During my time as Creative Director at IdeaBase, I was able help guide several projects from concept to delivery for Kent State University that I’m really proud to have been a part of.

This included the Athletic Program for the Athletics Department, campus wide wellness initiative for the department of Human Resources, The Kent Stands Up! campaign against sexual assault for campus organization, SRRVS, L’aventurra Italiana: The minimalists guide to Florence (and beyond) for the College of Communication and Information, “ Allison, the activist” exhibit for the May 4th Memorial Center, collateral for the School of Public Health, and the school of fashion hype video for their IFFTI conference. These projects all show my ability to work within specific branding elements of the Kent brand, while implementing novel solutions.

Non-University clients

I Also had some great opportunities to work with non University clients, such as with the Textile Art Alliance’s book, Fiber Focus book, design collateral for Midwest Precision, Burton D. Morgan and more…

I served as Marketing Communication Specialist Lead for the College of Business & Economics. In this role, I was able to work on many really rewarding projects, Including the 2022 Dean’s Report. I am especially proud of the report, as I was responsible for gathering or creating much of the content and the design layouts. The turnaround was tight, but I am really proud of what we were able to achieve. I also had a hand in leading our social media overhaul as well as our website re-design in which I was able to provide much of the photography and UX of the new site.

When tasked with finding an organization that was in need of a rebrand. I chose the cannabis advocate group, The Ohio Rights Group.

Its about more than legal weed. We are on the verge of a sustainable industrial revolution, with the continued evolution of our knowledge in the use of the cannabis plant. It was important to me to recognize a burgeoning industry early on in my design education, as I realized that while this plant is making our lives better, there would be a need for visual communicators to help end the stigma that many of us have had ingrained in us since childhood.

The spirit of this project was to combat long accepted iconography, by stepping away from the well known symbol of counter culture, the pot leaf, and instead approach from the viewpoint of wellness. This meant a clean and sensitive approach, to help the audience understand they aren’t breaking the rules, they are doing not only what feels good, but what helps the body and mind by way of naturally occurring medicinal properties. Instead of the pot leaf, I chose the iconic symbol of potential, the building block of life and growth, the seed.

Included in the rebrand was a website, advertisements and print collateral.

Afro Nouveau

Art Nouveau, an art movement popularized by painters like Alphonse Mucha and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, is a restrained, yet powerful style has always been a favorite of mine. The subject matter usually involved the beautiful framing of a leisurely European woman, with decorative flowers and peaceful environments. I wanted to take this movement I admired and inject a new energy, new perspective…I wanted to turn it on its ear, blow it apart, and put it all back together again. Then it came to me… beauty comes in many forms…and it is not always shy or genteel. Demure European woman certainly have a prominent place in our art history, but if your’re really paying attention, beauty comes at us in many forms…we find and admire it in the bold, the strong and the independent. Powerful and heroic women of color particularly of the 60’s and 70’s eras immediately jumped out to me… instead of the long flowing hair Art Nouveau is known for, we would celebrate the Afro instead, a natural hairstyle of people of color, iconic of the 60’s and 70’s. Afro-Nouveau was born soon after; the kinky haired love child of Art Nouveau and iconic heroines of color. A way to celebrate both allure and strength, Afro Nouveau is a collection to remind us that badass is beautiful too.

MP Biomedicals is an international Biomedical company that I worked with for about 2 years. I had many opportunities to grow my skillset. My responsibilities included but were not limited to print collateral, e-blasts, gif’s and company headshots to photo-manipulation, web assets, product packaging and illustrating the company calendar. During my time at MP Bio, we were able to reach annual sales goals that hadn’t been achieved in years.

Admittedly, I am a Hunter S. Thompson fanboy. His intelligence, his quirks, his fearless search for the “edge” has always spoken to me. The adventurous nature, the button pressing, the outside the box approach, is something that inspires my design and illustration every time I make something… so when I had the chance to create a book based on a person I admire, I jumped at the chance to tell the good Dr’s story.

This book was truly a labor of love. It was my first foray into Perfect-binding, constructing a hard cover book using book board, it might have even been my first trip to Jo-Anne fabrics to procure the canvas for the cover. It was definitely my first time using a laser cutter, and its something I incorporated into future projects, because those things are just so badass. I’m really proud of how this project turned out. Thompson was such a colorful personality, and I did my best to let that shine through the book. One of my favorite parts are the fold out pages which highlight Ralph Steadman’s iconic scratchy art style and give a larger canvas to show off his work. The copy from this book are all from interviews from people who knew him that I pieced together from different books I read about him, so it not only looks fun, I feel it tells a pretty interesting story of his life as well.

Coming Soon!

Music has been a passion of mine for a long time. In many ways, music helped me find my way to design! My thesis research centered around how design and illustration could enhance musical experiences. To that end, I created a virtual band, which visually communicated not through images of band members in a field staring off at random directions, but rather through stories and art. Flatts Fields is the culmination of that project! The fly on the wall of our imaginations.

www.flattsfields.com

This was a project that focused on using Type as Imagery. The topic came about when we were asked to identify our favorite event of the previous summer, mine was when my partner and I made it official under the stars of Joshua Tree, California.

For part of my Graduate Assistantship with the department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University, I had the opportunity to not only design the print collateral for visiting artists, but I was also able to assist Idris Kabir Sayed with curating the Uumbaji Gallery.

My experience working at the gallery really frames how I approach creating design collateral involving art. It boils down to… when you have amazing images…get out of the way! organize the information, but the let the work speak for itself.

This project involved creating a cover for the iconic New Yorker magazine. We were allowed to create our own concept and topic, however we had to keep in mind the history of the magazine and its penchant for approaching difficult topics with humor.

I don’t eat eggs. I’ve found the most accurate way to describe why as follows, “They make me inwardly shudder”…they’ve just always just grossed me out… so the irony is not lost on me when I had to spend plenty of time observing eggs frying, to try and understand how render a food I never go near! The idea came to me thinking about the old depiction of it being so hot outside that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Many scientist believe if we don’t take care of our planet, we could end up with temperatures hot enough to fry one of these gross things…

This was a project close to my heart. The original assignment was to design and illustrate a classic children’s book cover. It was one of my first forays into digital painting. When I started getting my portfolio together, I noticed a few things… I loved the design and the idea, but I had learned so much since I originally worked on it, so I thought it would be fun to take another crack at it. I also saw it as an opportunity re-think the character of Alice with a more culturally ambiguous appearance, because little girls of all shades should be able to see themselves in fairy tales. I used my mom’s skin tone as my reference, so that was really fun.

“ So while today’s grads may be part of the most educated generation in history, they are also the most indebted twenty-somethings the world has ever seen.”

This project was for an editorial illustration concerning a social cause. I chose the Student Loan Debt Crisis, as it is definitely something that has affected my parents generation, as well as my own.

This was a fun project! I was charged with re-creating characters from the tale Robin Hood, using animals. I was heavily pushed away from the classic depictions of fox’s, so I chose to depict my Hood characters through a world of dog characters. I definitely enjoy character design, creating inhabiters of the worlds we create… and I’d like to do a lot more of it!

Robin Hood

I took inspiration here from the Airedale Terrier. Its furry face made me think of the Shakespearean styled facial hair embodied in classic depictions of the character played out on screen. A good sized athletic dog, not overwhelming physically, but intelligent, more agile than powerful. Perfect for a dashing canine protagonist.

Maid Marian

I chose to model Marian after the Husky. I wanted to stay loyal to some of the more modern depictions of Marian, as a fierce warrior in her own right. Ive always thought the Husky had a magical quality to them. There’s something about those unique eyes, that could in one scene ensnare a masked hero and in another thread the needle of a bullseye shot!

Prince John

To personify the canine spirit of the villainous Prince John, I knew I had to go with a breed of dog who’s bark was much larger than its bite, yet somehow manages to order much larger creatures around according to its yippy whim. The Pomeranian embodied that attitude and its physical characteristics lent themselves to being made to appear regal…A little bling never hurts!

Little John

Little, the not so little friend of Robin Hood, in my opinion could not have been depicted as any other dog but the St Bernard/Malmute. A gentle giant, they are some of the largest of breeds, yet known for their peaceful demeanor, and if that wasn’t enough, they were bred for rescuing people from the snow. The challenge was to make him a big sweetheart, but with the brawn and might to throw down in a fight. Any guy who has a tree for a club, you want on your side.

The Sheriff of Nottingham

My Grandmother once had a massive Doberman named “Judge”. One day, while visiting, I was playing with him in the yard with and I grabbed his bone and tossed it to him. I was about 6 or 7 years old, and I didn’t exactly speak dog, but I knew from hearing Judge’s growl, that I probably shouldn’t have touched Judge’s bone and that it was time to book it out of there! I sprinted…which was probably a mistake. He caught me just as I entered the rear porch door to the waiting arms of my relatives, as they must have heard my shrieks as I lived my own version of the big chase scene from the movie, The Sandlot. Only in this version, the boy gets caught…right on the left butt cheek. I have the scar to prove it. Do I have to explain anymore why the Sheriff of Nottingham is a Doberman?