some “designy” stuff (on wheels)

The resumés of Vibrant Design principals Christopher Landy and Ellen Waggett—full of lighting and art direction assignments for TV shows and concerts—will make your head spin. These days, Ellen is the Production Designer for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” while Chris recently finished work on several episodes of “The Marriage Ref.” So it was a great pleasure to design the identity for Vibrant a few years back.

This year they’ve created GreenGripGear.org, a leasing service for environmentally-friendly lighting equipment. Best of all, they acquired some wheels to make it mobile. Here is their “trucklette” in its nature environment of Dumbo, Brooklyn, sporting yet another one of my logos.

not just for the birds...

By the look of this blog over the last month or so, you’d think all I’ve been up to was corralling a loony menagerie of birds. Today, I’m happy to share several recent projects that involved nary a winged creature.

My work for Kiwi Magazine continues. Pictured above is the essay piece for their October-November issue about an unreligious family who find value in saying grace, and below, two spots from their Cooking Class section which I turned into a cookie crust construction site. (Yes, the workers are building a pie crust out the pieces of their brethren.)

This month I designed my first app—a game developed by Little, Brown and Company to promote a young adult novel they will be publishing this winter. More details to come once the app is released.

I was also hired by my pals at Vibrant Design to create a logo for their new offshoot company, GreenGripGear.com, promoting more environmentally-friendly, theatrical lighting equipment. I’m hoping to score some pretty photos of their shiny, black “trucklette” sporting both the GreenGripGear and Vibrant logos soon. As far as I recall, my work has never before appeared on a moving vehicle.

And last but not least, my newest client is Lake Isle Press, “Publishers of Books for Cooks.” They will be celebrating their 20th Anniversary at the Rubin Museum of Art here in New York City in November, so I was thrilled to be asked to illustrate and design their invitation to the big event, a detail of which is seen above.

That’s all for now. Happy Halloween!

mtvu woodie awards–december 4th

Lucky me! On Wednesday night, I went to the MTVu Woodie Awards at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC...all I can say is WOW! Christopher Landy and his team at Vibrant Design did an amazing job! Matt and Kim opened the show by riding into Roseland on bicycyles, then took the stage while my little guys started marching across—I don't know how many screens. It was a big thrill. And to top it off, Matt and Kim won in their category for best video.

MTV will broadcast the entire show on December 4th at 10 PM, ET.

mtv woodie awards animation

Ever heard of the MTV Woodie Awards? Well, I hadn't until about a week ago when my lighting-designer-guru friend Christopher Landy of Vibrant Design called me. He wanted an animation of some figures to project along a 48' balcony for the awards show at Roseland Ballroom in New York, behind nominated band Matt and Kim while they perform their song "Lessons Learned."

So I spent the better part of last week on it. (See below, where you can watch a beginning clip.) If you want to see Matt and Kim's nominated video and hear their terrific song, check it out here on YouTube.

There were definitely some lessons learned on my part technically, but over all it was really fun. I can't wait to see what Chris and his crew do with it—they're going to add lots of color and other effects.

The show will be broadcast on December 4th—more details to come in a later posting.