LEVX (Magna Force, Inc.)

A really brilliant inventor in the little town where we live understands magnetics in a way that no-one else in the world does and I was fortunate enough to work on this project with his company.   They hired me to come in-house with them for a few years, which meant I had less time to work on other freelance projects.   This one was fun.   The enviroment was fairly relaxed and deadlines were far enough out most of the time, that allowed for a very creative collaborative process.   The website is only a small percenatge of the work I did for them.   Because of the sensitive patented technology, the majority of the work I did for print, internal presentations and documents are under NDA, and I didn't keep a copy.   The site was a merging of two different templates that we purchased.   We liked elements of both, so the initial challenge was to make those pieces work together, and not have the JQuery clash.   After the basics were working, the next challenge was to market a product I couldn't show anyone.   It didn't exist.   During the site development, they built a prototype vehicle and track which we were able to photograph and video, but even in those materials, things needed to be hidden that weren't patented yet.   I had a hand in everything you see on the site.   From document creation, graphics, style, video shooting, timelapse, and editing...   if it's on the site, it went through my hands at one stage or another.   If not to view my work, you should really just check out the site to see what they have created.   It's really amazing and I believe it could change the world.

Facebook Cover Graphics

For over a decade I have built a few websites for Whitney Allen.   It's hard for me to see someone I've known for so long as a "legend" but In reality, she is.   Whitney was the weekend show host for the syndicated radio show that I produced during the week for Blair Garner.   The show is called After Midnite.   It has since changed hands, and the company I worked for (Premiere Radio Networks) has re-branded itself to iHeartRadio, but that's where we met.   The most current version of her own syndicated radio show, The Big Time with Whitney Allen, is where these images landed.   Each week they would either be contesting some new album release, a trip, or promoting artist interviews, and that what these were created for.   All of the examples in the "graphics" section highlight the vast canvas I got to work with.   In some cases I had layered artwork from the record lables to take apart and re-layout, and in other cases I only had the flat, square cover art, or publicity shot to work with.   Regradless, the challenge was the same.   Create a long rectangular representation of something designed to be square, keep the look and feel consistent with the release or brand, and deliver the message in a glance.   Oh, and lay it all out so that it looks good with or without Facebook's crap laid over the top of it.   Hopefully all of those points fade away and you're just left with a nice looking promotonal vehicle to help promote the show, the artists and their music, which is what it's ultimately all about.

My Printed Resume

I've been fortunate that most of my cients have been referrals from other clients.   I have always tried to go above and beyond to treat clients with respect and help them achieve their goals within, if not below, their budget and on time.   With the break in client work while LEVX monopolized my time, at the end of that project I found myself looking out in a field where WordPress dominated the majority of the client websites that I would have potentially customized for them.   WordPress is a good tool, and I'm more familiar with it than I was a few years ago, but what I have done isn't that.   Looking to stand out in a pile of resumes on someone's desk, I sought out ideas online.   I found a company selling a template that looks very much like this.   I liked it a lot, and instead of buying it, I took it as a challenge for myself to use the Photoshop and InDesign skills I have to customize and create it from scratch.

Printable copy

Keith Urban - 18 Kids: Greatest Hits Target Special Edition

I enjoy shopping for use CD's above watching sports.   I'll choose it every time, and I think the money I'm saving not paying to watch all the games is justified.   I can spend it on music instead.   This is another one I found used.   It's the Target Special Edition of Keith's 18 track Greatest Hits before they re-released it with a 19th track.   This one included a red cover and a DVD with the music videos, and the price was right, so I had to have it.   Of course, I'd like the visual representation in my CD Database to refelect the correct cover whenever possible, so I had to create this one too.   The cover is based on the grey cover shown in the bottom corner, but with some "Special Edition" text at the top, and the red background.   Changing grey to red isn't all that hard until you have to do it behind hair.   The other cover copy at the bottom is to show you a scan of the disc itself.   I've re-touched 2 of Keith's covers that got the target Secial Edition treatment and the second example can be found below.   "Get Closer: Target Deluxe Edition" was pretty simple to change.   I added the red border, and a red copy of the title treatment.

Keith Urban - Get Closer

RIDA Development

RIDA is a client that one of the LASIK Eye Surgeons referred to me.   They develop multi-million dollar construction projects, most of which tend to be hotels.   This is the second version of the site I have built for them.   We liked the original design, but it needed to be freshened up.   We widened the pages, changed the color scheme, and created this unique layout of gallery images that wrapped around the content instead of just being a static chunk of images thrown on the pages.   This one also takes elements from a few sources and merges them to work together.

My Name Is Faith DVD Cover

My wife doesn't take no for an answer very easily.   She is as tenacious as she is sexy and it's really no surpise to me that she has added "award winning filmmaker" to her list of acomplisments.   Along our journey in adopting our kids, we realized that very little was known outside families doing it...   about how hard it really is to raise children who have expierenced early life trauma.   What does my wife do about it?   She makes a film.   It's a film about our journey to find the right answers for how to best help our kids.   The good, the bad and the ugly.   If life is messy, then adopting kids with early life trauma is a hurricane.   She got it all done, while running a family, and i'm sure 100 other things that were off of my radar.   In the end, the film was shown at multiple fetivals, got a distribution deal, a hollywood star connection, and along with a few other awards, walked away with the Audience Award from the Slamdance Film Festival.   We could have paid someone to do the artword for the DVD, but I'd have kicked myself not to rise to the challenge.   Check that one off the list.

Steve Ringgold

Steve is the voice of The Big Time with Whitney Allen and dozens of other radio properties across the globe.   I have worked with him on multiple projects ranging from high school track graphics and newsletters to nationally syndicated radio program websites, graphics, a couple of different sites for him personally, and other side projects he's into.   One thing remains constant throughout the years working with him is a relentless drive for excellence.   Steve pushes me to do some of the best work I've ever done.   He has a very clear vision of what he wants, and won't stop until we get there.   This site took way too long to build, and we still joke about it today, but the final result was gorgous.   The site was Adobe Flash heavily, which is hinted at in the image above. You can see the transition from 1 image to another.   Steve still tells me how much he loved it and misses it.   I hope to be redevloping a new site in it's place in the future.

Facebook Cover Graphics

For over a decade I have built a few websites for Whitney Allen.   It's hard for me to see someone I've known for so long as a "legend" but In reality, she is.   Whitney was the weekend show host for the syndicated radio show that I produced during the week for Blair Garner.   The show is called After Midnite.   It has since changed hands, and the company I worked for (Premiere Radio Networks) has re-branded itself to iHeartRadio, but that's where we met.   The most current version of her own syndicated radio show, The Big Time with Whitney Allen, is where these images landed.   Each week they would either be contesting some new album release, a trip, or promoting artist interviews, and that what these were created for.   All of the examples in the "graphics" section highlight the vast canvas I got to work with.   In some cases I had layered artwork from the record lables to take apart and re-layout, and in other cases I only had the flat, square cover art, or publicity shot to work with.   Regradless, the challenge was the same.   Create a long rectangular representation of something designed to be square, keep the look and feel consistent with the release or brand, and deliver the message in a glance.   Oh, and lay it all out so that it looks good with or without Facebook's crap laid over the top of it.   Hopefully all of those points fade away and you're just left with a nice looking promotonal vehicle to help promote the show, the artists and their music, which is what it's ultimately all about.

Sleepless In Seattle - Soundtrack

In the never ending battle to find good artwork for my older CD's, I finally came across the Sleepless In Seattle and More Songs for Sleepless Nights soundtracks.   There was nothing from Sony other than bad scans for both, and the rest of the internet seemed to be OK with it.   I scouered the Google Image Search for better copies of the art and there was just nothing, until...   I ran across a large copy of the original poster art for the movie.   Tom was on the right and Meg was on the left, but that didn't matter, it was perfect, and there was NO TEXT on top of it!   I couldn't believe my luck.   Other than inverting the image, the work was matching the fonts.   Tedious work, but it had to be done.   Once the image was cropped correctly, and the text laid out to match my CD, I went a step further and re-created the obnoxious purple "sticker" that was printed in the center of the image highlighting the single they pushed to radio at the time.   See both copies of my recreation above, with and without the "sticker" and a bad copy of a scan that's pretty easy to find online.   The "More Songs" cover used the same cropped image in the center but with text dominating the rest of the space.   See it below this text.

More Songs...

More Songs For Sleepless Nights - Soundtrack

This cover used the same cropped image from the "Sleepless" cover in the center but with text dominating the rest of the space.

Coastal Eye Associates

Written description coming soon.  

Michael Buble - It's Time: Target Deluxe Edition

Written description coming soon.  

Facebook Cover Graphics

For over a decade I have built a few websites for Whitney Allen.   It's hard for me to see someone I've known for so long as a "legend" but In reality, she is.   Whitney was the weekend show host for the syndicated radio show that I produced during the week for Blair Garner.   The show is called After Midnite.   It has since changed hands, and the company I worked for (Premiere Radio Networks) has re-branded itself to iHeartRadio, but that's where we met.   The most current version of her own syndicated radio show, The Big Time with Whitney Allen, is where these images landed.   Each week they would either be contesting some new album release, a trip, or promoting artist interviews, and that what these were created for.   All of the examples in the "graphics" section highlight the vast canvas I got to work with.   In some cases I had layered artwork from the record lables to take apart and re-layout, and in other cases I only had the flat, square cover art, or publicity shot to work with.   Regradless, the challenge was the same.   Create a long rectangular representation of something designed to be square, keep the look and feel consistent with the release or brand, and deliver the message in a glance.   Oh, and lay it all out so that it looks good with or without Facebook's crap laid over the top of it.   Hopefully all of those points fade away and you're just left with a nice looking promotonal vehicle to help promote the show, the artists and their music, which is what it's ultimately all about.

20 Years of R.E.M. (Promo)

I have been an R.E.M. fan for decades.   I'm sure that my love affair with them began, like a lot of people, in 1988 with "Stand."   That song was everywhere when I was 18.   By 1991 I was working in a record store and "Out Of Time" was the first R.E.M. CD I bought when it was new, and I've bought every one since.   This promo was sent to radio in 2001, and was given to me by a guy in Houston radio.   Of course cover art for promo CD's are rarely ever available in high resolution, so I had to create it.   I had great quality copies of all the covers for my tracks in iTunes and for my CD database, so I just needed to lay out a grid, space them evenly, and find the font.   I usually create all high resolution images for artwork at 1500 x 1500 pixels, but because I was working with 600 x 600 copies of other covers, I decided to let the covers and the spacing between the covers dictiate the overall size of this file.   It ended up being 2600 x 2600.   I matched the font exactly, and he final result is perfect.

Yoga Vibe

I gave up trying to create full website graphics from scratch a loooooong time ago.   For the most part I'm a one man operation until I run into a problem I need help solving.   So, it's just not cost effecting or time efficiant for me to try to create full graphic packaes on spec for a new client I haven't yet entered into an agreement to do work for.   Since early on in this process, I started purchasing graphics packages (Templates).   One of the fun / challenging parts is finging a graphics package that visually represents the aesthtic the client likes, or may like based on the information I have from them, or just my own feel for what I think would look good.   The client's budget plays a small factor just in terms of how much alterations I can see would be needed.   I usually change the colors, and most of the images have to be changed for sure, but sometimes the initial look we start with is so far from the final product, it's comical. I mention all of this for the Yoga Vibe site because this one was an extreme example.   We ended up building this cool...   zen-like yoga studio site, but the original design was for a sheep farm.   Lots of green.   No kidding.   I could see the yoga studio site inside of it.   Ohm.

The English Beat - Beat This! Best Of The English Beat

When I found this disc, I thought that I wouldn't know anything on it.   I fired up the iTunes store, searched the band, looked for the top tracks from them, and was surprised that I knew about three.   "Cool," I thought, check them off the list. I own everything I'll probably ever want from the band.   But then I realized once I got it home, thatI couldn't find a good copy of the aretwork.   Of course.   Undaunted, a cover with solid shapes and colors is just another opportunity to excel, so I drew this one too.   Found a bright-ass shade of pink that I liked, drew some arrows, feet, and the "Beat This" text because I couldn't find the font to match it...   and Voilà!

The Nordstar Group HPC

On a trip back to Texas for our friend Holly's wedding, I met with these guys about their project.   It was one of the more challenging organizational UI / UX challenges I've faced.   I consider myself a techie guy, and most people would assume that I'm very computer litrate, which I am to a degree, but I had the hardest time finding that breakthrough light-bulb moment for how these server systems are built.   One of the things I love about building sites for clients in a wide range of industries is learning a little bit about a lot of different things.   In the end, we were able to organize the content in such a way that it should be easy for a veteran of the field or even someone who knows very little about it, to understand servers, how they are built and be able to customize one for their needs.   I worked with an outside party to develop the configuration piece for them, that allows a customer to virtually build a system and get a quote.

Front 242 - Front By Front

Front 242 was probably a band that I only liked initially because it was controversial.   "Hey Poor, you don't have to be poor any more, Jesus is here!" were lyrics that I'm sure I screamed at the top of my lungs at little dance clubs when I was a young adult.   The band has since re-released this album with a completely different, and to my mind, stupid looking cover...   because we don't like change, and this is the cover for the one that I own.   I took a bad scan I found online, and totally re-created this digitally, from scratch to all its 8-bit glory / goodness.   There's not a single analog (scanned) pixel in it.

Facebook Cover Graphics

For over a decade I have built a few websites for Whitney Allen.   It's hard for me to see someone I've known for so long as a "legend" but In reality, she is.   Whitney was the weekend show host for the syndicated radio show that I produced during the week for Blair Garner.   The show is called After Midnite.   It has since changed hands, and the company I worked for (Premiere Radio Networks) has re-branded itself to iHeartRadio, but that's where we met.   The most current version of her own syndicated radio show, The Big Time with Whitney Allen, is where these images landed.   Each week they would either be contesting some new album release, a trip, or promoting artist interviews, and that what these were created for.   All of the examples in the "graphics" section highlight the vast canvas I got to work with.   In some cases I had layered artwork from the record lables to take apart and re-layout, and in other cases I only had the flat, square cover art, or publicity shot to work with.   Regradless, the challenge was the same.   Create a long rectangular representation of something designed to be square, keep the look and feel consistent with the release or brand, and deliver the message in a glance.   Oh, and lay it all out so that it looks good with or without Facebook's crap laid over the top of it.   Hopefully all of those points fade away and you're just left with a nice looking promotonal vehicle to help promote the show, the artists and their music, which is what it's ultimately all about.

Better Than Ezra - Greatest Hits

Looking at this cover without the smaller example below it, you can't even tell what was done.   WEA (Warner Elektra Atlantic Corp.) has this nasty habit of repackaging their greatest hits packages with this obnoxious gold "photo corners" sleeve that covers up the top right and bottom left coners of every single cover given this treatment.   The Better Than Ezra cover is one of a few WEA releases I've retouched for my own purposes.   (See also the Violent Femmes and Deep Purple links below this text).   The lower corner was no issue at all.   The gradient was easy to duplicate and blend, but extending the pipe in the upper right corner took a bit more time.   The end result is pretty seamless, and the comments I've gotten from people who have seen it, don't believe that I did any work to it at all.   Knowing where to look helps.   You can see some repitition in the clouds, but would you have seen it if I hadn't told you were to look?

Violent Femmes

Deep Purple

Violent Femmes - Permanent Record: The Very Best Of

Click here to see the Deep Purple example.

The upper right corner took little effort, but reconstructing the "V" in the lower left took a little bit of time.

Deep Purple - The Very Best Of Deep Purple

Click here to see the Violent Femmes example.

Both corners on this one had their challenges.   The upper right corner needed the edge of the stamp and a postmark recreated.   And the lower left needed string and cardboard texture.   The final result doesn't have the original postmark, rather, I found a font that is nothing but random postmarks and chose one from San Bernadino California.   Call it artistic license.