I was thrilled when MICA’s GDMFA program asked me to host a digital publishing workshop. For the past year I’ve worked at Joe Zeff Design where I’ve art directed and designed apps for company’s such as Fast Company magazine and National Geographic. It was an honor to share what I’ve learned and also quite inspiring to see what amazing designers can build when they have the right tools.

Check out my digital work here.  |  Poster Credit: Young Sun Compton

I created this book to document my collection of vintage shoes from my YiaYia. (Greek for grandmother) It is light on text and heavy on photography. Former mentee, friend and Ink contributor Ashley Grove shot the photos for me while I art directed. This meant I positioned the shoes all over Baltimore’s Bolton Hill neighborhood and then let Ashley do her thing.

Learn more about Ashley on her blog and portfolio.

No computers were used in the making of these 16″x13″ screenprints. I marbled all of the ink so each print is different. There are approximately 24 prints of each of the three shapes.

I recently became a member of the smart phone team. That’s right. For the past 10 years I diligently updated my Samsung every two years for free. Until about a month ago it was impossible for me to receive e-mail on the go. But now, in honor of my new found freedom to tweet anywhere 3G is available, I designed a series of iphone cases from my letterpress and screenprint work.

Today I organized the newspaper pages I have designed/illustrated over the past 6 years. But first I spread them all over the floor. Then, forced my roommate to listen to all of my deadline stories.

You can never get enough advice from Alice! This spin-off of my original postcard concept, turned into a series of 30 screenprints and a Mother’s Day gift. The prints are 10×13 on French Paper – Construction/Steel Blue/80 cover.

Graphic Design Thinking  is now available for pre-order on amazon.com. I wrote and designed the above chapter about sprinting, a technique I use to create a large amount of design solutions in a short amount of time.

This site collects all of the bits and pieces from my thesis, including my essay and exhibition. I also created a book for documentation.

The winter mailing from Stack Magazines contained the second issue of Ink! In case you’re not a subscriber—even though you should be—you can also purchase a copy from inkthestudio.com/get-a-copy/. The Stack blog also published a Q&A with Nick and me.

The Visualization Marathon 2010 was a 24-hour student data visualization competition, that took place in New York City on October 23. The challange, hosted by Visualizing.org, was to visualize the impact of humanity’s footprint on Spaceship Earth. I worked with my peers Lauren Adams and Beth Taylor to develop an infographic that shows how human actions effects climate change in six steps of separation. We supported our findings with statistics about population growth, deforestation, transportation, water, biodiversity and the ozone.

Co-editor and designer Nick Mrozowski and I built this issue in Detroit from January 6-12. Our collaborators generously donate their time and work on a volunteer basis to create the stories and images included in each issue. Learn more about Ink at www.inkthestudio.com.

We found a stack of newspaper proofs from the 1950s in the unused Free Press Building during the construction of the second issue of Ink. There were also index cards with headlines typed on them from the 50s and a file full of confidential letters. I posted photos from the excursion on flickr.

This image is from one of our first Detroit visit’s while working on the second issue of Ink. The rest of the unedited photos are on flickr.

I made these business cards for my dad for Christmas. Even though he is retired, he manages to stay quite busy and drive my mother crazy.

Some advice on how to develop Ink’s branding and language from David Barringer, one of the thesis critic’s for MICA GD MFA program.

Allow room for evolution. Be flexible in certain areas. It’s kind of an Alexey Brodovitch thing, as well as it’s something Steven Heller told me, to not waste time trying to set everything in stone (or pay a brand nazi to make you a look-at-me logo that hogs the limelight of every page it appears on) but instead to be open to change so that the magazine becomes the best of whatever it’s going to be. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, as Emerson famously said. You don’t want to be consistent for the sake of consistency. You want to design a periodical for the sake of the material and the expression. It’s like a personality. You don’t want to wear the same suit and tell the same jokes at every party you go to. A magazine can be a personality, which means it wears new clothes and tells new jokes and makes every party worth going to.

This was the initial graphic sketch I made to organize a potential thesis project on personalized media. My topic ended up transforming into something different, but this was nonetheless a first step.