Patriot Graphics

Happy Independence Day everyone!  In the spirit of bbq, baseball, apple pie, fireworks, social security, inappropriate Facebook statuses and everything that makes America as kick ass as it is today, here are a couple of patriot related graphics I've made for work.

Holiday Themed Logo Tag for e-mail signatures

Flyer for VA loans

VA variant flyer

Quick note on the flyer formats.  We're moving towards an automated system for personalizing flyers for brokers, so the bottom 3 inches are left blank for their contact info.  It's made designing them a bit more dicey, but I try my best to keep it cohesive .

Thanks for reading! :)

Flashing Pretty Girls ;)

A couple weeks ago, my friend and old photo instructor, Peter, asked me to assist him in a workshop he was doing for small flash photography.  I took a bunch of random behind the scenes type shots (some for me, but mostly for his blog) and here are a few random ones I've had the time to process.  I'll probably be posting more later (I shot a lot and have been a little lazy sifting through them).

Peter setting up a shot

Unsuccessfully sneaking up on Lindsey

Artificial Wind? Check.

Caitlin checks out the results

Someone cracks a joke

A break between shots

Thanks for reading!

Killing Time with Photo-Retouching!

Every so often things get slow at work, and I'm left to my own devices to try to pass the day.  Most of the time I'm on reddit, mining basketball news, or stuck in a wikipedia loop.  But lately,  I've been having fun pulling random photos (from flickr, or the random employee shots for our online directory at work) and messing with them in Photoshop.  It's surprisingly addictive, seeing how much you can tweak a photo without making someone look like a mutant :-D.   

*Disclaimer: All photos belong to those people's who's flickrs I took them off of and the last 2 specifically belong to Mountain West Financial, Inc.

This was shot by my friend from class, Anita Malony. 
Visit her Flickr HERE

This shot belongs to Phoenix Photography (whoever he/she is)

This is a shot from work that a broker gave me for her business card.

Another broker for her business card.

On a quick side note:  I intend to start updating this blog on a more regular basis, (specifically, every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month).  So for those of you who look for updates (SHOUT OUTS TO MOM!), there you go.

As always, Thanks for reading!

Andy the Killer

Some portraits of my buddy, Andy, that I took for my studio photography class a while back.  I processed them a bunch to try to give them a tougher/grittier look.  It might have been a bit overboard, but I kind of liked how they turned out :).

 
Don't let these shots fool you, though.  Andy's a pretty decent guy :).

You can see more of him and my other work on FLICKR

Thanks for reading.

Fun with E-mail Blasts!

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Here's just a few things I did recently at work.  It can get tough trying to come up with new ways to show what is essentially the same thing, but I think I might be starting to get the hang of it.  These particular pieces are e-mail invitations for informational seminars for our mortgage brokers.

All works shown are properties of Mountain West Financial, Inc.

Check out more of my work on my (Newly Updated!)
FLICKR

Thanks for reading :)

Skills USA: California Advertising Design Contest

Produce the following projects on your computer. Use any software you are familiar with. You will design a logo for a company called Evergreen Marketing. Evergreen is a new company, trying to enter the direct mail market and portray a “green” environmentally-friendly image. Once the logo is created, you will create an 11” x 17” advertisement Design your projects with the grading criteria (listed below) in mind. Remember, this project is destined for print production, so watch color model, resolution, and bleed issues.

Details:
Evergreen Marketing, 4800 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside CA 92506
Phone: 951 222-8583
FAX: 951 222-8491
www.evergreenmarketing.com
Jeffrey Finner, owner
Services: Ad creation, mailing lists, brokered printing, ink jet labeling, postage, and inserting (Make up other detail as you see necessary).

2nd Place Entry

Logo

Layout

Thanks for reading!

An Experiment in Color

For a class I'm currently taking on color theory, I was recently given an assignment designed to explore the emotions and feelings associated with different colors.  

For my photos, I drew inspiration (i.e. stole the idea :-D) from a simple lighting set-up I read on my old photo instructor's blog.  THANKS PETER!   ;-)

From the start I kind of saw this assignment as a chance to experiment.  I figured that if I kept certain elements the same (in this case the wine glass and light source) I could better gauge the impact of the changes that were made (the colors).

And not only that, but this gave me the happy excuse to only shoot one simply executed setup (HOORAY for laziness! :D).  Here's what I came up with.

I was fairly surprised by the results.  I mean, everything was kept the same save for color, but that change made a huge difference in the way the photos looked and the emotions they exuded.  I found myself being fooled depending on the color (the red made me see a glass of wine, the orange of champagne, and the black made me see poison),  even though I knew that it was just plain tap water. 

I often think about colors in the design work that I do (it's pretty essential actually), but It still really surprised me how much it could change and truly impact an image.

Thanks for reading.