work work work


San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery



Headlands Center for the Arts' Mystery Ball

Invitation, program and website for Headlands Center for the Arts major annual fundraiser, their Mystery Ball. The theme was "organic". Rather than dwell upon the obvious contemporary tropes of the theme, I explored a biomorphic, vegetal and growing graphic and illustrative system using a single nesting framing element at micro and macro levels to connote ecological systems. A cryptic overhead photo of the center (from a military photo in the Headlands historic archive, from the time the Center was Fort Barry) appears throughout as a backdrop for the event logotype.

Received Honorable Mention for the AIGA's Cause/Affect Awards.



Helena Keeffe's RFK Remix



CCA MFA Program's 2007 Graduate Book

I was asked by the California College of the Arts (CCA) Graduate Design Program to design the annual book for the graduating class. I approached the students with a number of concept ideas. They clearly were overworked and had more important things on their mind and more or less were unconcerned with the whole thing. What they did clearly state was that they were not interested in a vanity book (typical of students and departments), one that glamorized their work and was in essence a PR tool for the program. The class was a small, intimate group with an particularly large streak of collaboration, experimentation and criticality.

I wanted the book to be a gift for them, not for the school, not for the department and not for the public. If other readers found it interesting and entertaining, great, but the intent was to create a book that would document their time and work at CCA. As an alumn of the program I had knowledge of the academic pedagogy and the courses, assignments, etc.. With that I designed the book around each semester. To reflect the collaboratory and incestuous influence that students have on one another in their project work I made a montage of all the work, blending different students work to create a narrative blending and reflect a conceptual wholeness. I told the students that it was in essence a "yearbook", a collection of their work and experience over time with references and context that only they, or others involved in the program, would have knowledge of. To confirm this "yearbook" concept, upon receiving their copies on the last day of school, they all signed each others copies.

There is a general graphic language of hierarchy based on depth rather than scale and elevation (from top to bottom of page). Images that are not specifically student work (documentation, etc.) are covered by a grid/screen, with primary work in front. There is also a framing system that appears and changes throughout helping to bracket and organize the plethora of work. These graphic elements appear and disappear throughout. The outside cover is all of the graphic elements combined, creating a woven-like texture connoting wholeness and design.



CCA Graduate Lecture Series Posters

For nearly all the b&w posters, I intentionally limited my palette and fonts. That in conjunction with what was often only 30mins to 2hrs of design time, enabled the constraints to guide my process.

In some instances, I scanned posters already hanging on campus (done by other depts. who were co-sponsoring events) and worked my design into their pre-exisitng logic. In others, I documented my process and revealed it as layers and visual/narrative sequences. In many, I included my previous designs, allowing a dialogue between the posters and the speakers/subjects to give a greater sense of conceptual continuity to the lecture series.

For a few of the posters I had the opportunity to spend some quality time on the research and execution.



Miscellaneous