I created this just as a personal project that I could place into my portfolio. The foundation to my style comes from traditional Swiss art. I felt that I should create a piece that honors this. In addition to this piece, below I have attached a song that has had a strong influence on my past week.

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My dream home is much more simple than the average American. I dream of a clean space with modern accents and color, very open to the outside world. I want it to inspire thought and social dynamic. I want it to retain a style of wealth but yet use little resources in my day to day life. This is my dream pad. Where my pad will rest is a complete mystery, but the city has to be full of diversity, arts, and of course with the open minded society.

Da Dream Pad: http://www.contemporist.com/2009/11/28/my-life-in-80m%C2%B2-by-poliform/

I cannot name one song that I am not fond of out of Lily Allen‘s two albums. She sings from the heart and relates to current events more than any other musical artist I know. If there was one artist I would love to meet it would be this woman. She is amazingly in sync with my creative and personal life and is largely responsible for my creative punch. I think Lily tries to run from any style hole that most artists dive into, but if she were to have one it really is the “fu#$! you it’s my life” style. I adore her.

This song/mvideo was just released and is her latest studio work. It’s a duet with Professor Green (rapping isn’t really my thing btw) and unfortunately she has made no plans yet for another album.

This is the most recent project I have completed at Hotbed Creative, a design firm I’m currently interning with. Once printed, this design will serve as fliers that will appear throughout Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago.

I remember loving her hit “Do You Know” in 1996 back when I was still kissing girls and terribly clueless what I wanted to be when I grew up. My latest obsession came from her 2008 album Robyn with hits like “Cobrastyle” and “Bum Like You”. This year she is releasing an amazing THREE albums and has already begun to deliver eargasms around the world. Here is her latest, “Dancing On My Own”.

To think that we are entering the end of May seems crazy to me. So much has happened this year and it’s all a blur. The first week of May I said farewell to my Junior year at Herron School of Art & Design with a very proud 4.0. I was very pleased with my outcomes throughout the semester and acknowledge my academic achievements.

Throughout the last semester, the Junior VC department split our course into groups of four as each group would be assigned a private organization to spend the semester designing for. These groups were chosen by the professors evaluation on our personality and diversity of artistic skills. I was very fortunate to be assigned with three motivated designers which made the semester a much easier ride. As a group, we were assigned with Community Heights Neighborhood Association, a not-for-profit organization that works at attracting residents into their community on the Eastside of Indianapolis while grouping the neighborhood together for gardening, food drives and monthly meetings. Their branding and online sources were extremely lacking. Below is a comparison of what was there when we came in and what we had left them in the end.

The art direction behind the new site was something that could connect to what makes this community unique. Community Heights is a community born out of the late 40′s where a lot of ex-military settled with their families after war. These homes were mostly ranch styled, but some businesses shared the 40′s flare. It was very important that we took this concept and flew with it. Transferring the extreme amounts of content that Community Heights wanted to store online was a headache, but in the end very organized content and navigation was delivered.

On May 5th, I began my internship at Hotbed Creative where I work with four other designers to excel at creative design. I’m loving it there already and have already begun working specifically with Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) and Minnesota Orchestra. I believe this experience will certainly further enhance my strengths as a designer. On top of the internship, I’m also designing a new album cover for The Freaky Afronaut, a website and logo. Stay tuned as I will soon have a lot to share with the world.

This past week marked the end of my internship with Indianapolis Monthly. It has been an amazing experience that went by much too fast. I was lucky to do plenty of exciting things during my time there, ranging from working on large sections of the magazine, creating vector art for feature stories, to helping art direct cover photo shoots. A job with a magazine publication can sure seem glamorous in the rush of things, but the whole experience was to teach me more about my creative self and collaborating with a team. The experience taught me that when a group of talented people get together in an organized form, amazing things can happen. The staff is constantly being pushed harder and harder, which they have to be in order to beat their competition. Magazines are suffering right now, and it’s a battle ground out there but luckily Indianapolis Monthly is selling well. My time with the publication also taught me that my creative energy is no match for a magazine. I can definitely see myself doing magazine art direction through a firm someday, but working in a publication house is much too repetitive for my taste. So now as my Junior year ends, I’m about to start a new journey as an intern. Starting in May, I will be joining a team of designers at a downtown design firm, Hotbed Creative, where I’ll get my taste of what life at a firm is like, just in time for my last year as a student. I’m very excited to start this new journey!

Early this week I finally received my official AIGA membership card. I’m finally official. For those of you who aren’t familiar with AIGA, it is a national group for designers. They plan portfolio showcases, social functions, etc. all aimed at strengthening networking for designers.

The tune for this week is very relaxed to feed the stress that has been eating me lately. The semester is dwindling to its end and my near future is heavily on my mind. I’ve been considering which cities are best for me, hunting through firms and more firms. The search and decision process seems endless. In a time where the mind has hit overload, you need a clean simple tune. Coldplay fits this gap just right.

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I just updated my folio to include my latest project, an album cover for The Freaky Afronaut‘s latest album, Baby Sugar Honey. It is expected to come out sometime this spring as a digital release. Will provide more details when they come.

Today I designed a pair of Converses just in time for spring.