Digital Totem
For your viewing and listening pleasure, I submit the digital totem. I created this guy by welding a steel structure together to support 5 monitors, one on top of the other. On each screen are custom totems, digitally "carved" and overlayed with frenetic animated totem images from the Tlinget tribes of the Northwest. All this was then set to a soundtrack of some of my favorite spacetracks featuring Radiohead, Imogen Heap, and U2. Go here to check it out.

I Been Hornswaggled!
New art has been uploaded today! My design series devoted to southern words that aren't words has been added to the ART section. Check it out, y'all.

Color Blind Design
For all you screaming throngs of people who anxiously await each update, TODAY IS THE DAY! If you check out the art link and go to the colorblind design section you can view my graduate thesis work from Northwestern. Here's the abstract:

This paper accompanies the exhibit by Bryan Alexis and details his own journey as a graphic designer who overcomes the challenge of color blindness, an extremely difficult condition to endure in a color intensive career. The exhibit and paper explores the desire of the artist to find the higher calling of design beyond its self imposed slavery to the global marketing and advertising machine to a place where it could be used to encourage and inspire humanity while retaining its Pop Art sensibility. The artist explores his own discovery of his disability from childhood and reveals, in a humorous way, the tricks that not just color blind designers, but color blind people use to navigate their slightly alternate reality. The show features twenty larger than life paint swatches designed with imagery pertaining to the trials and tribulations of a color blind designer. The paper discusses each of these in detail, recounting the stories behind each one. Through this experience the artist concludes that there can be a world changing effect by design, even if it is just the world around him.

Maybe I'll link the paper for your enjoyment... one day...

Is There Such a Thing as Over-Educated?
So when I tally the hours that I've taken in grad school to earn a Masters Degree in Design with the hours required to earn a Masters of Fine Arts in design it will come to around 90 hours. So when all is said and done I'll have 30 hours over what is normally required for a terminal degree in Graphic Design/ Art. Is there a name for that? Not that I mind, just ready to get on with it.

In other news, I added a few more pieces to the layout section. I think I'm going to break from that for a bit and flesh out some other parts of the folio. Maybe the campaign section. Also, it's animation time. I've been waiting until the Flash class that I teach to animate my logo as I want to use it for demonstration purposes. It's coming up tomorrow so hopefully in two weeks I'll have that going.

I've been promising my past interns I'd make them some shirts featuring Crintical and Nebula. They seem pretty excited about wearing this wee badge of honor.

Layout Section Begins...
A little more progress today. There are about twenty or so images in the layout section now. I know, I know, your only supposed to have twenty pieces in your entire portfolio, but hey, this is my online playground right... Besides, I want a place that I can display a lot of stuff.

New Site Launch
Well, after two years with the same old site I've finally gotten around to a complete update. This of course falls on the heels of a personal rebranding and portfolio organization. You're next resumé! Hopefully there will be news of more education around the bend as I embark on the last stage of my higher educational journey, the coveted MFA. Yeah, I already have the MA, but that F makes a big difference to some folks. Check back now and again for updates.

New Logo
One of the most challenging assignment that I give my students is self-branding. It's difficult to really nail down an image that will say all the things you want to say about yourself or your company. Something that will be totally original, totally yours, and have longevity to boot. You have to be able to live with it for a while to build that coveted brand equity.

I've really become fascinated with artist origins, beginning with my own. What were the unfettered imaginations of artists like before "proper education." Are there any connections? I can't say I'm a true pack rat, but I have tendencies. And luckily, I have saved most of my old drawings created during the countless hours in junior high and high school when I guess I should have been concentrating on algebra. I'm sure my experience is not unique. Sometimes, if I have a spare moment, I will scan through all those old drawings, (I paid a really good friend to scan them for me, as I didn't have time) and have a good laugh.

Those old drawings are so free and unique, and uniquely me, I felt compelled to incorporate one of them into my personal logo. Enter Crintical and Nebula, a symbiote creature, half octopus, half crab, wielding a sweet ninja sword. HA! This was part of a greater series of creature all featuring grotesque inbreeding, massive weapons of destruction, and displaying only minimal knowledge of anatomy. Whatever, right? It works for me. I can live with it for a while.