work to pay the bills

Sometimes you get a cool idea and it is just an awesome feeling to be able to make it and sow others… it’s even cooler when your favorite band of all time posts it up on their tumblr link!

Bassnectar is a silly big multinational success so seeing my work go up there was one of the coolest feathers I have ever got to put in my hat!

Normally I’m pretty good at describing the tone I am looking for when I build something but in this case I have listened to the music so much that all I can say is I tried to visualize his music and this is what poppped out.

Tech wise, the piece is really simple. It’s an image created by Jeddaka on DeviantArt which I added a vector mask to with a chunk of the northern lights and enlarged slightly and moved around a little so the outline was clear.