I've been working to improve my skills with Photoshop and have been inspired by a lot of cool, grungy work lately. Playing a lot here with textures, scanned-in elements, smart filters, and displacements. 90 Day Fiancé is one of my guilty pleasures, so I thought it would be fun to make a poster featuring some of the most memorable (and arguably most heinous) cast members.

Thanks for looking!

I don't often share my work for Hershey, but this one I was too proud of to not share. I had the great opportunity to develop the strategy and graphics for the 2024/2025 PAYDAY Hard Workers program that celebrates Hard Workers with custom packaging and promotional graphics.

I worked with design manager Mike Pacewicz to strategize and implement custom graphics for 6 specific occupations (Healthcare Workers, Teachers, Retail Workers, Truck Drivers, Construction Workers, and Service Members) as well as develop a graphic lockup to represent the program. From there, the graphic strategy was implemented across 6 King Size label designs, 4 Regular Size label designs, 3 total custom carton designs, merchandising displays and a tool kit to serve as a point of reference for agencies who would use the assets to develop additional merchandising and applications related to the promotion.

The graphics for each occupation were custom illustrated by myself which included developing an "icon" graphic to represent each career and also a relevant background pattern/graphic to add additional context. I began each illustration on my iPad to nail down a "hand drawn" look and then imported each illustration into Illustrator to add color and refine.

The Hard Workers program was really rewarding to see from start to finish and be able to say the visual language was developed totally by me with creative direction from Mike.

These will be available in stores fall of 2024. Thanks for looking!

The Hershey Company has been around for over 125 years and has an incredibly long history of producing some of the world’s most beloved brands. Below is a case study of some designs for what a limited edition version of their iconic cocoa could look like if there was ever an opportunity to create a nostalgic tribute design.

The study was a really fun opportunity to explore a range of layouts that incorporate actual vintage HERSHEY’S typography and illustrations and also some options that simply just use typefaces and design motifs that have a vintage look and feel.

DISCLAIMER: This is simply a case study for design exercises only, not an actual product that you will find in stores.

“The Corsage” is a duo music group comprised of my two very dear friends Meg and Jason. They have been creating music for many years together in other musical projects, but they began their synthy, 80s dream-pop project “The Corsage” together in 2023 and I have had the pleasure of creating art and design for them as they continue creating music.

Over the course of several months, I collaborated with them on a zine project they call "Impermanence Now" - a media project consisting of a series of 6 zines, each with a unique idea/story that are essentially social commentaries on existence, technology and change. This project was not only a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with some of my dearest friends, but a great design exercise where I was able to experiment with texture, typography, image collage and even AI.

Per The Corsage on the project:
"In early 2024 Jason sat down and wrote the poetry that would become impermanence NOW, an extension of The Corsage art project.

These poems remind us what it means to be human, and suggest different ways of thinking about our experiences. Impermanence NOW is a calling - to a higher level of consciousness, to an expanded sensitivity to ephemera, to breathe deeply and know the full depth of yourself.

We didn’t stop at poetry - these ideas needed more from us. Megan was instrumental in moving this work towards a visual medium and helped storyboard initial visual concepts for each of what would become the 6-part series of impermanence NOW zines.

Each zine also concludes with a haiku, the mindfulness bell of poetry, inviting the reader to a meditative understanding of the work.

...

Now, we’re proud to claim the work as our own.
Strengthen your sensitivity to Ephemera
Live Alive
Embrace
~~impermanence NOW~~"

I had the great honor this year to design the poster for the 5th Annual Lancaster Print Crawl, hosted by Typothecary Letterpress of Lancaster.

The Print Crawl is a short walk around downtown Lancaster, PA that occurs on the first Friday in September each year. You are able to stop at any of participating print shops to pick up your poster and program booklet with the map in it. You will then follow the map around downtown to each of the shops to complete your poster.

Stops include screen printing, letterpress printing, stamping, laser cutting and vinyl sticker graphics. The whole crawl is 1 mile (one way) walking start to finish.

The design is a bit of a puzzle in a way that you must assume folks will not complete the crawl in any ideal order and consider that some of the techniques use opaque inks and others translucent inks if you were to use overlapping elements in your design. Below you will see my final illustrated design and some photos I took during the Crawl.

Craft beer is one of my many passions and no one in Lancaster does craft beer better than The Fridge. I have been a devoted patron of the Fridge since moving to Lancaster years ago, but I now also work there part time. The Fridge celebrates their business anniversary every year with a huge bash that includes a specially brewed beer, food specials, a special draft list and anniversary merch. This year, their 13th anniversary, I had the great opportunity to work with my friend and owner of the Fridge on this limited edition shirt design. The design would be one color (white) on black shirts. Since 2024 celebrates 13 years in business, we wanted to do a "bad luck" sort of theme and I envisioned a dynamic illustration of the grim reaper bursting out of a Fridge, beer in hand, on a bike (cycling is big in Lancaster). Super fun to illustrate and pleased with how the final shirts turned out!

In the spring of 2021, I received an email from a group of gal pals - Austin, Jess, and Julie - asking for my help to visually bring their dream of opening an eclectic feminist bookstore in Lancaster, PA to life. They explained that they had found my work on Instagram and felt that my style was exactly what they were looking for. Something kind of witchy, unique, intriguing, maybe even a little bit spooky…? but not overly feminine.

They also wanted to include subtle nods to Lancaster in the design somehow, particularly referencing folk and hex art that one will often find displayed proudly on many homes in Lancaster County. Austin is a Lancaster native, so I love that they wanted to incorporate that in the final design. One of the main goals was also to make sure their shop felt inclusive and wasn’t alienating or polarizing to any particular audiences, and it was important that their branding reflected that sentiment.

After sharing some reference examples of visual styles, other logos that inspired them, and even the listing for the property they planned to purchase, I got to work coming up with a couple of options of how we could bring “Pocket Books”, the name they’d chosen for their dream baby, to life. Austin, Julie, and Jess are honestly dream clients, and I love that they were trying to bring something meaningful to my community; an inclusive bookshop that focuses mainly on BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ authors.

A sweet Lancaster local baker named Kristen was in the process of starting her baking business which she wanted to name Front Porch Baking Co.

Lancaster is a wonderful community and Kristen takes pride in using high quality and locally sourced ingredients. She approached me to develop her branding for her after seeing some of my work for Troegs Brewing Company.

We first began by developing a logo and would then move on to developing additional graphics to use on her social media presences, labels, merchandise, and more. Eventually, the plan is to develop a website where she will be able to sell her offerings online.

I started by exploring a few ideas for Kristen’s logo design, taking inspiration from some reference she had seen online and also the idea of the name “Front Porch”; I was looking to capture the wholesomeness and community-based nature of her business. A few concepts that didn’t make the cut are shown below. After deciding on a logo design, we moved onto additional graphics to further develop her brand.

After providing me some facts about types of ingredients Kristen uses and important information she would want her consumers to know about Front Porch Baking Co., I used those phrases to create some additional graphics to use on her websites, totes, shirts, and so on. Many of these graphics focus on her strict use of regional and local grains and being a very community-centric bakery.

See her fully designed website I created for her here.

I had the privilege to create the branding for Dave Hoover, president and founder of the new Method Insights Research, a business that does consumer habit research and studies to aid business and companies in their demographic studies.

I am proud to say that this identity system has won a 2019 GD USA Award.

Encompassed in this project is the branding for Method Insights Research: a brandmark, color palette, business card, letterhead system, and a website to start off with. As Method Insights matures there will be more applications of the branding, but in addition to the specific requests from Dave I mocked up some cool t-shirts and such as well.

To keep costs down, the website is built using a Squarespace layout template but we’ve really customized it using Method Insights brand colors, typefaces, and imagery. Looking forward to adding more to this body of work as it’s quite a unique aesthetic to some of my other work. Enjoy!

Often some of the freelance work I do are acquaintances or relationships of friends and this branding project is an example of that.

A good friend of mine from my younger years who has consistently partnered with me any time he has needed design work recommended me to his wife, Laura, who is starting her own coffee roasting business.

Unfortunately, Lopi Coffee never came to fruition due to financial and other barriers caused by the Covid pandemic, but Laura and I were still both very happy with how the work turned out so I still wanted to share it here.

These particular friends now reside in Superior, Wisconsin where there is apparently a big influence of Nordic and Scandinavian culture. Laura originally wanted to incorporate this subtly in her branding and wanted to call her company “Lopi” coffee, “lopi” being short for “lopapeysas”, which I discovered are traditional knit Icelandic sweaters. (You learn something new every day). She envisioned perhaps incorporating the visual of a sweater or elements inspired by patterns on the sweaters. I also did my own research on Nordic design and noticed it relied a lot on geometry and simple shapes.

We started off with some logo designs and then would proceed to business card designs and then label designs for her bags. She intended to start by using stock white bags and printing and applying labels instead of custom printing bags to save costs while she is first starting out.

Below is her completed branding and exploration of initial logo design options, business card designs, and label designs.

Lunar Cycle is a hypothetical brewing company that I created in which the concept plays off of ideologies of the solar system, particularly the phases of the moon. These sour beer offerings were based four of the 8 phases, specifically the First Quarter, Full Moon, Third Quarter, and New Moon. I’m a big fan of sour craft beers, and so for my own enjoyment, I thought it’d be fun to create some packaging and restaurant graphics for this fictional brewery.

This was also a project that I wanted to use as an opportunity to challenge my 3D modeling skills. Once I figured out the dimensions of a 16oz. can, I modeled it in STRATA Design so I could manipulate the cans however I pleased. I’ve also created the 3D models of the menus here as well.

In addition to the cans and menus, I’ve also created some 3D modeled glassware: a stemless, pint, and tasting glass. I’ll likely add more fun stuff in the future, but until then, enjoy!