SteadyRain: More Than Just Web Design

To celebrate my last day as Creative Director at SteadyRain, I want to share the video I recently created to show the people and the place that is SteadyRain. I'm not going anywhere important, but I'm branching out to do some work on my own, and honestly to see what happens. It's a little scary, but it's even more exciting to be staring the unknown in the face.

This video celebrates everything I have come to know and love about this company and these people, plus I think it's a great piece regardless. I did all the dirty work on this one... concepting, shooting/directing, editing, music, etc... so it really feels like my baby.

Enjoy. Here's to taking a chance on creativity... and to the future.

A Live Show Approaches

For the first time in at least a year (probably longer), I'm playing a show. You heard me right... it's time to get back into the swing of things. I've got a bunch of new material I've been working on for a while now and it's time to share. I'll also be having the honor of opening for my former bandmate, Mike Steimel, and his band... not to mention that DJ Lamartina will be keeping things going between sets. It will also be my first time at the Gramophone, so all-in-all, I'm really looking forward to the night.

You can buy advance tickets from the Gramophone website here: http://thegramophonelive.com/shows/

Scoring Dealership The Series

During the recording of the Dealership soundtrack, I took some time to document my work on one of the episodes, The Lemon... and aside from being really ridiculous, there's a small sprinkling of actual information in there. It's not educational or anything, I can assure you... it was fun to document a little bit of my process though.

laBar

laBar is an upscale bar planned to open in the spring of 2011, in the Midtown area of St. Louis. They came to me to create the entire package, from identity to website, and I was thrilled to be a part of it. I always say it, but it's such a treat to work with people who not only appreciate good design, but enjoy seeking it. That made this an incredibly enjoyable process all of the way through.

In creating this identity, the only guideline was that the 'la' should stand out from 'bar', and based on a slick, modern wallpaper I had seen (and envisioned in the bar itself) I started sketching ideas for this petal. I wanted the petal to be very multi-purpose, usable with or without the text, and so I landed on what is basically a square with two opposite rounded corners. The fact that it's a square makes it lend itself well to patterns, and the plan is to work it into the decor of the bar.

Since the bar isn't open yet, the plan was to create a password-protected version of what the website would be like once the bar was open, as a selling tool for investors. Business cards, stationary, and etc have been created as well so that instead of getting an idea on paper, potential investors get to experience everything but the bar itself. Plus, once the bar opens, everything is already finished and ready to go with just an update of content.

As for the mechanics of the site, it was done entirely in Flash, as is common with bars and restaurants, to allow for a feeling of excitement and drama. I also added in this horizontally scrolling content area, which the user can simply click and drag to navigate. Because it works effortlessly, it adds some fun and makes visiting this site a memorable experience. There's also a slick text-as-graphics animated intro movie using the same descriptive 'la' words found in the site's navigation.

Dealership The Series

Dealership was a unique project for me... I initially came onto the project to create original music for the pilot episode back in something like 2006. It was a great experience and when the guys decided to create a web series out of the concept, I signed on to score the episodes.

Basically, once everything was under way, and the guys were starting to work on promoting the upcoming release, it became clear to me that they needed a designer in the mix, so I offered my services. At this point, I believed in the episodes and was obviously invested to some extent, so I wanted to do anything in my power to make the whole package 'work'.

It started as a simple website design, but eventually I was creating business cards, t-shirts and everything under the sun. The look and feel I developed even ended up influencing the title and credit sequences, which was really an honor. It was all fun, whereas few projects tend to be... and I feel like I got to contribute to something totally unique... so let's count this one as a win.

Below is one of my favorite episodes from the series, The Trip. The music turned out to be really great, but one of the most fun things I did throughout any of the soundtracks was an effect I did in this one. Not to give it all away, but the guys end up on an acid trip... so to accentuate the feeling of warped reality, I took the dialog and ran it through an analog delay, tweaking the delay time and feedback as it went. With an analog delay, when you change the delay time, the echoing audio speeds up or slows down as it decays, so it starts to sound really crazy and almost 'melty' or something. It started out only on a line here and there, but as the trip becomes more intense, I pulled the effect in more and more until it was on all the time at the end. Of course with the loudness of the chaos at the end, it's probably completely lost in there, but I like knowing it's in there.