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The Ol’ Swimmin’ Hole: This video was taken by my...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:56:00 -0400

The Ol’ Swimmin’ Hole: This video was taken by my friend Tom Hammond of River International when we visited the Jardim Gramacho dump in Rio de Janeiro in September. With his iPhone, Tom got footage of the “lake” within the favela that surrounds the dump. Children were playing in the beyond polluted water. Hospital waste covers the ground where children contract diseases by walking around with no shoes.

In June, 2013 I return with the nonprofit organization Wellspring Trust to outfit these children with proper footwear.

For more information on the project click here.

To read about my experience read A Day in the Dump here.

FREEDOM!: I developed the storyboards for the opening and...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:55:24 -0500

FREEDOM!: I developed the storyboards for the opening and closing sequences for Tommy Hilfiger’s Freedom TV spot while at Laird+Partners last year. Above are the rejects—cute (and totally out there) aren’t they?

*To see the final TV spot and storyboards click here.

Six Months in the Making: As part of the Liberty redesign we...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:19:54 -0500

Six Months in the Making: As part of the Liberty redesign we created a new welcome video. This video sets an overall visual tone as it greets guests when they enter the church service. The above are behind the scenes photos of the six month filming process. Shot by Andrew Matusik, Jarrod Valliere, color grading and motion graphics by Byron Slaybaugh.

Click here to see the final video.

Say Chees(y): I was commissioned to design the logo for...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:11:00 -0500

Say Chees(y): I was commissioned to design the logo for Fox’s sitcom Raising Hope’s 2013 promotional materials. Working alongside master compositor Andrew Matusik we helped to create an image reminiscent of the classic mall portrait.

Click here to see the final image.

7 Months in the Making: The Liberty Church redesign has been my...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:52:12 -0500

Process: An "L" showing forward progression within the 3 core values

Process: An "L" showing forward progression within the 3 core values

Process: An infinite "L" based on the Penrose triangle

Process: An infinite "L" based on the Penrose triangle

Process: An "L" within the cross

Process: An "L" within the cross

Process: An "L" within the cross

Process: An "L" within the cross

Process: The cross at the center of it all

Process: The cross at the center of it all

7 Months in the Making: The Liberty Church redesign has been my proudest project to date. Commissioned to me in June 2012 I began with the redesign of the mark. The brief was a challenging one: create a logo that represents the organization—and its subsidiaries—within Christian and secular markets. It would be a difficult task to create one logo that must represent so many different entities with no definitive demographic.

Several weeks and hundreds of sketches later I was reminded by mentor, Graham Clifford to: “Keep it simple”. I then reminded myself the criteria for a successful mark: Is it appropriate? Is it simple? Is it memorable? It wouldn’t be able to express everything about the organization, it just needs to represent it.

*The above is some of the process leading to the final mark. Click here to see the entire identity.

Festival Fever: Missed Connections comes home with another...

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:12:00 -0400

Festival Fever: Missed Connections comes home with another Audience Award, this time from the GenArt Film Festival in NYC. Congrats to director Marty Snyder, DP Paul McCarthy, production designer Tania Bijlani and all the talent and crew. It was a whirlwind 17 days that’s really paying off. Two festivals—two awards—there’s some good math in there somewhere, but alas I’m just a humble artist, you figure it out.

Click here for some of the film’s art direction by yours truly.

Showin’ Off: The Cartwheel Initiative is getting quite...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:41:00 -0400

Showin’ Off: The Cartwheel Initiative is getting quite good at hangin’ and hostin’ exhibitions. Our latest was at the Children’s Museum of the Arts in NYC. Along with the children’s work from Northern Sri Lanka there was a screening of the project’s film.

To read more about the exhibition click here.

To see “my kids’” work and the film click here.

Back to the Drawing Board: Developing the brand identity for the...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:32:14 -0400

Back to the Drawing Board: Developing the brand identity for the Cartwheel Initiative posed an interesting design challenge. The proposed inspiration was a print from one of my students in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, the icon of a simplified human figure is so over used I had the difficult task of designing an original interpretation of it. Sketching the anatomy of a cartwheel in motion provided me with the base I needed to design a mark that is simple, relevant and memorable.

To see the final logo, process and guidelines click here.

Sarasota Film Festival: The feature I art directed last summer,...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:54:16 -0400

Sarasota Film Festival: The feature I art directed last summer, Missed Connections came away with the Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the 2012 Sarasota Film Festival. It was exciting to be part of the festival which took place in the town of my beloved alma mater, Ringling College of Art and Design.

Click here to see some of the film’s art direction.

"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:55:43 -0400

““If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.””

- Bert Einstein

My office for the day (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:29:59 -0400

My office for the day (Taken with instagram)

"The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and..."

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:37:52 -0500

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

- Theo Roosevelt

3 Days of Normal: The trailer for a feature I was property...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:53:23 -0500

3 Days of Normal: The trailer for a feature I was property master on last October was just released. (I was also a puppeteer during the shooting scene — and lived to tell about it).

Click here for behind the scenes.

Click here to see some of my work from the film.

Look Mom, I’m on TV: Almost a year in the making, Slavery...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:32:42 -0500

Look Mom, I’m on TV: Almost a year in the making, Slavery by Another Name premieres Monday, February 13th at 9pm on PBS. It received a two minute standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival —I expect you all to do the same at home.

Click here to see some of my art direction from the film.

American Dodgeball Association of Sri Lanka: What started as an...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:48:02 -0500

American Dodgeball Association of Sri Lanka: What started as an innocent after-class game of catch quickly deteriorated to “Let’s get the big guy”. I am still tending to welts on my back courtesy of the children of the Poonekary school in Sri Lanka. MLB recruiters take note.

*Thanks to project manager Karen Ng and her behind-the-scenes photos I am able to share with you my crowning moment as an art therapist—using kids as shields. But hey, they started it.

Click here to see the students’ actual work.

The Making Of: Slavery by Another Name was just released on The...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:41:00 -0500

The Making Of: Slavery by Another Name was just released on The Hollywood Reporter today. After a close look you will see the hands, elbow, back of head and resting on the job art director — me.

*Click here for behind the scenes of the art department.

Muito Demais: Brazilian agency Tatil Design continues to make...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:19:35 -0500

Muito Demais: Brazilian agency Tatil Design continues to make the logo an art form with their design for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. Their thoughtful design truly embodies the “heart” of the games. An inspiration in process, technique experimentation and collaboration.

*Click here to see their design for the Rio 2016 Olympics.

From the Mouths of Babes: See what children of the cARTwheel...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:59:15 -0500

From the Mouths of Babes: See what children of the cARTwheel Initiative have to say about the project on an interview with Young Asia Television at the Colombo exhibition.

Debrief: The cARTwheel Initiative

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:53:57 -0500

As one of eight artists chosen to participate in an art therapy project in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, I taught a curriculum of illustration and graphic design to 60 enthusiastic children who bore witness to a Asia’s longest civil war. This post — in short — was my project.

The Journey Ahead: Sometimes spending up to 8-hours a day on a bus through tank-torn and monsoon-flooded dirt roads we traveled to three remote and often forgotten-about schools. Fighting illness, insects, sleep deprivation and the heat, each of us were dedicated to teaching these students our craft — and they were just as dedicated to learning them.

Supplies and Indoctrination: Each student was given a sketchbook in which their entire course would be documented. I passed on to them what my instructors at Ringling College of Art and Design had instilled in me — that a sketchbook is a visual journal displaying your process and advancement, never tear out a page or erase a sketch.

Illustration: The first of two days was spent developing technical skill in drawing using still life and various media. They learned about proportion, perspective and shading with trompe l’oeil. Using techniques such as contour line drawing they outlined forms in graphite. Their first time using the medium, students sketched, smeared and erased giving dimension to their shapes with vine charcoal. Sketchbooks nearly full and a class full of smiles, the fun day of drawing from life came to a close, but tomorrow would be more challenging.

What is a Logo?: Was the name of the discussion in which we opened class with on day two. Communication was challenging given there is no direct translation in the Tamil language for the term logo, closest available being “adeyallum courie” (literally meaning emblem). With my MacBook Pro I presented popular case studies such as the “arrow” within the FedEx logotype, the evolution and simplification of the WWF panda, and who could neglect to show the controversial Nike Swoosh? However, I needed to reach them on a personal level to truly reveal the power behind a mark. I did this by dissecting several local logos, displaying the icon alone without its typographic counterpart. We reviewed local telecom companies’ Etisalat and Airtel, petroleum companies’ Caltex and Ceypetco and Western but available soft drink giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi. I showed them the symbolism within the Unicef logo that graced their backpacks, the smiley-face of LG and the national pride of Sri Lankan Airlines’ peacock. Their eyes grew large.

Design: Now that they all knew what a logo was and what it should convey they moved on to designing their own. Switching media from sketch-able pencils and charcoal to the less forgiving black marker we began the graphic design portion of the course. I educated them in iconography techniques that would simplify their drawings to their most basic forms. They combined icons of animals, shapes and type (their favorite) to design a mark representational of themselves. Final output of their design — composed in their sketchbooks — would be printed using a linoleum block due to its therapeutic benefits in chiseling away and the gritty nature in which it prints — befitting the history of the region in which these children live. The results were astounding, the children were held in amazement of their final achievement. I encouraged them however to flip through their sketchbooks from day one to final design to contemplate the process as a whole — for in life as in art it’s not about the destination but the journey.

Exhibition: I chose five of my students from each of the three schools to travel 10 hours south to the capitol city of Colombo to be recognized for their work at a gallery exhibition — an amazing opportunity for many who’ve never left the north. Sri Lankan press filled the gallery as US Ambassador Butenis graced us with her presence. Famous Tamil actors and musicians performed popular songs and invited children on stage to dance — gladly accepting of course. As the night came to a close while taking our final group photo I was approached by a young girl who told me she “could never forget me”. And with that my team and I waved goodbye with a solemn stare and a tear on each cheek as “our kids” boarded the bus headed north.

Conclusion: I speak very little Tamil, thankfully art, despite language and cultural barriers is universal. The need to express one’s self resides at the core of all great artists — and children. Picasso said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”. My initial goal was for each child to design a logo representative of themselves — perhaps giving them a sense of personal “identity”. Did they come away with new tools and techniques to further their training? Yes. Did they develop a sense of identity? From where I stood they had developed them already. Children are happy just to create, to lose themselves in a craft with someone who cares enough to share with them their passion (whether they traveled 8,000 miles or not). That is at the very heart of art therapy, isn’t it?

It would be an understatement to say I learned more from them than I could have ever reciprocated. If anyone developed a sense of personal identity it was me.

* To see the children’s progression click here for a sketchbook video and their final designs.
* For deeper insight into this trip view my travel blog here.
* For more information on the cARTwheel Initiative click here.

All good photos by Geoff Green for The cARTwheel Initiative. Bad ones by me.

Sundance Bound: Director Sam Pollard of Slavery by Another Name,...

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:27:41 -0500

Sundance Bound: Director Sam Pollard of Slavery by Another Name, speaks about acceptance into the documentary category of the Sundance Film Festival. I was privileged to have art directed this under production designer Tania Bijlani. Hard work does pay off.