The nautical theme is clearly portrayed in the font choice, colors, background textures and iconography. Notice how we have four different elements from the name all combining to build the icon: the “O” of Anchor joins with an actual anchor, generating a life preserver out of the “O” and a cross out of the anchor.

I came on board with Nickelfish as their first Senior Designer in July of 2010, one month after getting married and one week after moving up to Princeton, New Jersey. Since that summer the staff has doubled in size and we expanded to our downstairs workspace. Check out these photos of the awesome space.

If you look above my desk you will see a panoramic image. This is one of the most fun projects I worked on during my time there: The Nickelfish League of Heroes. Over a lunch early in my Nickelfish career, I said it might be fun to illustrate our Nickelfish group as a team of superheroes. This was mentioned casually (and if you’ve known me for any length of time you will recognize this suggestion as pretty standard procedure anytime I am in a new professional or social setting), but the proposition was immediately taken up by the CEO, Justin Marcucci.

Though the pet project was delayed by busy months of actual client work I eventually began sketching on our then-15-person team and researching professional comic artists to render them. After many months of sketching, revising and proofing we finally printed our inaugural class image in the summer of 2011. The long-term plan is to re-print a new league poster every summer, updating the team as necessary.

The portfolio section of this site is littered with projects I’ve done while with Nickelfish, and my time there truly expanded my skill set and pushed me in directions I otherwise would not have explored. My relationship with the people at NFIDM is excellent, and I am leaving on equally excellent terms. I will continue to work for Nickelfish as necessary, wrapping up the rest of my remaining projects on a freelance basis and helping the team out as needed.

Thanks to everyone at Nickelfish for making my time there enjoyable and rewarding. I hope I contributed to the team’s experience as much as they contributed to mine. My best wishes to everyone over there, I hope to see you all soon.

What about The Brandit, you ask? That will have to be saved for another time.

My initial connection with Reel FX (Radium and Reel FX merged in March of 2007, just a couple months before I began working at the Dallas location) came from family, my mother having attended grade school with Brandon Oldenburg and his family. Brandon is one of the co-founding members of Reel FX in 1995.

During my brief time there I assisted him in a minor role on a couple projects, but getting to watch him work on his art was worth much more than my meager paycheck. As a skilled visual artist and storyteller, Brandon’s professional accolades are many, but his biggest one may yet be before him.

A couple years ago Brandon left Radium/Reel FX to join up with a group called Moonbot Studios. Radium/Reel FX had long been focused on animating the intellectual properties of other companies, but Brandon’s passion was developing original characters and stories. His training is in visual art, but he specifically loves using that skill to tell stories.

The synthesis of these traits is evident in Moonbot Studios’ new short film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morriss Lessmore. Please enjoy the video above.

This is what Brandon and Moonbot Studios have to say about their work:

Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story.

Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation) award winning author/ illustrator William Joyce and Co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a new narrative experience that harkens back to silent films and M-G-M Technicolor musicals. “Morris Lessmore” is old fashioned and cutting edge at the same time.

To date, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” film has drummed up fans all over the world taking home the following awards:

· Cinequest Film Fest: Best Animated Short
· Palm Springs International ShortFest: Audience Favorite Award
· SIGGRAPH: Best in Show

Here is a link to their Academy Awards Press release.

Congratulations, Brandon. Can’t wait to see you bring home the statue.

“I am a photographer based in Washington DC. I shoot weddings, families, kids, various events and any other random projects that catch my eye here and all over the world. This blog serves as my own personal journal for all of my professional work, personal imagery, travels, and other randomness.”

Wale called me in early 2011 for a logo and business card design. A fan of custom lettering, he wanted something slightly old fashioned, so that’s exactly what we did. (You might have seen this logo before in the Identity section of the portfolio)

Personal communication and attention to detail are the focuses of Wale’s work as a photographer, and he wanted to convey that in the business card. We elected a letterpress process, and made one side of the card appear to be “flashing” like the bulb from a camera.

Here you can see the letterpress impression of the logo, as well as the yellow highlight on the edge of the card.

And here is the new logo on-screen on his website…

Olivia (my amazing wife) has been wanting to have photos taken of us for a while now, so we elected to do an exchange of services: I would design his logo, and he would do a photoshoot for us in Princeton in the fall. Here is a beautiful photo he took of us…

Note: Exchanging services can be very beneficial for those who run their own shops, or are a relatively small business. In many of these cases, including my own, small companies like this run pretty lean financially, and have more freedom to do work than spend cash.

In an exchange of services (or bartering) both parties are taxed on the value of the service they receive, just as if that service was income. Since Wale and I run our own shops this is simple enough.

Wale claims his strength as a photographer is shooting people; after spending a brief afternoon with him I can see why. His friendly manner put us right at ease, and he is able to discover what his customers want from simple conversations without having to ask too many details.

Though weddings and romantic scenes are his specialty, I highly recommend Wale for any shoot you may have; he is based out of DC but is free to travel, mostly up and down the east coast. Here is his website: http://waleariztos.com/

Having lived in Princeton for over two years I decided it was about time to go see a Princeton Tigers’ football game. With all due respect to some remarkable individual efforts including a Princeton outside linebacker, their kickoff return man, and a few Yale offensive playmakers, the game as a whole left much to be desired for someone whose football tastes were cultivated in Texas and Oklahoma.

A student of team sports uniform design, the most interesting part of the game was Princeton’s winged helmet. If you have been aware of college football at any point in the last fifty years or so you will doubtlessly know of Michigan’s famous winged helmet. I asked one of the Tigers’ old guard seated behind me who had it first, and he assured me it was his alma mater.

Princeton

Not that I didn’t trust the homer sitting behind me, but this merited some research. Here is the story according to Princeton.edu:

“Princeton’s orange and black “Tiger Helmet” is a distinctive piece of the University’s sports tradition. Designed by legendary Hall of Fame coach Herbert O. “Fritz” Crisler and first worn by the undefeated national championship team of 1935, this colorful headgear is a link to one of the great eras in the heralded football history of Old Nassau.

“The helmet was styled to represent a fighting tiger with its ears glared back and three symbolic orange-stripes running sleekly from front to back and matches the traditional tiger striping on the jersey. At a time when all helmets were similar, Coach Crisler thought that this highly visible emblem would help quarterbacks more readily find their downfield receivers.

“When Crisler left Princeton in 1938, he took the helmet design with him to Michigan, where in maize and blue it became an icon of that university’s football program. This distinctive helmet design which originated at Princeton – where intercollegiate football was born – is a reminder to students, alumni, fans and worthy opponents of all the great Tiger players who ever proudly represented Old Nassau on the gridiron.” - Princeton.edu

Surprisingly, Michigan’s website supports this narrative:

Michigan

“The famous “winged” design dates from 1938 when Coach Herbert O. “Fritz” Crisler arrived from Princeton to begin a new era in Michigan football. Even as the design and composition of helmets evolved from stitched cowhide to high-tech, molded plastic, the winged design has remained the pre-eminent symbol of Michigan football.

“The distinctive helmet would also have practical advantages on the field. Crisler figured the helmet would help his halfbacks find receivers downfield. ‘There was a tendency to use different colored helmets just for receivers in those days, but I always thought that would be as helpful for the defense as for the offense,’ Crisler recalled.” – Bentley Historical Library

Here is an interesting video about the Michigan helmet reconditioning process. Although it is heavily pro-Michigan, the fact remains that their helmet is certainly the most recognizable in the college sports landscape.

However! As it turns out, there is more to this story. Ohio State University claims to have used a “winged” design as early as 1930:

Ohio State

“On September 11, 1930, Ohio State Head Coach Sam Willaman had his Buckeyes debut new uniforms along with winged helmets at Northwestern. This was the first time any team, either college or professional, wore a winged helmet.

The first winged helmet was a dark leather helmet with a lighter contrasting color wing on the front. The wing was put in place as extra padding to help sustain collisions.

Willaman had his teams wear the winged helmet for three seasons and in 1934, new Head Coach Francis Schmidt kept the winged helmets for his first season, but opted to return to the traditional leather helmets during his second season in 1935.” – SpartanJerseys.com

The reason this is not as popular a narrative, however, is due to the nature of the “wings” on the helmet. The uniqueness of the Princeton/Michigan design includes the three stripes coming out of the center front of the wings, and wrapping around the head to converge in the back. However! Photographic evidence proves that the “three striped winged helmet” had been used even prior to Crisler’s 1935 Princeton team.

Indiana

“In 1933, Indiana started wearing winged helmets under Head Coach Earle “Billy” Hayes with a victory over Miami (OH) on September 30, 1933. Indiana’s winged helmet consisted of a black leather helmet with a white wing and three white stripes running from front to back. A small block “I” logo was centered on the front of the wing.

“In 1934, Indiana hired a new head coach, Alvin “Bo” McMillin, who began phasing out the winged helmets only one year after the helmets were debuted at Indiana. Photos of the team and games depict only half of Indiana’s players wearing winged helmets during this season, with the other half wearing the traditional leather helmet. This suggests the NCAA and Big Ten rules regarding consistency with helmets were more flexible in 1934.

“By 1935, the entire team switched back to traditional leather helmets ending their two-year stint wearing the winged helmets.” - SpartanJerseys.com

Spalding’s FH5 three striped winged helmet featured on the cover of the 1938 Spalding Official Intercollegiate Football Guide:

So as it turns out Princeton was not the first utilize to utilize either a winged helmet or the three striped winged helmet design. The Michigan State Spartans page has a more robust history on it than mine, including excellent academic sources in case you don’t want to take my word on any of this.

I might buy what they have to say since Michigan State no longer uses a winged helmet design and doesn’t stand to loose anything. However, with Michigan being their biggest rival, it might behoove them to discredit one of Michigan’s coaches with the creation of it… conspiracy?

Although Princeton abandoned the winged helmet when Crisler left after the ’37 season, the Tigers resurrected it in 1998 and use it to this day. Upon further research (read: Wikipedia) I found an abbreviated record of other schools who have used the design:

• Saint Peter’s College, New Jersey (football program since dropped)
• University of Delaware
• Southwest Baptist University (stopped its use in 2008)
• Grove City College
• Gustavus Adolphus College
• Middlebury College
• Nichols College

This topic definitely merits more research than the cursory web search I’ve done here, but it’s certainly enough to whet my appetite on the unique headgear. In case you’re interested here is the Wikipedia page on the history of the winged helmet design. I won’t be posting again before the new year, so enjoy your holidays and the remainder of 2011.

See you all in 2012.

Back in April I designed a masthead for The University of Oklahoma’s Journal of Global Affairs, and recently received the completed book. Over the summer Texas Christian University Press hired me to lay out a novel by Texas author Tom Hardy: Slow Moving Dreams. When they arrived in the mail it provided the perfect opportunity to try out the new camera and start honing my skills.

I don’t do much book layout work. The nature of page by page layout spread over hundreds of pages doesn’t appeal to me as much as a series of unique layouts for a shorter publication, but the cover design is usually exciting enough to me to justify laying out a complete book, especially if the cover design will help inspire the interior.

Journal of Global Affairs

This project actually turned out better than I had hoped. The two-tones of grey throughout the book helped separate the various levels of information within each article, and the references and graphs read clearly at the end.

Slow Moving Dreams

The cover of this novel was supposed to romanticize the stark nature of West Texas. Some would argue that the miles of flat desert plains that roll into small mountains need no assistance being camera ready, but for those that are not familiar with the spacious grandeur, I wanted to lend an air of fond familiarity.

Slow Moving Dreams: Cover Design

And there you go. My first attempt at photography posted on this site: terrible.

At NFIDM, we recently launched our new company website, electing to design a suite of icons to go with content headers and subnavigation. We ended up marking almost every paragraph in the site with a unique icon, and developing a simplified or streamlined version of especially complex icons for the matching subnavigation, leaving us with two versions of a handful of them.

Sidenav Icons

Content Icons

Icon Guide:

Contact Us         Launch the App        Previous Project        Clients
Marketing              Download                  Next Project              RSS
Project PDF                Staff                        All Projects             Process

The Order               Strategy               Wallpapers              Challenge
Manifesto            Technology           Whitepapers           Exploration
Modus Operandi   Design                Project PDF               Solution

You can peruse the icon suite here at nfidm.com, and you’ll get to see the adorable sidenav buttons that were created with the icons (see screenshot below).

Even an average set of icons will raise the level of any mobile application, brand identity system, publication or website by a significant margin, but a bespoke set of illustrations designed to match your unique content and efficiently guide your users where they need to go is an invaluable addition to any interface, digital or not.

The next time you begin an interactive or content-heavy design project, evaluate the effect an icon suite can have on your user experience. Your information architect or UX/UI person will really appreciate having those powerful visual tools, and your users will appreciate the ease and beauty with which they interact with your product.

The iPhone came out in 2007, and the release was likely a hellish experience for Specialists at the store, but even though Apple has learned to handle the product release throngs with aplomb, their employees are feeling more frustrated at work then ever. Often they cite being treated poorly by those they are trying to help, and face an increasingly ungrateful / misunderstanding customer base.

Earnest Specialists desperately attempt to preempt inevitable user frustrations that arise down the line by teaching their customers about the products in the store. Their serving attitude is frequently met with, “I don’t care about that s***, just sell me the f****** thing.”
(This is a direct line from a customer delivered to a trusted Apple Expert)

Why is this happening? The rise of the iPhone and iPad has led to a ubiquity of Apple products in American households, (the iPad is forecasting between 70% and 80% of the tablet market, depending who you read) appealing to a much broader variety of users than the loyalists for whom Apple initially made product. Short answer: Apple is no longer catering just to fanboys.

This isn’t new. This isn’t news.
It’s just bigger than we (or Apple) thought.
The beginning of the non-fan-clashing-with-Apple-culture-phenomenon occurred when Apple Retail opened its bulletproof glass doors for the first time on May 19th, 2001 in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia and Glendale, California: two very affluent areas with high student populations. According to Wikipedia as of July 2011, Apple had opened 357 stores worldwide, and although most are in urban or suburban centers, ease of access to (and, more importantly, visibility of) the product has moved from techies and the affluently-trendy to the everyman.

While Apple Retail as an entity exposed Apple and its culture to the public eye, the exponential demand for their products has driven even more traffic to store who aren’t techies or design geeks.

Now, you’re probably thinking “What about the iPod? That dominated its market way before the iPhone!” When the iPod came out everyone already knew what an MP3 player was. The iPhone is a much more complex device than the iPod, and requires much more support. Also, the phone relies on mobile networks, necessitating cooperation and a whole new level of customer interaction and tech support the iPod just never dealt with.

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Apple Retail is still pushing the boundaries of the retail experience. They now station iPads at near every product display, calling them “smart signs,” enabling the customer to view details about the product, as well as put their name in line to be helped if need be.

Any available employee will get a push notification to their iPod Touch (now standard issue for those on the floor) with the location of the customer in need. The customer will then receive a notification on the iPad that a certain Specialist is on their way, with the photo of that Specialist right there so the customer can look out for them!

How cool is that?

However, sometimes these advancements in the retail experience can frustrate those accustomed to big box stores. For instance, that digital queue generated by the smart signs is frustrating to those users who are unaware of it. To counteract this, Apple Retail has begun testing a “floater” role at select tester locations. He or she babysits the queue and the front of the store, making sure customers who ask for help or appear lost are added to it.

My Expert friend says “Our customer base is getting less and less tech savvy.”

For clarity’s sake, I must add that the Apple geek is not getting less tech savvy, in fact, just the opposite, but the average customer’s tech IQ is decreasing by virtue of sheer un-teched volume.

“The kind of person it takes to walk up to the iPad, see the specialist button, hit it, and know they will get assistance is maybe one in fifty customers.”

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“So,” you’re probably thinking, “what you’re saying is that the great unwashed aren’t as kind as Apple geeks?”

The short answer is “yes.”

The long answer is “no.”

Fans of any product / band / company / political party are going to approach interactions with that entity with a positive attitude, making them more receptive to teaching and, therefore, more responsive to the “surprise and delight” mantra to which Apple Retail is dedicated. This also makes them more patient and understanding if something doesn’t go according to plan or is unexpected.

A neutral party (or worse yet, a non-fan sent to the store by their kid who has to have this newfangled contraption NOW) will likely approach the interaction like the financial transaction it is: mentally guarded and emotionally distant, and much more difficult to teach. Anything perceived as “wrong” or “different” is instantly negativised in memory.

- – - -

I highly doubt a board of directors will look at Apple’s current bottom line and think something is wrong, but the fanboys are what helped Apple become great by buying what they sold when nobody else was, and now the Specialists and Experts are being treated quite poorly by the current customer base.

My friends totally need a break because they have lost all patience with their customers. But are the customers really changing that much? I don’t think so; there have always been customers like this. Now there are simply more of them.

It will be interesting to see how Apple Retail develops again as the customer base continues to evolve and their products permeate the culture more and more. They have already made huge strides in the way customers think about retail, and nobody doubts them as a leader in the field.

But as far as the emotional state of their employees-on-the-floor, I hope the direction they take sets their Specialists and Experts up for satisfaction, rather than frustration.

YouGiveGoods is an environmentally friendly, revolutionary way of helping others. We connect people who want to give real goods to those who need them—at food pantries, animal shelters or homeless shelters. Our technology makes it easy to start a drive or to contribute to a drive to support these kinds of organizations. By simplifying the process of giving, we hope that more good gets done.

And more of that…

YouGiveGoods is a socially conscious company founded with the purpose of making it as simple as possible to start and promote drives that support charities and organizations that help those in need—such as food pantries, animal shelters and homeless shelters. YouGiveGoods makes contributing to those drives an easy, enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Great, right? We developed many different logo concepts for YGG (as they’ve come to be known around the office), and this post explores some of my work helping to develop this unique brand.

The first concepts I worked on revolved around an icon that displayed “friendly packaging.” I wanted to convey the idea that YouGiveGoods is involved in taking the love and kindness their users are showing others, and making it easy to package that up.

The first icon here is simply a box, friendly rendered within a “G”. The heart in a box is the most literal icon for this concept, and the final can with an arrow is more descriptive of the actual YGG process.

You Give Goods Brand Concepts

After addressing the literal storytelling of YouGiveGoods, I changed direction and began to focus on the social element of this service. Sharing your drives and activity on the site is integral to the way YGG works, so I developed some concepts that revolve around communication, using the iconic “speech bubble” as a containing shape.

Social Concepts

Lastly, I explored the “delivery” portion of the YouGiveGoods brand, creating a fun truck as a mascot of sorts. Although none of these illustrations made in into the final set of marks, a truck remains a central visual element of their brand.

Truck Concepts

Alternate Truck Concepts

So there you go. As I said, none of these designs are the final brand; the selected logo was created by my partner Senior Designer at NFIDM, Jahanzaib Malik. Zaib is a very talented designer whose work is housed here. If you have some time, head on over to YouGiveGoods.com and see if there is a way to get involved.

Life Church in Austin, Texas is an example of the word of mouth method. Last summer I completed a brand for a small church in Saginaw, Texas called Eagles View Church. A few staff members at these churches have worked together, and I knew all of them from my congregation back in Keller, Texas. Boom: word of mouth.

Originally called “Lakeline Church,” the north Austin-based organization changed their name when switching buildings earlier this year. In the Bible belt, the name “Life Church” carries a specific challenge due to the heavyweight brand LifeChurch.tv. This church has multiple campuses in the Tulsa and OKC areas, now in Fort Worth and Albany, New York, as well as their ubiquitous internet campus.

That being said, many churches share names and Life Church is likely one of the most common. We did not feel a strong need to differentiate Life Church from the OKC-based ministry, but we also did not want to have too much similarity.

Most small churches share a consistent set of realms in which their logo will operate, so I have developed a branding guide with a consistent set of guides that help these resource-strapped organizations steward their new brand as efficiently as possible.

Click Here to view the new Life Church branding guide.