11.22.09 Business cards for my wife
My wife, Svetlana, recently started working as an independent nurse practitioner at Arbors at London, in nearby London, Ohio. To help mark her first position as an NP, I designed her business cards.
She came up with the idea of logo that incorporated a stethoscope inside of a heart. I was struck by the similarities in their shapes and was able to design a stethoscope whose ear pieces formed an outline of an iconic heart. Svetlana and I worked back-and-forth to refine the mark and add color and typography to support it.
We've since added the brand to letterhead and office flyers.
03.12.09 First video and Flash animation
I just wrapped up my first video production in Final Cut Pro. Working with fellow Ohio University graduate student Rachel Mummey, we documented how the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks helps small businesses in Athens and the surrounding counties.
To tell ACEnet's story, we focused on Jonathan Milo Leal, founder and owner of Milo's Whole World Gourmet as he and his crew put together their latest batch of salad dressing. This shipment was destined for Japan. Jonathan is one of ACEnet's greatest success stories. His line of Vino de Milo pasta sauces and salad dressings are sold all across the country and internationally in four other countries.
You can watch his story here.
My next post is a couple of months old, but it's my first animation created in Flash. There's no sound, but hopefully you'll still find it engaging. It's brief, and it reveals my secret celebrity man-crush.
03.01.09 New slideshows!
With only two more weeks left in my second quarter of graduate school at Ohio University, I have two new audio slideshows to share.
The first is a profile of Ellie Olin, a nurse at Nationwide Children's Hospital who spends Saturday evenings bellydancing at Salaam, a middle-eastern restaurant in Athens.
Watch Ellie's story here.
The second slideshow for my Audio and Video for Photojournalists class documented OU's Got Talent, a student competition that took place February 9 in OU's student center. Three talented students sang, played and rapped for audience members and judges. Fellow graduate student Jenny Cecil shot the photographs.
Watch their story here.
Most of my time this quarter has been spent on my graduate project, an interactive Web site about the history of my hometown of Lebanon, Ohio. It will live at www.HistoricLebanonOhio.com when it's finished in June.
11.24.08 Back to work
After finishing my first 10-week quarter of graduate school at Ohio University, I returned to work at The Dispatch today. OU offers a six-week winter break and I'm spending it back in Columbus at the newspaper.
That's not entirely true. My wife, Svetlana, and I are flying to Las Vegas next week. It will be my first time to Vegas. We'll be staying at the Stratosphere and attending a show Sunday night.
My first quarter in the VisCom program was productive. In addition to creating this site, I also designed the Web site for the program's annual Dawn to Dusk photoshoot and a portfolio site for two friends who run a design studio in Cleveland. Fellow graduate students Peter Hoffman and Carrie Pratt created the slideshow for the Dawn to Dusk site, while I designed the architecture. For www.snikstudio.com, my friends Scott and Nicole Wilson provided the content and art direction.
For my audio production class, I created two slideshows using ProTools to edit the audio and Final Cut Pro to add the images.
For the first one, my friend Kevin and his now wife Lorelle tell the incredible story of how they finally found each other, 10 years after meeting for the first time. I used family photographs from the wedding to illustrate their narration.
My second audio slideshow was recorded by VisCom student Corey Michalek at Ground Zero in New York City. Corey found a unique man named Harry J. Rowland who devotes his time to reminding visitors of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. I used radio broadcasts and Associated Press photographs to supplement my photographs and Corey's audio recording.
The crowning achievement of my fall quarter is a three-minute animation that tells the story of lawyer Clement Vallandigham, and how he died in Lebanon, Ohio's Golden Lamb in 1871. I recorded foley sound effects to embellish the taleas told by my father, Johnand used Apple's Motion 3 to animate my pen-and-ink drawings.
I plan to find a better way to present these projects on my Web site, but this will do for now.
10.12.08 It's getting late
I've been working on this Web site for about four hours straight now. It's now 3 A.M. and I don't feel tired, but I know I should wrap this up.
Putting together this portfolio site for my Web Design class at Ohio University has been fun. I'm learning to use Dreamweaver after experimenting with straight code-writing for a couple of years now. The program takes care of so much of the hassle. Every letter, bracket and quote mark means the difference between something working or failing.
I don't know how often I'll write blog entries — usually if I have something to say, I'll just e-mail or call a specific person. I find it a little creepy that this message is going out on the Web where anyone can read it. Not that anyone would want to. There's no nude celebrities or political hate mongering here.
This Web site is part of my graduate studies at Ohio University, where I am taking a nine-month break from The Columbus Dispatch to learn about multimedia. I'm in the university's School of Visual Communication, where I was fortunate enough to be awarded the school's Knight Fellowship this year.
It's a lot of work — more than my job at the paper — mostly because the work follows me home after classes and over the weekends. I just hope it doesn't follow me to my pillow tonight.