Songs of Love for Japan (SOLFJ)

After March 2011′s devastating Sendai Earthquake, Tsunami, and following Nuclear crisis, a few creative colleagues collaborated to raise money to send resources to the devastated country. What followed was a 3-day flash-sale of a collection of 100 music tracks donated by major and independent artists, such as Tori Amos, Sara Bareilles and The xx. The flash sale raised over $25,000, donated to Shelterbox, an international relief organization that dispatches care packages for individuals living in devastated areas.

Artwork by Yoko Furusho. Collaborators: Bryce Longton and Cheryl B. Engelhardt (founders), Chris Wherry (developer) and Michael Whalen (legal).

date: April 2011
client: Pro-bono, Personal Project
website (no longer active): http://www.solfj.org/

New York University: School of Continuing & Professional Studies

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NYU-SCPS, New York University’s Professional School, consisting of 17 school departments offering unique curriculum was in search of a contract Information Architect to jumpstart their school’s redesign process. More than 5000 pages of content existing in disorganized fashion needed to be organized and ported over into a new design. My resulting contract with both NYU and Format Studios lasted a year and saw my role expand beyond an IA to contribute as an Art Director.

My team consisted of a mixture of permanent NYU employees, writers and producers, and contractors who handled the project management, design process and development. Initially, I developed wireframes. Nevertheless, I eventually found myself in the design driver’s seat, refining my process as an I.A. and overhauling the design for a sharper, more modern look that embraced recent developments with CSS3 and HTML5. The website was developed using Adobe’s DAY/CQ5 content management platform.

My first major project in the educational sector since college, my team actively consulted with school leadership, internal marketing in what was a highly defined and well paced process (certainly a big departure from the iterative process start-ups embrace).

Nevertheless, the complexities of the school itself proved quite a challenge to design around. This included developing a visual language that not only served NYU-SCPS as a larger body, but also developing a design infrastructure that would remain consistent but offer each of the 17 school’s departments their own breathing room with satellite sites.

Please note that the site is scheduled for a Late Spring/Early Summer 2012 launch.

FELA! On Broadway

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FELA! A 2009 Tony Award winning Broadway musical illustrating the storied life of Nigerian singer Fela Kuti started its touring production in the summer of 2011. The broadway production’s original producers included Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Jay-Z, and the show’s talent includes Sahr Ngaujah. The Knitting Factory, the show’s marketing arm felt that the original website was outdated and needed an visual update.

Design and production started in the Fall of 2011 and the website was up and running shortly after Halloween. The website was built using WordPress.

LoKast

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LoKast, a group messaging app found on the iPhone and Android devices provides a vehicle for gregarious and curious mobile users to discover proximity-based chat rooms (called “Spaces”) organized by venues, events, interests and more.

I designed the user experience and interface for the current generation of the applications for both major mobile platforms, familiarizing myself with both system’s unique (yet similar) production requirements. The design process was highly iterative, where I found myself working remotely with the executive/product and development teams.

Beyond designing and producing the actual applications, accommodating both iOS and Android groups’ user habits/requirements proved challenging (this being my first Android app). Both mobile operating systems and development atmospheres certainly come with their own advantages, disadvantages and yes, quirks! Android’s support of press-and-hold to activate contextual menus could certainly have a place on iOS devices. Unlike Android’s vast array of hardware choices, Apple’s tight control of not only the app approval process but handset manufacturing truly provided the most consistent and highest quality experience for its entire userbase (especially once I realized that many Android devices packed screens that supported only 256 colors)

I also designed and produced the product/company website, in wordpress.

Arts in Bushwick | Bushwick Open Studios 2011 & 2012

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My second and third years as Arts in Bushwick’s contributing designer produced significant changes in their web and print collateral. One year after adapting the organization’s previous design language to Bushwick Open Studios’ 2010 festival, I wanted to try my hand at a more organic design and take advantage of New York City’s largest geographically oriented arts community.

I designed the festival’s website to provide a taste of what festival goers could expect from Arts in Bushwick’s open studios. Scouring photography of previous festivals’ artwork, I selected a handful of photographs that randomly loaded as background images for the header, turning the transparent “Arts in Bushwick” into a visually dynamic and organic element.

The festival’s print brochure incorporated detailed vector maps of the festival’s 6 different zones, supporting nearly 400 open studios and shows. Produced over 36 straight hours of work, I organized massive amounts of information, assisting the reading experience, which also complemented the information presented on the website.

The design was such a success for the 2011 Bushwick Open Studios, the organization carried it over for the 2012 festival.

The Hoopla Hoop

I had always wanted to start an online magazine about the city’s culture, but never really had the creative energy or the organizational focus to do so. Departing Sosauce in February 2010 left me with some time on my hands to focus on such a project! After sharing my ideas, a few friends quickly expressed interest in contributing to the publications. After 2 months of planning, meeting and pitching, the Hoopla Hoop was born! Quick turnaround, eh?

As a publication, our main goal is to highlight parts of New York City that typical news outlets would shy away from, covering those stories with a revealing, narrative voice and hopefully having fun in the process. Design-wise, it was my goal to make the magazine enjoyable to read, not only in blog (shorthand), but also when it came to releasing our feature-length articles, which thankfully break up the what can be a monotonous reading experience.

The publication is an experiment, not only exploring how we can help transform the new-media oriented content presentation paradigm within a struggling industry (publishing), but also exploring how we can best form our vision of what New York City, and news reporting in New York City can be!

BTW – Though the Lightview image viewing plug-in is great, it does have some limitations. If you’d like to look at a larger-sized version of these thumbnails, right-click on the image and select to open the link in a new tab.

date: May 2010 – Ongoing
client: Personal Project
website: http://www.hooplahoop.com/

The Hoopla Hoop – Contributor Portraits

Launching the Hoopla Hoop, I wanted to provide our readers with a sense that they’re conversing with the writers who are sharing these great stories on the publication. Thus, as a first assignment, I require our columnists to submit an introductory article about themselves (What can be more difficult to write than writing about yourself? Everything afterwards should be easy!).

I had the impression that our first-run columnists are truly a team of founders of the publication, and wanted to present us as such by scheduling a unifying photo shoot on my very picturesque roof and including the portraits with the writer intros!

The shoots took place over several days, scheduling times for the writers to come over, then climbing up a somewhat unstable ladder to reveal what I believe to be one of New York’s most dramatic landscapes. As expected, our writer’s portraits embellished that landscape!

date: April 2010
client: Personal Project
Camera/Lens: Pentax K-7, 77mm FA-L f1.8 (115mm equiv)
website: http://www.hooplahoop.com/

Arts in Bushwick: BOS 2010 Program Booklet

Arts in Bushwick (AIB) is a community-based volunteer arts organization based in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, which boasts one of the city’s most highly-populated artist communities. Since 2007, AIB organizes a series of arts festivals, the largest being Bushwick Open Studios which basically turns the entire neighborhood into an art-gallery-cum-block-party for an entire weekend to kick off the summer.

The organization approached me this spring to lead the design for this year’s festival collateral, including the website, festival brochure and extra print advertisements. They already had a fairly strong visual identity and I wanted to bring that identity forward, add some depth to this year’s design and utilize the organizations vibrant colors.