Applications Used: 
Role: Web Layout | Branding Strategy | Creative Direction

The Challenge

The hurdle was making a “young” candidate come of as fresh and modern without alienating the older voting majority in the city of Detroit. Shani Penn’s message of “Ready To Lead” had to be visually conveyed with vibrant confident colors and personal images her that displayed her confidence and un-matched experience with the voting public.

The Process

Going the stock image route to save on cost, I pulled close to 100 images that were in the ballpark of the design model. Scanning thru with the client we got it down to a pool of 15 that I could use in the designed pieces. The vibrant colors were the base of the design, along with the “curved like” gradients set a positive visual attraction to coordinate the brochure and folder that could be a standard that could possibly grow to many different marketing pieces.

Final Product

America Works was very satisfied with the folder brochure combo. The new look allowed them to showcase their product with a fresher approach that expands their reach to a younger more competitve crowd.

Applications Used: 
Role: Branding Strategy | Creative Direction | Marketing Materials Design | Identity Design

The Challenge

The hurdle was making a “young” candidate come of as fresh and modern without alienating the older voting majority in the city of Detroit. Shani Penn’s message of “Ready To Lead” had to be visually conveyed with vibrant confident colors and personal images her that displayed her confidence and un-matched experience with the voting public.

The Process

Going the stock image route to save on cost, I pulled close to 100 images that were in the ballpark of the design model. Scanning thru with the client we got it down to a pool of 15 that I could use in the designed pieces. The vibrant colors were the base of the design, along with the “curved like” gradients set a positive visual attraction to coordinate the brochure and folder that could be a standard that could possibly grow to many different marketing pieces.

Final Product

America Works was very satisfied with the folder brochure combo. The new look allowed them to showcase their product with a fresher approach that expands their reach to a younger more competitve crowd.

Applications Used: 
Role: Branding Strategy | Creative Direction | Marketing Materials Design | Identity Design

The Challenge

The hurdle was making a “young” candidate come of as fresh and modern without alienating the older voting majority in the city of Detroit. Shani Penn’s message of “Ready To Lead” had to be visually conveyed with vibrant confident colors and personal images her that displayed her confidence and un-matched experience with the voting public.

The Process

Going the stock image route to save on cost, I pulled close to 100 images that were in the ballpark of the design model. Scanning thru with the client we got it down to a pool of 15 that I could use in the designed pieces. The vibrant colors were the base of the design, along with the “curved like” gradients set a positive visual attraction to coordinate the brochure and folder that could be a standard that could possibly grow to many different marketing pieces.

Final Product

America Works was very satisfied with the folder brochure combo. The new look allowed them to showcase their product with a fresher approach that expands their reach to a younger more competitve crowd.

Applications Used: 
Role: Branding Strategy |  Establishing Design Guidelines |  Project Management  | Print & Web Design

The Challenge

We had to sit down and hammer out the details from what design elements they liked about their book and apply them to initiatives and projects they were planning. From the spice labels for their new spice line to the Girls Bite Out 2008 and Get ‘Em Girls Catering there was alot of things on these ladies plates and they needed a branding strategy to showcase their many talents.

The Process

Getting started with this project began with a sitdown meeting at the Harlem IHOP over pancakes and french toast. I got their vision of a lifestyle site with many “women-centric” categories. With the Girls’ being such a joy to talk to, it was easy to get right on board with their ideas. They wanted the world with a not-so-large budget but it was just a way to stretch my ability and squeeze everything out of what funds we had. I started with the logo. I revamped it by adding a more italicized look and depth with the stroke and drop shadow effects. While enhancing their marketing materials by making them more “bright & colorful” I developed the creative guidelines that the Girls would stick to once the project was done. I still wince every now and then when they stray outside the parameters but for self-taught “Photoshop’ers” they don’t do to bad for themselves. Creating the microsites for their events such as Girls Bite Out & Get ‘Em Girls Catering were designed and developed as great marketing tools to support the Get ‘Em Girls many ventures.

Final Product

The Get ‘Em Girls project which quickly evolved into a great friendship was very pleased with their re-vamped marketing campaign. The new look allowed them to showcase their product with a fresher approach that expands their reach to a more vast following. This is an ongoing project that will be updated regularly…

Applications Used: 
Role: Web Layout | Branding Strategy | Creative Direction

The Challenge

The hurdle was making a “young” candidate come of as fresh and modern without alienating the older voting majority in the city of Detroit. Shani Penn’s message of “Ready To Lead” had to be visually conveyed with vibrant confident colors and personal images her that displayed her confidence and un-matched experience with the voting public.

The Process

Going the stock image route to save on cost, I pulled close to 100 images that were in the ballpark of the design model. Scanning thru with the client we got it down to a pool of 15 that I could use in the designed pieces. The vibrant colors were the base of the design, along with the “curved like” gradients set a positive visual attraction to coordinate the brochure and folder that could be a standard that could possibly grow to many different marketing pieces.

Final Product

America Works was very satisfied with the folder brochure combo. The new look allowed them to showcase their product with a fresher approach that expands their reach to a younger more competitve crowd.

Good Magazine is an online and print mag that is all about positive progress worldwide. A very socially conscious readership that supports the mag with virtually no money owed for a subscription. If you want to pay, you pay, if not you still get the benefits of the great site and magazine. The central part of their business strategy is to have 100% of their subscription fees go entirely to charities you choose. So far this has raised over $860,000. As quoted from their about us page “GOOD is a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 we’ve been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn. This website is an ongoing exploration of what GOOD is and what it can be.” I mean really how can you not be down?

Good is the good in people

Founded by Ben Goldhirsh, son of entrepreneur and Inc. magazine creator Bernard Goldhirsh who died in 2003 and left Ben a nice hefty inheritance. So young Ben was sitting on a few stacks (his dad sold Inc. in 2000 for $200 million) and decided he didn’t really need to make money with his venture. He was better off creating a media platform that reports what we as a society are doing to negatively effect and positively effect our world. It is always a fine line between the two and Good Mag has definitely mastered the art of covering social injustices that we just seem to glance over now-a-days. From environmental, globalization and class/race issues to your run of the mill economic woes of Uncle Sam - Good has a wide variety of things showcased.

You really have no reason not to join, it’s free!

The videos made by Good are slick, creative and overly informative. America: Love It Or Fix It is a series of videos they have been producing that highlights the ills of our country and a fire under your booty response should be created to get out and do something about it. A good place to start is by becoming a member and blogging and commenting on stories and creating your own that are shared with the community. A great site that is all about social interaction within the members of the site but also allowing users to social share (digg, mixx, Yahoo buzz, etc.) their experiences with others . Totally viral in concept and is duplicated in the printed mag with members names and profiles showcased throughout. Social events are put on by the magazine regularly in the L.A. area for all members free of charge. So if you’re around definitely go check one of them out.

Here are a few of my favorite articles, videos and links on Good.is

If Mos Def was your President
Emergency in Mumbai? Dial 1298
The Hidden Cost of War
GoodBusiness: IceStone
Cold Turkey
Whatever Happened To…

I am an avid runner (Yep that’s me jumping over the hurdle in the Men’s Health 2008 Urbanathlon) so RunKeeper Pro is dear to my heart. For me it’s my most functional iPhone app by far. On my 7:00 a.m. runs thru Harlem this app has allowed me to not only track my run by time but by distance accurate step-by-step GPS. It also allows me to view my pace, speed, elevation and calories burned while listening to my music in the background. But what the developers did to really make this a cool app was to add a social sharing component. After your run it will send a tweet out via twitter letting all your lazy ass friends know that you just finished a five miler while they were still drooling.

It’s nothing like social sharing your achievements

It also allows you to share your run on numerous networks (digg, facebook, YahooBuzz, etc.) and gives you the option of “making your runs public” so that it shares your runs with members in the RunKeeper community. So you can meet others in your area that share their runs too. Really cool options.

Nicely Engineered App

In addition to jogging it also accurately tracks hiking, cycling, walking, skiing, and even driving. I have tried 3 other running GPS tracking apps, but this one blows all the others away. With some apps GPS tracking is shoddy, some stop tracking if a call or text comes thru, and some don’t allow you to listen to your music while it’s on (can you even believe that?). With RunKeeper Pro you’re able to do all those things plus features like pause and start if you say run into your pretty neighbor who you’ve been trying to go out with for the past year. It was just built for everything. The only addition I would like to see is voice alerts for distance and time. But other than that it’s a nicely engineered app!

You can pick RunKeeper Pro up for a measley $10 at the iTunes store.

Applications Used: 
Role: Branding Strategy | Creative Direction | Marketing Materials Design | Identity Design

The Challenge

The hurdle was making a “young” candidate come of as fresh and modern without alienating the older voting majority in the city of Detroit. Shani Penn’s message of “Ready To Lead” had to be visually conveyed with vibrant confident colors and personal images her that displayed her confidence and un-matched experience with the voting public.

The Process

Going the stock image route to save on cost, I pulled close to 100 images that were in the ballpark of the design model. Scanning thru with the client we got it down to a pool of 15 that I could use in the designed pieces. The vibrant colors were the base of the design, along with the “curved like” gradients set a positive visual attraction to coordinate the brochure and folder that could be a standard that could possibly grow to many different marketing pieces.

Final Product

America Works was very satisfied with the folder brochure combo. The new look allowed them to showcase their product with a fresher approach that expands their reach to a younger more competitve crowd.

Soulbounce is a daily must for me. It is in my morning coffee of bookmarks. Besides the artist reviews and streaming music, it is one of the best designed blogs on the net. Designed by PhattyGirl who I reached out to, to discuss how she came up with such a well planned and designed site. We as designers need to start givin’ a lil’ love where it is due, and since I ran across this site a few months ago, I have been mesmerized by it’s clean look and scalable up or down architecture. From first look I figured it was a Wordpress build but further investigation shows it’s a Movable Type backend.

“Balanced Design”

The one thing I need to point out is about Soulbounce.com is that it is a very well written site. It is updated daily so since it isn’t static which leads to creating a stale look no matter how great the layout. The site structure is flawless and they way the images and YouTube videos are all the same width makes the site balanced, coordinated and consistent, a style I definitely stress with blogs. If your gonna have a page of posts, the one thing you want to make sure of is some form of consistency or you’ll end up with a page that looks like this instead of this.

Site Breakdown

The style of the header alone is one of praise from me. The large simple navigation buttons and the rollover paintstroke add a nice touch. Images are large, bright and consistent in size which adds the uniformity synonymous with big budgeted sites with a design department. The simple breadcrumb navigation is large and visible (Archive>>Interviews) and the three (3) column layout makes the intangibles of the site always consistent in position. The blogroll and the large number of outside site links in the right column are very seamless. It does not seem too long because it just flows because of the color scheme PhattyGirl selected. The date stamp is original and the sepia tone for the images and slick font style used in the “Behind the Groove“ for the artists interviews is very creative. I must say as far as blogs go this is definitely in my top 5 of the best designed weblogs online. This should always be a starting point for inspiration before a designer fires up Photoshop to begin their design.

Twitter this, Twitter that. What’s all this fuss about? Prez Obama did it, Shaq is doing it and so is Britney Spears. Now after the recent success of so many tweeters it seems that CEO’s, businesses and organizations are even getting on board. Twitter is now being transformed by the very people who use it. Doctors are using Twitter for educational purposes, Diddy is twitting to provide his own cheap, effective and instant PR and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has re-envisioned his entire online shoe store around it. With the everyday changing landscape of social sharing Twitter is being shaped by us.

Micro-blogging is the future of mass communication

Micro-blogging is the technical term for actually what twitter is. It’s in between a personal blog, a text message, and an instant message. The only difference is the way it’s seen or followed by your fans. Jimmy Fallon is a regular tweeter and he updates in advance of unique things only the staff knows about that nights upcoming show, guest, skits, etc. which in turn wets the whistle of his nearly 300,000 followers who could be 300,000 potential viewers of the show. Powerful stuff, I know!

140 characters or less to get “your” message out

I have currently seen Big Business using Twitter to solicit feedback from users, provide updates, press releases and news on products or services, engage with users directly and invite interested folks into the beta or special invites. I can see live  Tweeting from events and press conferences so people can get a real-time feed from what’s going on from many sources to grow exponentially this year. The Twitter experience will continue to evolve as long as we keep evolving our appetite for instantaneous communication. Monetizing the Twitter effect is what businesses are attempting to do. It’s guerrilla marketing 2.0. It allows for the message plus the most important feedback. It can then have a breakdown of sex, age and location which makes this a dream for marketers targeting their certain demographics.

A Trend We Will Only See More of

As Twitter expands the possibilties of communication we will continue see the trend to broaden the reach of said communication. Twitter is a simple platform that can be tweaked, massaged, polished and morphed into whatever stream, poll, media, feed, real-time info that “you” as a user wants the world to know about “you”, because when it’s all said in done thats what Twitter is all about -You!