Over the last few years I’ve done more and more exploratory work for clients. This involves brand exploration and ideation on new potential product lines and identities. This past year my client Tervis hired me to design some Coke Classic wraps for their tumblers to be used in a licensing presentation.

I was provided with a style guide of Coke Classic brand assets and asked to create some brand centric designs that utilized these assets and kept true to the vintage aesthetics of the Coca Cola brand. Each design also had to have a QR code included with it.

“Carbonated” Coke Classic Design.

The nice thing about the Coke brand is they allow a lot of levity in their licensing as long as it fits well within the historic ideal of Coke.

“Aviation” Coke Classic Design.

I had never seen this aviation styled mark before I worked on this project? It inspired a fuselage motif that harkens back to the whole WWII era.

“Beautiful” Coke Classic Design.

Of course I included a design direction that utilized my ornament graphics from my book Flourish.Banner.Frame..

“Wow!” Coke Classic Design.

As to whether these designs will ever be used is yet to be seen but it was fun getting to work with a classic American brand.

Keywords: Commentary, Coke, Lincense, Design

Looking forward to season 6 of Mad Men. It’s one of my favorite TV shows. Yes I enjoy the creative context which is advertising, but the other aspect I enjoy is that the era is the 1960′s and I’m always spotting the same decor and objects my parents owned and I remember seeing when I was a kid.

I think in the second season I spotted wooden ducks with metal wings hanging on a wall during one scene and just laughed because my parents had the exact same set in our living room growing up. Kudos to prop master Scott Buckwald for a very authentic touch to an already compelling narrative.

My favorite character on the show is Roger Sterling. He plays a narcissistic womanizer with a quick wit and a penchant for liquor and cigarettes. He’s a good example of everything you shouldn’t be, and he pulls the roll off in a very entertaining way.

So I decided to illustrate him tonight using one continuous line.

Alternate Mad Men design.

Since Roger was responsible for landing the Lucky Strike account for their ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the show, I included a reference to that in my design.

Download Mad Men Print
- PDF Mad Men Print (4.3 mb)

Keywords: Commentary, Mad Men, Linear, Illustration

During the course of designing a logo for a local roller derby team called the Knockouts, I was offered a FREE full page ad in the flyer they give to all attenders of the monthly matches.

I figured the audience is there to see some rough and tumble action so I decided I’d take the same approach to my ads message. I’ll be attending the event so I’m curious to see how people might respond to it when flipping through the flyer?


Keywords: Commentary, Ad

I don’t do a lot of editorial illustration. But one publication I’ve been doing editorial illustrations for well over a decade now is a magazine called “Oil and Gas Investor.” I get sent the article, I read it, re-read it and try to glean some bit of information I can elaborate into an interesting visual narrative that will represent and work well with the article.

The premise of this article was on research being done by universities regarding shale-gas exploration. Initially research papers were coming out and the reports were positive in general, than the debate would begin to flame the research via ad hominem personal attacks on the researchers behind the reports.

So this dynamic of academia playing their research card and having the cards turned on them leading to the report than becoming a negative reflection on them was the idea I played off of. My client liked an old illustration I had done years ago so I used the same segmented style and format on this editorial illustration.


Keywords: Illustration, Commentary, Editorial

I’m really excited to be be speaking at SXSW this year.

I’ll be doing my “Drawing Conclusions” presentation I originally created for the HOW Design Conference.

SXSW is the largest event I’ve ever spoken at. And this last week I did my first media interview about my talk and have a few more lined up once I get to Austin.

But what I look forward too the most will be the BBQ. Yum!


Keywords: Drawing, Doodling, Creativity, Commentary, Speaking

I’ve been on this cardboard doodle kick for about a month now. It’s been a fun creative habit.

Today I decided to draw a Sasquatch and posted my initial one via my instagram account. Someone asked if they could buy it so I agreed and it’ll be shipped out in the next day or so to a new home.

I was kind of bummed though, I like these funky pieces of art so I decided to draw another one for myself which you can see in the image above.

Jumping Jack coming to life.

Last week I assigned a paper craft illustration assignment to the class I teach at a local college and decided to do another cardboard doodle that aligned with the assignment. I wanted to create a Jumping Jack paper toy. I roughed out my pencil sketch on my cardboard and cut out all the pieces than started drawing on top of them with my PaperMate Flair pen and a sharpie.

All the Jumping Jack components created.

Once I had all the components created I just punched holes through the cardboard and used brass brads to connect the limbs to the torso.

Final Jumping Jack Toy cardboard doodle.

The final Jumping Jack works pretty good. It makes a fun interactive art piece I can hang on my studio wall and I plan on continuing this new creative habit to develop other cardboard doodles by repurposing scrap cardboard. I’ve been thinking of doing an owl in a tree and making it two sided so no matter angle you view it from you can enjoy the art.


Keywords: Drawing, Doodling, Creativity, Commentary, Green