AIA Dayton 2010 Design Awards

Award shows and me... we go way back. I created animated showcases for interactive entries at the 2009 and 2010 Hermes Awards shows, and helped with creative direction for their 2010 show. My recent work on the awards presentation for AIA Dayton was a little different. Instead of having a video that supports the emcee and provides visual accompaniment, AIA Dayton wanted to try using a video instead of an emcee. Thus, the burden of keeping the rapt attention of 100+ attendees for over eight minutes fell upon me.

Five Second Project: CMYK

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What do you do if you have a little extra creative energy, you want to create a cool original piece and maybe try out a new technique or two? Well, if you're an animator like me, you might enter one of Nick Campbell's Five Second Project competitions.

Review: The Wild Things by Dave Eggers

As part of my ongoing Dave Eggers kick, I picked up The Wild Things. The book had a lot going for it before I even ordered it: the novel is based on the screenplay for the Spike Jonze movie (also co-written by Eggers), I already dig Eggers' writing, and the damn thing is covered in fur!

Mead Builder: Research Paper Edition overview

Meadwestvaco, likely the makers of every school notebook onto which you lovingly rendered the Metallica logo, has made a couple of surprising moves into the educational software market lately. The newest of these is Mead Builder: Research Paper Edition, an application designed to help students write better research papers. To show teachers, students, and parents the benefits of this new product, I was tasked with directing a short video to help explain the idea.

Review: Dropbox

Image via Dropbox.com

If you're anything like me, you might have a computer at work, another computer at home, and maybe a mini-computer (iPhone) rattling around in your pocket. They all have different hard drives, and it can be a hassle to transfer files from one computer to another. Your options are basically a flash drive, an external hard drive, burning a disc (yuck!), or some kind of FTP transfer to a server. Dropbox falls into that last category, but it makes things a lot more simple.

Review: Mint.com

Recently I discovered that, despite a hefty student loan debt, I finally have a positive net worth. Considering my desire to live in a house, my entrepreneurial tendencies, and the fact that I'm American, my new status seems like it's temporary and I should savor it while it lasts.

This was also a surprise because creative people are notoriously bad at managing money, or at least that's the stereotype. Whether you're creative or not, personal finance is something every grown-up should understand and think about. So, here I'll discuss a tool that has helped me break the creative pro spendthrift mold: Mint.

Work: Real Mart grand opening announcement

Real Mart, Real Art Design Group's foray into the world of online artisan consignment boutiques, flung open its digital doors this week. To help announce this to the world, Andy Nick and I were charged with making it a feature on the Real Art homepage. The aesthetic of the store is made up of many hand-drawn elements, so we shot a hand drawing the "Grand Opening" type onto the screen.