I just completed a new project with my good friend Steven Hasegawa. We had been talking about collaborating on something for a while and we wanted to create something that neither of us had done before (at least not to this extent). Eventually we settled on creating a 360º panorama of an action-movie car chase.

Click on the image above to view the final image, or go to www.thechasepano.com.

We’ve also created a BTS video showing our experience creating this project. Click the video icon on www.thechasepano.com or watch it on vimeo.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Josef Müller Brockmann’s work, especially his concert posters. Over the past few years I’ve also been experimenting with screen printing — mostly t-shirts that in some way involve graphic design geekery. So, it was only a matter of time before I decided to pay some homage to JMB with some screen printed t-shirts. On Sunday my friend Steven and I did a small run of shirts inspired by Joseph Müller Brockmann’s Beethoven concert poster. We printed some black on white (in keeping with JMB’s original colors).  But we both thought that white screen printed t-shirts look cheap, so we printed on grey too, which we thought looked awesome.

A few behind-the-scenes shots:

This is a motion graphics kinetic typography & animation video that I created for Compendium Inc. to promote their new “5 Book” they just released. The book focuses on what you can accomplish in 5 years and serves as an inspirational piece for anyone wondering what the next five years of their lives might have in store for them. I worked closely with both Steve Potter (the book’s designer) as well as Dan Zadra (the book’s author) to pair the overall look and feel of the video with the already existing look and feel of the book. Working with Compendium Inc. was a great experience. They’ve got a lot of great things going on over there, check them out.

Side note: my favorite part is the “go where you’ve never been” and “get involved — get inspired” scenes.

Selected stills from the video:

This is a series of posters I designed recently to help raise awareness about violence and injustices being committed in developing countries around the world. At first glance, each poser appears to be splattered with blood, with the number of people who have been killed in a particular conflict listed at the bottom of the poster. However, when you inspect them more closely, you’ll see that each “blood splatter” actually forms the shape of the country that poster is devoted to. There are three posters, one for Burma (Myanmar), Sudan, and The Congo. The statistic of  those who have died in each conflict is made up the words from Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the wind,” which asks how long atrocities like this must continue.

Details from the “Save Burma” poster:

This is an ad campaign I worked on for Cal Poly’s campus dining program. They came out with a new mobile food service called “curbside grill” and this campaign was designed to be placed all around campus to promote the new service. Greg Smith and I were the photographers for the project, and we worked with designers Sara Hamling, Andrew Santos-Johnson, and Adam Wirdak.

Below are some large single images, as well as a one of the final ads from the campaign.

One of the final design applications for the campaign:

There is a tavern in Virginia’s Williamsburg that serves some of the best root beer (and diet root beer) I have ever tasted. But, while their product is amazing, their packaging is not. As it turns out, there is another tavern in town, King’s Arm Tavern, that serves ginger ale and lemonade. After doing much research into the background of the two taverns, the beverages, and Williamsburg in general, I came up with this proposed redesign.

The new packaging draws on many elements that would have been found in the few printed newspapers in the area at the time, as well as commonly known illustrations and illustration styles (mainly woodcuts). All the type is set in Caslon (the most commonly printed typeface of the colonial era) and has a bit of a distressed look to simulate the imperfections of the wooden presses that were used in colonial times.

Interestingly, the two taverns actually existed in colonial times and served very different customers with very different ideologies. Chowning’s Tavern was a very pro-revolution tavern, while King’s Arms Tavern (unsurprisingly, given the name) was a pro-British tavern. Therefore, in my redesign, the pro-British King’s Arms Tavern features a British seal, while the pro-revolution Chowning’s Tavern features the “unite or die” illustration showing the 13 colonies as a snake cut into pieces.

In order to give the bottles a little more of a historical, and colonial feel, they were crafted from short stubby bottles (the same shape and size as Red Stripe) and were sandblasted to give them a rougher, less perfect look (which would be more characteristic of glass produced in Colonial Williamsburg).

Below are flat versions of the 4 labels.

This is a recent series of portraits I have begun as a personal project. I’ve named it… The Incredibly Awkward Portrait series. It started out as a test I did to experiment with some new lighting styles, but soon evolved into an ongoing series of portraits. It’s been a fun challenge finding different ways to get these expressions out of people. The majority of the work in this series is tied into the lighting (I forget exactly now, but there are upwards of 7 lights in these shots), with actually a somewhat minimal amount of post work. Check back later, as I am planning on doing another post detailing the lighting and post-production work on these images.

Detail of the 3 images from above:

Recently, I’ve started a side project called 360 Panographic. For a while now, I have been experimenting with shooting 360×180º spherical panoramas. I felt that they were so different from my regular photography work, that they really deserved their own home and their own branding. So, I built 360 Panographic, my business that is entirely devoted to shooting and showcasing 360º VR panoramas (or spherical panoramas, QTVRs, virtual tours, or any other number of names they are known by). Above is the new logo I designed for it and below is a screenshot of the new website design. Check out 360panographic.com — I plan to keep it updated often with 360s I’ve shot all over California.

Recent product shot of Patrón Silver tequila. ‘Nuff said.

I worked closely with the designers and writers at Compendium Inc. to produce another kinetic typography based motion video to promote their new book, “1″. This book is part of the same series as the “5 Book” video I worked on a little while ago.

The one book is all about finding your purpose and making a difference (tagline: how many people does it take to make a difference). It’s a great book — well written and well designed. Congratulations to Compendium Inc. on another job well done. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue making great pieces like this with them in the future.

Screenshots:

A special edition of the “1 Book” was also sold in select Starbucks stores over the holidays, with its own custom color scheme and design. We produced a second, shorter version of the video matching these colors that was played as part of a loop on the video screens in Starbucks stores.

Stills from the special edition Starbucks treatment: