April 5, 2024

Lamenting a Lack of Leadership

For a few weeks now I'd been discussing with friends my frustration with agency leaders who had been dead quiet on what was happening in the industry right now. After some encouragement from my friend TJ Bennett I decided to go ahead and write about it.

I do wonder if me speaking up about about issues I see in the industry makes things harder on myself in terms of finding work, but I'm not the type to shy away from hard discussions. After all, we can't fix things we don't want to talk about.

It seems to have struck a chord though with over 13k views and 160+ likes. Apparently I wasn't the only person who had noticed.

March 23, 2024

Generative AI

I wanted a better way to show off my generative AI abilities so I built a new page on my site to showcase the things I've made. I also made a new image in my series of my daughter after a few months of not adding to it. You can see the page here and the new image below.

March 4, 2024

Motion Graphics Business Card

I've been playing with motion graphics on and off for like 11 years now. I wouldn't say I'm great at it by any means, but over time you do tend to pick up little things that can add up.

So maybe I'm not as terrible as I think, but I can at least do basic stuff. Or rather, I can figure out ways to make certain things in a way that I actually know how to do them. It's probably like this for a lot of people across different skill sets though. Nothing is super complicated if you have enough random know how to figure out how to deconstruct it and put it back together with the toolbox you have.

February 22, 2024

San Francisco

Took some time to digitally draw/paint a photo I found of San Francisco. Made this in Procreate.

February 5, 2024

Squarespaced

Last week Squarespace posted about a new Sr. Art Director position in LA and honestly, on paper it'd be a great match for me. But none of that matters if I can't get an interview. So on Friday I threw together a page on Squarespace to make the case for why I'd be the perfect candidate. It mostly has to do with my history of designing websites (not professionally) and understanding the target demo. Plus to really make the point it took me less than an hour to get the page up. I posted it to LinkedIn today and broke 100 likes, whether or not that'll make a difference is yet to be scene.

It does bring up an interesting philosophical question though. The page received a good bit of traffic and a lot of messages of support telling me they loved the idea. Are stunts like these zero sum games in terms of success? If I don't get an interview out of it from Squarespace, is it a complete failure? Does grabbing the attention of other creatives mitigate that if I don't? We'll find out I suppose.

February 4, 2024

Side Show Stuffs

Despite the lack of updates since mid-December, I've actually been keeping myself fairly busy. The second half of January was dedicated to getting some stuff for Side Show online.

I had this idea awhile back for a resource library since people make helpful tools all the time, post them on LinkedIn, and then you can't find them a few months later. You can see that here.

I also wanted to create an updated database of all the agencies I could find across the country. I started making a list, broken down by state and city and was able to get that launched as well. That is part of The Library that can be found here.

Hope you'll check 'em out.

December 18, 2023

Birthday Invite

I wanted to make an invite for a birthday party I was putting together and ended up with this. For the record, the party didn't happen. I had to cancel after our babysitter got Covid and we couldn't find a new one. Bummer.

December 9, 2023

Another r/LosAngeles Top Post

I like using Reddit to gauge my different theories about social media, how people use it and what they gravitate towards. Obviously, different communities will like different things but as a whole Reddit has some of the most skeptical users on the internet. I pulled a photo I shot at some point last year and posted it and sure enough it hit the top spot.

November 24, 2023

Holiday Card

I designed a holiday card this year for Sheena, Izzy and I. I don't really consider myself Jewish, but since she's definitely going to celebrate Christmas because of Sheena I figured I might as well through something for Hannukah in there too.

November 24, 2023

Cockroach Mentality

I wrote something the other day for LinkedIn that resonated with a few people.

October 27, 2023

Go Viral for Something

When I've had free time I've been working with my old collegiate debate society to create a new ad campaign for them to use on campus and their social channels. I pitched them a few platforms, but they settled on one I called "TikTalk." The core insight being that today's youth are missing out on necessary communication skills as they've migrated from real life interaction to digital.

From there I gave them a few campaigns and they chose "Go Viral for Something You Can be Proud of." With a long list of famous alumni who have achieved fame in their fields, it made sense to highlight that there are a lot of bad ways to go viral but when you are an effective communicator you have the chance to become famous for something positive.

Below are the print and social. I also pitched them on working with University Archives, as the school's oldest student organization, to host an exhibit under the same name featuring artifacts of the society's most famous alumni.

As far as design, I took cues from design in the 1800's, since the society was founded in 1803 (200 years before Facebook). I also used a font named Philosophers my friend Eric Doctor made. The letter forms, glyphs and even name were spiritually perfect for the project.

October 27, 2023

Street Fighting Baby

Some more fun with Izzy.