The Best Best Buy Logo Money Could Buy

I worked at Best Buy for just over a year, and I was able to help them out with some promotional material when head office... dragged their heels on occasion.

My brother-in-law currently works for them, in a much higher capacity than I did, and he recently wanted to pump up the morale of the store by giving them a unique brand that they can use to distinguish their store during various promotional events.

Apparently, their store is known as the Monarchs, and he wanted something to incorporate their raw, awesome power. This is what I came up with. I think it looks pretty good in application :)

Thanks for reading!

Save The Date!

Sooo much of my life these days is taken up by working on escape room design and prop making that I don't know how to... unlock my free time!!

*ahem*

Because of my affinity for the medium, last month I was requested by a wonderful mom to help do something special for a wedding shower - a portable escape room for the bride and groom! Once I stopped squealing, I humbly accepted.

The game prepped for transport to the party

It was a surprising amount of work, but I had great support from an escape room mentor. Puzzle flow had me confused at first, and there were some puzzles in there that needed A LOT of playtesting, but I think the results were just fantastic.

The happy couple

 What was great about this project is that it's something that I own, so while I've done... 5 different escape rooms in the last year and a half, I can talk about this one without spoiling some information that I don't own.

Puzzlers gonna puzzle

As an added bonus, with a little tweaking I think turning this game a little more generic can make it something more people can play in the future :)

Thanks for reading!

Hail To The King, Baby

I don't know if this has ever come up, but I love board games. At least two of the "always on the plate" projects I have kicking around here are to design my own games. I'll get those done, some day, eventually... but in the last few years Carla and I have been thrown head-first into the world of Eurogames (the fancy ones you see and are like 'that one looks to hard') and I can tell you that it is becoming a heavily saturated market.

What's great, then, is when a friend commissions you to make a custom set of character pieces for one of the coolest games out there, King of Tokyo. It's basically battle Yahtzee where players use giant monster to vie for control of Tokyo. Lots of fun.

For a mutual friend's birthday, we made him a custom set of monster cards (based on his friends and family), and a few new special power cards for him to mess around with. We played it and it rolled out amazingly thanks to the hand crafting of Jared and the Photoshop skills of Kurt.

In all respect and fairness, the basis for the art was found and lovingly altered from the artwork of Brian Allen, and we have no intention of selling it again or making any profit from it, we just REALLY liked it :)

Happy birthday Adam, and thanks for reading!

More Than One Way To Skin A Design

I really like making people happy with my designs.

Like the big robot in the sky once said: See A Need... Fill A Need. Often I have clients that come to me and say that they have Event X coming up, and need Y to make it special. We're then able to sit and talk about what sort of theme, or 'skin' works best for Event X.

Most times people know exactly what they want, sometimes they need help turning their ideas into tangible things, and sometimes I have free rein. In this case, I was somewhere in the middle of all three. We had a baby shower coming up, and Carla needed games to play with the ladies. The mom-to-be is a big Batman fan, and the dad is a Superman freak.

I do not own any of the images used, trademarks of DC / Warner Brothers, etc...



Sometimes, it's too easy :)

Thanks for reading!

I Saved A Seat, Just For You :)

The CRUX Of The Matter....

... is that I've got some very exciting news.

So I've been off the grid for a while, hammering out some small things here and there in typical artistic fashion, but the BULK of my time has been going to a semi-secret project that I can finally talk about!

So, in case you were unaware, I like designing. And I like puzzles. And I've learned that I really like escape / adventure rooms. Turns out that through some delightful happenstance I've been able to actually design an escape room. A good friend of mine who's made his way into the Southern Ontario escape room community (yes, that is actually a thing. I was surprised too) got the opportunity to manage his own escape room for a company called CRUX. He's brilliant with puzzle concept, but not with the art, and offered me the chance to fill the room with all the things!

We've been working on this now for a few months, and soft opened last weekend, but as I was hanging out tonight putting up some final stickers we had our FIRST walk-in customers! It's been insane to see this as an empty building to puzzle concepts to to construction and everything in between.

Unfortunately, this is the one of the few projects I can't preview here, as it might ruin some of the puzzles of the room, and blow the surprise the theme, but I CAN tell you our first room is called Dead Air.

With total bias, I recommend you check out our Facebook page, and if you like what you see, pop over to the CRUX's website and see about setting up a booking. We are making new rooms, and I solemnly swear that this won't turn into only advertising for the room, but it's the only way you're going to see my art this time ;)

Thanks for reading!

Denver, The Foam Dinosaur

Remember these?

I do! I used to love these growing up. I had a few of them, and I remember putting them together, and then moving to more complicated ones. Once I started working with foam again, and piecing together the sections of the Stargate, I remembered putting together these puzzles and thought "Hey! Let's combine these things!"

So I found a pattern like this...

...printed them large format, and then used that as a template to make much bigger foam pieces out of them...

...and unearthed this old beast! A special thank you to my lovely assistant who held the tail down. The structural stability of the final product wasn't as good as the old wooden ones, and was way too top heavy. Learnings for next time!

As always, thanks for reading :)

Pop Culture Contest: The Return!

Good morning children!

The response to the first run at the Pop Culture Contest were overwhelming, and not only did I have people request well after the contest closed, almost a month later people were asking if they still had a chance to enter :)

So once again, I gave the first four people who responded to my Facebook post the chance to have their name(s) immortalized in a reference to their favourite pop culture theme.

Congratulations to the winners :)

As always, thanks for reading!

Pop Culture Contest The First

I gave the first four people who responded to my Facebook post the chance to have their name(s) immortalized in a reference to their favourite pop culture theme. The results are in!

Thanks to all those who participated. Keep checking my page regularly, as another contest like this will definitely be coming up soon!

Sneak Peek

I have too many ideas in my head. This is something I'm playing with now:

Very preliminary, but also very excited...

That is all. Thanks for reading :)

Holy Wedding, Batman!

It's been an exciting time around here the last little bit.

Two of my very good friends, Darren and Robyn, finally got married! Their wedding was a huge success, and being that they were friends of mine, naturally their wedding was impressively geeky.

Apart from Darren (accenting his suit as Batman) and Robyn (accenting her dress as Catwoman), the wedding party also had geeky accents (I wore green and white ala Green Lantern!). The set ups for the table were all hand crafted, comic book themed accents created by Robyn and the wedding party. The cake was Lego themed, and the hall even had large screens playing in the background with various superhero themed musical interludes :)

So aside from being in the wedding party, and this being the creative blog of a graphic design, many of you must be asking how these two things relate. As it turns out, there were two things the couple needed. First, they wanted the stage to look like a Gotham City rooftop, with the 'heroes' and 'villains' sitting around, chatting and eating for the night. To achieve this effect, they had both a bat signal shining overhead the whole night, as well as a faux cityscape arranged along the front of the head table:

If you can imagine, the second thing was even cooler. For their give aways to the guests, the couple commissioned a local comic artist to create a graphical version of the story of how they met! They provided the concept, and the artist fleshed it out. We even had the final version printed on comic book stock, and inserted some fake ads to tie the whole thing together. While I can't take much of the credit in terms of the art, I did handle the colouring and layout to the final cover (which is Darren as Superman and Robyn as Batman):

 

Congratulations you guys!

Client Spotlight - Ontario Office Works

This is a long overdue client spotlight for some wonderful people that without whom there might not be an Intelligent Designs! First, some background:

Way back when, yours truly worked in the design department of a large company. This was my first job out of school, and boy did I need it to help me take all this amazing, raw talent and hone it into a more marketable and business-oriented thing. A few years into a wonderful learning experience, I was laid off.

This part next is a little harder. I looked around for a long while for a decent job in my field, but was unable to find one. Eventually, I went on Employment Insurance, but with the end looming I made the decision to take a risk and start working for myself. That involved a lot of discussions with government offices, second career employers, etc., but because we were in the process of moving, everything waited until we were here in Niagara region. That was when I was put in contact with Ontario Office Works.

From their website:

Ontario Office Works Inc. is a dynamic service oriented company focused on providing small businesses with the information and support needed to grow and prosper in today's business environment.

We help people to understand... and take action!

So what does that mean? It means it's a group of caring professionals, men and women who are experts in their field that really care about your success and well being, that use their resources to help you grow. And that's the key there: the staff at OOW help grow YOU just as much as growing your business. They take your idea and nurture it, help you understand it and build on it, and when you're secure there (or more often at the same time), then they relate it to growing your business.

 
I picked up a lot of knowledge about best practices, accounting, bookkeeping... all of the things a small business owner needs to know to get their feet on the ground. All the while, I knew that I could pop in any time with a question, attend one of their free classes, and even have a great conversation with the staff pretty much any time. Over the years we've done a great deal of work, and I can guarantee that their marketing materials are always updating ;)

If you're a small business owner in the Niagara Region and unsure about how to take your living room hobby and make it a functioning, profitable business, then give the good people at Ontario Office Works a call.

Back From Another Dimension

First, a super congratulations to Mel and Pete, wonderful new couple and commissioners of all things fantasy and strange.

Way back when, there was an idea of a wedding. A nerdy wedding. One that would have certain overtones that few would appreciate and many would question. But there was a hope there, and the fact that if you didn't understand why you were at the "12th Doctor Table" versus "The Dalek Table" then you probably stumbled into the wrong hall anyway. Of these geeky sprinklings, one things stood out - it stood very loud, and very tall...


Let's start with a bit of explanation as to what a wedding arch is. Mel and Pete felt they needed to mix a bit of the traditional with the bit of fun, so they asked me to create a wedding arch that resembled a Stargate (for more info, click here).

I immediately thought that to get the ten foot tall size in the best arts and crafts way was to use sheets of 20 x 30 foamcore from either the dollar store or Michaels. I used some high resolution images of the original Stargate I found online to create some vector art, and then borrowed a projector from another client (the fine OOW) and recreated it at full-ish size:

From there, I traced / cut out all the details for a proper, 3D look:

Once all 11 (ELEVEN!) pieces were created and assembled, I painted it all with a nice silver acrylic to give it a weathered metal look, then spray painted it with a Krylon stone textured paint to give it some extra pop:

Originally I was only going to have a single chevron up top, but looking at all the pictures there were 8 to correspond to the dial code to lock, so I kept the top one super detailed but added the others in a more simplified fashion. Oh, and did I mention that I made it so that when you inserted glow sticks it looked like it was lit up and active? This was just a test, the final had two sticks on the sides that fit in perfectly:

From there, I put it all together:

And delivered it to the happy couple to display at their wedding. Naturally, we had to test the thing prior to delivery, and since time moves differently on the other side, you'll have to forgive my long absence. There was a lot of positive feedback though, so that's awesome!

As always, thanks for reading!

Client Spotlight - Trainer Jane

When you start your own business, you always hope that it will succeed. You can never know for sure, but if it's your passion, that's sometimes enough to push through and make it big.

When I moved out to the Durham region for a year, the first thing I did was try to connect with other small businesses. It involved a lot of meetings, joining chambers, pressing flesh, the usual stuff. It didn't take very long for me to hear the name "Trainer Jane" being talked about at a number of these events. Jane knew how to work the events, and while I wasn't necessarily looking for personal training at the time, he energy and passion plants the seed in people that she meets that says "pay attention to what this person is saying".

If anyone remembers my post about hats, Trainer Jane kind of makes me look bad :P She's a personal trainer, an author, a speaker, and a professional motivator: she gets people out to her Win Win networking event every month, and connects small businesses over discussions about what they can do to improve business in their area.


The Durham region was abuzz this summer with the introduction of light-up name tags, and the first work I ever did for Trainer Jane was to properly design her one of these, as she was content to show up at her events with her name hand written on this... nobody's perfect ;) Shortly after we relocated to Niagara, Jane contacted me again about her upcoming fitness book, and needed some assistance promoting it. I was familiar with media kits, but this was the first time I really got to sink my teeth into one. The artwork isn't final just yet, but expect these bad boys to be available pretty soon :)

Book Cover (artwork not final)

Sample Media Kit Page

Trainer Jane his all the social media outlets, and I highly recommend looking around at what she has to say. Until next time, thanks for reading!

Thronies Rejoice!

What seems like forever ago, Carla bought me the Game of Thrones Puzzle of Westeros.

For anyone else putting this together, I feel your pain: the water is all black with SUBTLE shading water lines to indicate waves, the boats all look the same, and most of the pieces everywhere actually fit together. Over the course of something like a month we finally got it all together.

As soon as it went together I knew I had to frame it. It took a while to make this happen, as we were about to move, I didn't have the wood or the tools, etc. We brought it rolled to my parents' place and soon I started assembling the shadowbox. It had to be deep, as the Eyrie stands about 2.25 inches tall! (so cool!)

I bought the glass for it, had my dad help me with the construction, and coloured the backboard it was glued to to highlight some of the colours (shown in the picture above). Now it's mounted on the wall of our apartment, and I whistle the theme song every time I see it :D

You know you're jealous ;)

Fiesta Week!

So if you're in the Durham Region, or from the Durham Region, or have heard of the Durham Region... or really even none of the above... you should know it's Fiesta Week!

Fiesta week is a week long "taste of Durham" multicultural festival where various pavilions represent the diverse cultural heritage of the region, and of their home countries.

It started with a parade on Fathers' Day that went all around Oshawa and continues with food and fun most every night all around town. We're new to the area, so it's really neat to see what's going on, and apparently is a big deal :P I've had a number of people who are local to the area tell me the whole thing is a lot of fun and that they go every year.

So what does all this mean? Why am I, and Intelligent Designs by default, interested in this event? Well, first for all the aforementioned reasons, but also because I got to create some stretch targets in an area I don't often play in: book layout and design.

Every year the Folk Arts Council puts together a publication that gets handed out during Fiesta Week that talks about the pavilions, advertises local businesses that help, and act as a guide book to multiculturalism. This year I was approached to help create overall designs for said book, and eventually worked to help create the layout for the whole thing!

This was a neat little feather in my cap for several reasons: I don't often work on editorial pieces but now I have a complete piece for the portfolio; my completed work was seen by the most amount of people ever, and completely advertised for me (as opposed to pieces for clients where I don't get to advertise myself on it directly); I got to look behind the scenes of booklet layout that will be important when I finally finish all my projects that will need rulebooks and the like.

Anyway, if you're in the Durham region, check out Fiesta Week and grab a book. It's a fancy double-sized version this year, so take two ;)

As always, thanks for reading!

The front cover of the book

Pavilion layouts. Over a dozen in total

Some concepts I created as a special anniversary banner

BOOM! Headshot!

Can you believe it's been a whole year since those crazy kids over at Headshots sat themselves down, strapped on their Depends, and ran a playthrough of Borderlands 2 for 24 hours?

Oh, you can? Ok, you can leave then. For those that stayed, it's happening again! This Saturday, May 3rd, the team takes over Kwartzlab, pushing aside the 3D printer, sliding over the laser cutter, and propping up a dozen or so chairs to make room for a gaming marathon all with the good cause of working with Child's Play  and because, well, they're big nerds and they love FPS.

Now, I don't mean to rustle your jimmies too much, but there's going to be all kinds of interesting things going on in the slim, slim chance playing Borderlands isn't enough for you: there will be an online auction, as well as telecasted discussions, special guests, a lemur, some celebrities, possibly balloons, food for those in person, and possibly a giraffe.

Intelligent Designs has been working with them from the beginning, sussing out their design needs for the website, the apparel, the advertising, anything they need really. I've also physically been to the event every year, Carla taking a keen interest in getting in front of the camera to help run events.

There's a lot more I could say, and a lot more information that you can find on the website, but really, you have to be there to get the whole effect, so come on down! Maybe if you're really lucky, you're get chased with a Nerf gun, or rock out upstairs on Rock Band :D

Thanks as always for reading!

**Edit** There won't be Rock Band this year, but there MAY be a giraffe....