First freelance job

I was looking through an old storage tub the other day filled with my issues of Juxtapoz, Star Wars Insider, Heavy Metal, etc. and came across a tattered copy of Transdimensional Times. People who lived in Columbus during the mid 90's might remember it - it was this crazy zine filled with government conspiracy, alien abductions, and is also the place where I consider my first freelance job to be printed. Back in 1996, I was a senior at Columbus College of Art and Design and through a mutual friend ended up doing ads for Stained Skin Tattoo and Body Piercing Studio located on High St. when it was owned by Durb Morrison. I got $10 to illustrate the ad and honestly I remember at the time not only being amazed someone was PAYING me to do art for them but also willing to get it printed. Since then I've had some amazing things done with my art (Hot Wheels, rock posters, motorcycle helmets, etc.) but I'll always remember the feeling of that first freelance job almost 20 years ago.

Logo and graphic design

Even though I technically went to school to study illustration and fine art, as part of my education I also took some ad design and graphic design classes. Over the years from time to time I will be asked to create a logo for someone and it's definitely a different type of challenge for me. My approaches will vary for each one depending on the type of business I'm working for and here's some examples. This first one was a sign design for my friend, Mike Guidone's shop Monkey Bones, located in Beavercreek, Ohio. Also here's some of the different stages and variations it went through....

Next up was a new logo / shirt design Stained Skin : Second Skin, located in Newark, Ohio and owned by Jeremiah Hanzey. My inspiration for this was Star Wars / Boba Fett and creating a character who would be a personification of tattoo machine....

In 2008, I was approached by Mike Musto to create a logo for a car culture inspired clothing line called Mr. Angry. Obviously personifying anger was the inspiration so I tried to figure out a good way to get that across but also tie it to hot rods and speed....

In addition to a variety of t-shirt designs, I also worked on some logos for a car race he was working on....

Next up, last year I created a logo / t-shirt design for Zombie Dogz, a local food truck that serves great food and has a really large following - whenever they set up, the lines are long as hell.

The final one I'll show is the design I made for my tax Lady, Elaine Janicki at Bayer Janicki Tax Service. This obviously is not the typical company I would design something for, but I saw it as a challenge to be forced to work in an understated manner and actually is one of my favorite things I've done. I know, weird , huh? Here's the first round of choices I sent her....

The first five were me trying to do what I thought a tax service logo would look like. For the last one though I remembered that Elaine, being from Chicago originally, was a huge Cubs fan. So knowing that about her and wanting to make this very personal for her, I got the idea to take the Wrigley Field sign outline, rotate it and plug her info into it. I was actually surprised how well it worked. When I showed it to her, she instantly gravitated toward that design even though she didn't recognize the sign outline.

Well that's all for now. In the future I'll show some more graphic design work I've done......