Putting a smile on your customer's faces

Over the past few months I've had the opportunity to work with art director David Waugh on a pair of assignments for ChannelPro Magazine. ChannelPro is a trade publication for Information Technology professionals servicing small and mid size businesses. Coincidentally, some of my friends from my days at RIT are now IT professionals.

Information Technology can be a pretty dry subject. Working with Dave is great because he tends to favor getting away from the literal and pushing the conceptual side of art. The image above was created for a feature on custome service. The spread can be seen on page 16 of this online edition of the magazine.

Below is another ChannelPro assignment. This was for a story on how the devices that keep us connected often make it more difficult to get things done. The spread can be seen online, on page 14.

A shameless plug for a friend's business venture

This is a logo I created for my good friend Blaine Moore, who runs a blog called Run to Win, that covers the world of running and track and field in addition to offering advice to runners of all ability levels. For the past few months Blaine has been working on a more comprehensive marathon training guide which is now available at marathoning.org. It is definitely worth a read if you are a runner preparing for your first marathon or looking to improve upon your previous best.

I know first hand that Blaine is quite knowledgeable on the subject he is writing about. We were teammates on the Rochester Institute of Technology's cross country and track teams. Shortly before graduating, Blaine started running marathons. Now his goal is to run one in every state in the union. To accomplish that goal, he's running at least two or three a year and has been for the past few years. In 2006, I joined him as he crossed New York off his list. It was my first marathon and his 9th. Needless to say he beat me that day by about three minutes. (His 2 hours and 51 minutes to my 2 hours and 54 minutes.)



Here we are around mile 8 of the New York City Marathon. Blaine is on the left, I'm waving at the camera.

Seeing Spots

Over the past few months I've done some work for FOLIO, a trade magazine about magazine publishing. I've worked with, Art Director, Dan Trombetto, who is a very easy person to work with. All of the assignments have been spots for a recurring section at the front of the magazine called Login.

The most recently published was for an article on website architecture.



Originally Dan and his editors pitched a Rubik's cube image with different labels on the individual squares.





When it was decided that these might not reproduce well at a 5"x 5" size I suggested using a Soma cube in its place. Since it retained the puzzle solving concept, but also incorporated building something. Below are some initial sketches.







Below is another spot that ran with a story on publishers predicting trends for 2008. They wanted something that said fortune teller without looking "too tacky" I ended up producing this image based on a palm reading chart.



These sketches were rejected



This assignment was for social networking websites. The only requirements were show a crowd and computer. I created this.


And here are some of the rejects.

Fun facts about the George Washington Bridge

Most mornings I awake to Maurice DuBois and Kate Sullivan on the Channel 2 morning news. As they cut to commercial, viewers are treated to live shots of New York City's landmarks in the pre-dawn light. One that usually catches my eye is the George Washington Bridge, which inspired this image.



And now for the fun facts:

Spanning the Hudson River, The George Washington Bridge connects Fort Lee, N.J. and Washington Heights in Manhattan. It opened to traffic in October 1931. At the time it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. The original design called for the towers to be encased in granite. However, the Great Depression put the brakes on those plans. In 1962 the lower deck was added at a cost far greater than the construction of the rest of the bridge.

On holiday the bridge is home to the world's largest free-flying American flag

Entering New Jersey is free, but if you want to leave be prepared to shell out $6. In March those departing the Garden State for the City of New York will be forced to shell out a few dollars more

The back alleys of the Internet

The Record's travel editor, Jill Schensul, recieved an e-mail with the subject line "We'll pay you to travel anywhere". Rather than delete it like any other ordinary piece of spam, she decided to read it and attempt to get paid to travel anywhere. She didn't get paid, nor did she get to travel anywhere. However, she did end up receiving a lot more spam and recieved a few suspicious charges on her credit card. This story ran Dec. 23. Originally the story was supposed to run on the front page. It ended up getting kicked inside, but this illustration, originally slated to run with it, stayed out front as a giant, quarter page teaser to the text.
The end result isn't terrible, but yet nowhere near as cool as Linzie Hunter's series of spam subject line paintings.

The Zoo (for Illustration Friday)

This image is part of a series of illustrations that ran in the The Bergen Record's travel section a while ago. I'm throwing it up now because it ties in with this week's theme over at Illustration Friday.

This illustration (as well as the others in the series) was loosely based on Works Progress Administration Posters.

An Island Holiday

This Illustration ran on the front page of this morning's edition of The (Bergen) Record. It accompanied a news story on the easiest ways in and out of Manhattan for all of the holiday festivities beginning with Thursday's parade and continuing through the festivities in Times Square Dec. 31. Also running was a column on the pitfalls of driving and parking in New York City. One would think people who live on the Jersey side of the Hudson River would be well versed in navigating the streets of Manhattan, especially the large portion of people who commute there during the week for work. Who knows, maybe they need a reminder of how to do these things when there is an influx of tourists and shoppers around the holiday season.

I think this was a great opportunity to use illustration. What was the alternative? A file photo of the tree in Rockefeller Center? I think a fresh image trumps a year-old photo most of the time.