After designing the poster for a short film by MJ Slide, she recommended me to the director of Student Programming for Seattle's True Independent Film Festival. He needed a poster for their Student Film Block and I jumped at the chance to create another poster in what’s becoming a personal series supporting indie and micro-cinema.

The Student Film Block (Student Block) is a program designed to help Student Filmmakers age 16-22 showcases their latest films. The winner gets $500 towards their next film and a job to work on a film shooting in Washington State. This poster will be given to each of the participants in the student film block. The typeface used is Gerry Powell's Stencil. All film stills were used with permission.

While I was working at Four Clouds, we were approached by a client to update their customers and orders database from a DOS-based text-mode interface, which had been used since the early 1990s, to a modern, database driven web app.

A promising young film director, MJ Slide, approached me on Facebook after having seen a film poster that I designed for another independent film project. The short film portrays the process of getting over a break up during a day’s adventures between two strangers.

Original photo removed from a screenshot of the film. A naturally aged piece of paper from my personal collection was lightened and then added as the ground for the poster’s layout. The typeface used is Europe Underground Black by Måns Grebäck. For more information about the film, visit: facebook.com/GoneForTheDay.

While working at Four Clouds, Andromeda Training, a client who is known worldwide for their business finance training programs asked us to make an iPad app. Income/Outcome is their flagship program, simulating the financial statements of businesses using real financial data in a group session board game. They have an internal tool that recreates that experience online but wanted an iPad app to further their brand and increase their exposure to potential clients.

These screens represent version 1 of the app. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, the basic version is free on the app store.

I belong to the Triangle Drupal Users’ Group (TriDUG), a local meet-up devoted to the Drupal content management system for the Triangle region of NC. Since the group is growing and looking for more ways to get involved in the local community, I volunteered to create a logo for the group to use in future communications and community events.

The final design draws from the main colors of each of the Triangle’s three major universities: UNC, Duke, and NC State. It uses a simplified version of the Drupal mascot, Druplicon, as well as the free, open-source typeface Deja Vu Sans, a derivative of Bitstream Vera Sans, to reflect the open-source origins of Drupal itself.

This is a rebrand for Boiler Code Tech a small consulting company in Tennessee owned by John Swezy, Jr., i.e. my dad. The goal of the company is to: "provide professional, responsive, and economical consulting services to help manufacturers of pressure equipment achieve compliance with applicable codes and standards in the areas of design, fabrication, and quality control.”

The background is a texture created from a scan of the back of a 1950s high school drafting exercise in my collection. I asked my dad to provide me with some CAD drawings from client projects that I could abstract into a collage style illustration. I was careful to obscure any proprietary details. The site’s font stack uses nearly every flavor of Helvetica for an authentic feel, falling back on Arial only as a last resort. I'm hoping the next version will be able to leverage the latest in web font technology.

After being hired on as a contractor with Four Clouds, my first project was redesigning their identity. I started with their logo, which went through a few iterations. The new brand was then extended to the company website and business cards. I was eventually hired on full-time in November of the same year as a User Experience Designer and worked there until February 2012.

Please note that if you visit the site, the contents and design might have changed or shifted since the site design is no longer under my purview.

I came upon this project through the common story of reconnection via the internet. I used to work with Jim Vendiola back when I lived in Chicago, and when I heard that he was making a short film, I volunteered to make any collateral materials he might need. We started with the film poster. Jim’s film is about two twenty-something strangers who ditch work one morning, wondering where exactly a winter's day together might take them.

The production still which was the basis for both designs was shot by Joshua Lopatin. For more information about the film, and to view the trailer, visit the website.

This is a freelance corporate identity project for emma delon, a local independent kitchen & bath design firm here in the Triangle area of NC. Since the owner, lead designer, etc., is also my wife Caroline Shillito I had a very personal stake in the process.

The emma delon identity system uses the Futura Std Book font of Paul Renner's venerable typeface. The flower symbol is derived from the Seed of Life in sacred geometry.

In October 2009 I (finally) married my longtime girlfriend and life partner Caroline Shillito. To prepare for the blessed day I created an informational website (my first site ever) as well as some printed materials that were sent to potential guests and used during the ceremony and reception.

The typeface used throughout is Robert Slimbach's Kepler with some isolated uses of Edward Benguiat's Edwardian Script. The wedding invitations, programs, and menus were printed by Salutations.

I’ve had a pretty diverse history in the design world: print marketing materials, logos, illustration, posters, pre-press, user experience design, mobile/tablet user interface and app design, and web design. I’m just as inspired by vernacular signage as I am by wordy literature, the latest scientific discoveries, or cult films. I take it for granted that designers today have to be interested in everything to find the best ideas. For me it’s all grist for the creative mill.

While I am an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, and designer my greatest assets are empathy and synthesis. I can step into someone else’s shoes and see their problems from their perspective and I excel at discovering the stories behind ideas through research. My favorite part of being a designer is using stories (empathy) to find connections between ideas (synthesis) to solve problems (art/design).

In my free time I love to paint and draw, design the occasional indie film poster, and cook with my wife.