Dancer Intros

This is the one the Miami Herald is using for Miami.com's adults section.


This is the original intro I designed for the Miami.com's adult section's 'Featured Dancer' segments. All elements in both intros I created from scratch, including drawing the women's silhouettes in Illustrator.

Dolphins iPhone app commercial

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but Blogger has given me issues. This is a 15-second spot I animated using Adobe AfterEffects and Illustrator promoting the new Dolphins iPhone app (coming soon). The idea was that this would play on the jumbo tron screen in LandShark Stadium (the former Dolphins Stadium) during commercial breaks and between quarters. I've nicknamed this commercial as the "Grand Revealing." Too bad it wasn't selected ...

Final Miami.com Night intro

The Miami.com editors decided to have two intros and a common lower thirds. My intro was chosen for Night time coverage. Lower thirds is on it's way.

For some reason, Blogger delays the beginning.

Miami.com

One of my first assignments as a designer at the Miami Herald was to create an intro for Miami.com's multimedia packages. Using After Effects, here is a compiled mock of what my intro and lower thirds would look like.

Gatefolds (Inserts)

Above is the "Hot Spots" insert for the 2009 Ibis yearbook. This is one of two inserts for the book. The other is on football, which will be a later post. The insert is just like ones found in magazines, also known as a "centerfold".

The completion of this insert was a combined effort between the Managing Editor, Jacqui O'Donnell, who created all of the illustrations (icons, skyline, and map) and originally designed the first and last spreads, the Photo Editor, Leah Adams, who designed the entire insert (middle spread), and myself, who developed, supervised, revised, tweaked and finalized these pages.

Election spreads redesign

REDESIGN (AFTER):

BEFORE:

Upon request of my advisor, publishing representative and Editor-in-Chief, I was asked to redesign the Election spreads. They felt the spreads did not flow with the style of the rest of the book. Kara, the former Assistant Design Director, put a lot of time and effort into creating the pages she did, so the spreads essentially required a repackaging of content -- which evolved into an entirely different spread altogether.

As you can see, I redid the Obama illustration to ensure he was looking inward on the spread's content. Also, I decided to create the Obama illustration out of stars in order to have a stars and stripes (Americana) theme to connect the two spreads. The decision to turn the students into black and white images came out of a desire to make them more uniform so as not to compete with all the other elements on the spread. Adding the "I am" statements corresponds to the written aspect of this yearbook's theme.

Economy spread

Got my mind on my money and my money on my mind ... spread for the Ibis on the economy, which charts the price or percentage of items or topics relevant to students, such beer and unemployment. It's an interesting graphic, so please take the time to look closer. I worked with the section editors to add variety to the items/topics covered, such as tuition costs and condoms.

Updated Maestro Sheet

The paper trail of our publication is maestro sheets. The design staff was struggling to draw inspiration from these forms, and ended up asking more questions that I didn't know the answers to. This new form enabled my design staff and I to know all that was going into a spread and what the vision is. 

The above forms is the revised/redesign maestro sheet, and the bottom form is the "before".

Banner and print ad I created/designed for the Miami Hurricane. The banner ad went through a lot of revisions -- adding text, adding pictures, adding more text, removing text. The space was hard to work with considering the client wanted the ad to be really visual with lots of pictures of the property.

New Obama Illustration

The Election pages needed to be redesigned, so I took this task upon myself. Above is the dominant illustration for the first spread, which is focusing on the candidates and issues. The following spread will focus on the student perspective.

Section Dividers

Yup, these are painted bodies. (And, yup, Greeks are black and white tushes!) The entire staff (but mostly the Core editors) worked as a team to get these accomplished in ONE DAY. This was an incredible shoot to art direct and participate it. Chris Rackliffe, the Editor-in-Chief, has said that he's never felt more creative in his whole life than the day spent shooting these divider pages.
Leah Adams, the Photo editor, and Kara Dapena, the former Assistant Design Director, constructed the "set" and were the real work horses that made this happen -- Kara did a majority of the painting and Leah did all the photography.
The missing section is "Organizations," and also happens to be my favorite! We're waiting to find out how many group photos we're going to end up with, as well as which student organizations will be spotlighted within the section so we can spotlight them on the divider.

The Cover

Very exciting. I have finished the cover design for the 2009 Ibis. There is a slight lime green stroke around the "IAM" of "MIAMI" because our theme for this book is "I AM ... MIAMI".

VT Game Feature (Football Gatefold)

Spread before the football gatefold (insert) about the last home game. The game was against VT, and was an important one for the 'Canes to win. We weren't supposed to win, but we did. This was a powerful and special game for seniors especially, who have only experience the 'Canes in a lull. I used Illustrator to create the mask, Bridge to view and select the photos I wanted (we have excellent photographers this year), and InDesign to bring the whole thing together.

Tentative Greek Sub-Divider pages

Tentative pages because the "National Association of Latino Organizations" page really bothers me, and the Greek section editors are working to track down group photos of these councils to add to these pages.

Murder Scene

This assignment for class was really fun because AfterEffects can do so much and we were given total creative freedom. Footage was shot using a green screen. Using AfterEffects, I added a background to make it look like the characters are on top of a roof, and manipulated the color treatment so that they are kept in shadow. I also wrote the dialogue.

Tentative Endsheets

I say "tentative" because more information needs to be added to the top (front) endsheet. There is a front and a back endsheet to yearbooks - attached to the cover.

Academics spreads

Spreads I worked on for the yearbook.

Homecoming spreads

One of the greatest criticisms of the previous yearbook (2007-2008) was how spreads with the same topic (and sequential) didn't flow or look like they belonged together - due to not having an element to tie them together. This has been a huge challenge that I wanted to take on. There will be four Homecoming spreads, one series of several we're planning to have in the 2009 book. The challenge we're having with the other two spreads is a strong enough dominant photo to run the entire length of the spread (and if not, what alternatives we have), and the readability of the timeline in the corner of the bottom spread (which will appear in the same spot on each of the spreads).

Lifestyles spreads

Spreads I designed for the yearbook.

Deans, Administrators, and Board of Trustees

First two spreads I designed for the 2009 Ibis Yearbook.

Senior Spotlight Application

Front and back application I designed for senior spotlights. Over 50 seniors applied, the most we've had in the recent past. The questions were developed by the People Editor.

Photographer Press Passes

Designed these for our fantastic staff of photographers. The top image is the front of the pass, and the bottom is the back, which has the contact information of the Photo Editor and the Editor-in-Chief just in case things aren't going as planned.

Ibis Yearbook '09 - Style Guide

Handbook I developed and designed for staff designers. I designed it to explain what is expected from them, how we operate, to use as a reference for navigating the server and designing pages, and other things. The last page was suggested to me by the Photo Editor - a survey with the designer's name, student number (because that's how we pay them), and other information that helps me to gauge a person's skill level and possible commitment.

Parent Ad Letter

Designing the bottom form has honestly been one of my favorite assignments as the Design Director. It was one of the first things I wanted to redesign because the previous forms that had been sent out were unnecessarily repetitive, unorganized, and possibly over-designed. Based on the information on the previous forms, and inspired by Print magazine's fantastic design, I designed a parent ad form that groups similar things together and is easy to read (both for parents and for the Business Editor).

Ibis Yearbook '09 Logo