Calm Wolf Shirt

I designed this shirt. I think it's pretty good. I did it in Illustrator CS2, drawing each triangle individually, using no filters or cheats. If enough people vote for it, Threadless will print it and America will be a safer place.

Thanks.

Starr Hill Logo Reimagined

Sometimes it's fun to take a logo and redesign it in such a way that takes the branding in a completely new direction. I spend a lot of time thinking about brewery logos and branding, and I started thinking about Starr Hill's logo. It's a giant star that looks like a sheriff's badge from the wild west. I like it. It's simple, bold, immediately recognizable. I'm not trying to "improve" anything (just as a disclaimer). I'm a fan who wants to reimagine the corporate identity of one of my favorite breweries.

Anyway, here's what I was thinking: Blue Ridge, nighttime music festivals, soothing, modern, and military.
The star always looks a bit military to me. I used a camouflage swatch set to come up with the color motif. I want more than one star to give us the idea of a good night and even a little magic (think a sorcerer's cap). I kept all caps on the logo for strength, but I used Helvetica to make it simply modern. I think it's a good contrast with the rounded corners of the bounding box. It makes the beer look accessible and easy. It's also fine when it goes black and white with a little help.

I worked the golden mean a bit more than I usually do on this one. Also, I wanted it to be reminiscent of patriotism. . . I'm kind of dancing with the military thing a bit.

Just to restate: I am not criticizing Starr Hill's logo in ANY WAY. Think of this like you would Twilight fan fiction. I'm just a fan having fun with design.

Low Poly Gray Wolf

I love the look of low poly artwork, so I spent all day making this wolf. Well, I made a full color wolf, and then changed it to this blue-gray version because I'm thinking about making it into a shirt. It's pretty cool to have it as a vector file and able to manipulate it in different ways.

Lady Hobo

A fan of the last hobo images I drew asked me to make one for her and her daughter of a girl hobo, so I did, and here it is. I hope you all like it.

Naked Cancer

 My friend Sara Pharris has cancer. She runs the Cancer Princess blog, and she's started a new project called NakedCancer.org, with which she aims to "strip cancer awareness down to its birthday suit." She said she wanted a logo like the one she designed, just different and "original."

I wanted to concentrate on strength more than sexiness because it's not really a porn site, you know? But the strength it takes to bare it all and maybe bear it all for the cause is something that should be encouraged and glamorized, says me. So, I built silhouettes of women jumping, suggesting their nudity, and made them orange because I thought orange was a very bold color, though that might change. She wanted a type treatment, so I looked at some of the most common ones that are tried and true, and then I took another look and wanted an amateur look to one, and that's my favorite, #4. It reminds me of Bee-gees covers or the seventies and maybe seventies porn or something. Anyway, there's something more friendly about it. 

My book of poetry is published

I have a book. It's good. It's called the Haunting of Ninjatown. I have been doing alternate cover things lately. I am liking them. 

You should buy it. If you buy it, you should write a review on Amazon. I am going to sprinkle weird alternative covers all over the Internet just because I'm feeling saucy.

How to Make Tea

I made this to show people how to make tea, and I also wanted to do something fun on the tea side of the Darjeeling Café. Even though we're concentrating a lot of our efforts on wine, trying to turn our restaurant into the wine destination of Central Virginia, we don't want to forget where we came from. After all, this whole thing started with tea.

We're much more like a European tea room than anything else: come in for some tea, stay for lunch, hang out with friends, before you know it, it's time to enjoy a great beer or wine, then it's dinner time. That's how I lived when I was in Europe (not every day of course, but often), and I think that luxury is missing in people's lives here in the USA.