Happy Holidays from ICDI<<

Hectic holiday schedules lead to lack of time to spend on spreading holiday cheer with new designs. I didn't do any new Christmas cards this year, but here's a blast from the past...


Merry Christmas everyone.

Florida Missing Children's Day '09

Well it’s been a while and I’m quite behind on this particular post as the Missing Children’s Day was long past and gone. Between my new workout schedule, the holidays, and the updates to portfolio, I’ve been neglecting my blogging duties, but I felt like bloging my involvement with this special event anyway so get over it already, yeeeeeeesh.

Several Months ago I was tasked with creating a backdrop for the Ceremonies taking place in our states capital for Missing Children’s Day by the Florida Outdoor Advertising Association. Yeah I’m cool like that I guess. …Anyway using a Florida map graphic created by another designer, I assembled a nice quick clean design.


It went over well and was approved very soon after completion. It was mounted on a mobile billboard and parked as the backdrop to the ceremonies to be held with state officials in attendance including the Governor Charlie Crist.

Me being based in Tampa I was not able to get there in Tallahassee for the ceremony but thanks to Amy at FOAA I was able to get a hold of a few pictures of the day.


I think it was about a week or so later after the big day I was contacted by the Florida Missing Children’s Day Foundation President, Drew Kesse. He was grateful for my involvement and arranged a time to come by and give me a nice plaque and a lovely letter of gratitude.


Speaking with him about his own involvement with the foundation when his daughter went missing a few years ago in Orlando, I realized I had done artwork for that cause as well. The conversation led me to remember the story my mom told me about how I was almost abducted by someone when I was just a few years old playing at the local park.

This is more than a serious and worthy cause. Just in this past year there have been several cases of formerly missing children returning home found again after years of families hoping and praying for the day they’d return. There’s always a chance and hope is a powerful driving factor.

I am glad to have been involved with raising awareness for this cause.

Bastard In A Basket

The newest creation...



Black and white acrylic on 15 3/4" X 9 1/4" rough cut Hickory

The 10 most influential CD covers to me

I just want to make this clear, this isn’t a list of my favorite album covers or a list of the best ones in my opinion. This is a list of the CD covers that somewhat shaped me in my youth and lead me toward a life of design and art. (more on that later)

With that said…

10. Steely Dan – Gaucho
I wasn’t very familiar with this music growing up. My dad tried to raise me on classic rock, where my mother brought me up on stuff like Michael W Smith & Amy Grant. Early in my youth my mom won the battle of my listening regiment so I never got into the classic rock until around middle school. This album was kind of an enigma to me. The painting on it haunted me. I cant say I was overly moved by it but it certainly created interest in an album covers for me at the earliest stage I can remember. This and GNR – Lies were definitely the kick off to album art for me, but “lies” was a horrible cover looking back I’m not including that one on this list.


9. MXPX – Life in general.
This was a mainstay of my listening for a good while. Those angsty teenage years listening to punk and ska and skanking around the house were the good old days for me. This album art really sticks out in my mind. Its bright vivid imagery and depiction of what the album is all about. It was also another eye opener to the fact that artistic ability and drawing skills were valuable assets and could be all you need to grace an album cover with you own work one day.

8. Newsboys – Take me to your leader.
This one doesn’t look like a whole lot at first. Its simple. A logo, retro picture (been done a million times on CD covers) and the album title, but there’s more to it than that. I may be cheating a little here and including the fact that the rest of the CD package helps this move up the list, but I cant help it. From the little green man peeking through the CD hole before you remove the disc, to the saturated and tinted (Tony Scott style) pictures inside really make it all come together. also looking back, I really love the font choices they used in this design.

7. Led Zeppelin – Presence
Not only was this the first album I got “the Led out” to, but before hand, was another foreign album to me along with Steely Dan and Guns and Roses. I was always perplexed by the images. What was that little black object? This was one of the first times I recall taking in art that made you think. And even more so, made me realize that the CD package can tell a story just as much as the music itself can. Very powerful.

6. Third Day- self titled
My best friend bought this on summer vacation in Tennessee the year it came out. I remember sitting in the back of a dirty utility van with no air-conditioning on our way through the back roads of a small town in the beautiful smoky mountains. All I could think about though was the cryptic images scattered throughout the cover art. The fire in the headlight, the peach in the window, the sale price sign… what was it all about. It made me want to listen to the music even more to see if the answers were hidden away in the tunes. In that aspect, I’d say that’s a successful cover.

5. P.O.D. – Fundamental Elements of Southtown
Ill never forget when I went to pick this up at K-Mart back in the day. I called ahead to the store to see if they had it in stock before I drove out there to get it. A little old lady answered the phone as she was working in electronics that day. She said it was in and I had her hold it for me. (Not that anyone else in tiny old Brooksville listened to POD anyway) when I got there and asked for the held CD, she just gave me a glare and asked “What kind of music is this?” by looking at the cover and seeing the word “death” in the name of the band, she had taken the music as some kind of devil music, and me as some sort of devil kid. I sort of smiled and told her that it was Christian rock and proceeded to purchase the CD. Its amazing that despite the name of the band, the imagery that’s associated with it bears so much weight and is so interpretive to the audience looking at it. Where I saw an amazing painted artwork filled with cryptic imagery and complexities, she saw some cultic and brooding devil work. That interaction sent a strong message to me and has really stuck through the years.

4. Pink Floyd- Animals
There are no limits to Storm Thorgerson’s genius. His legendary Pink Floyd album art is inspiration of its own. Regardless of being an album cover, even if it were just a print, its amazing work. My favorite just might be “Ummagumma” but Animals was where I was truly introduced and fell in love with Floyd and through their music, Strom. I really wanted to make this album art higher on this list as it holds so much impact on me. It’s really close to being as high as #2 but in looking at it as far as impact in shaping me to the path and life I’m living now, it really only goes so far as I think I was somewhat down the art-and-design path by this time already. The other three in front of this shaped my desires for graphic design and album art, more. As they were a little more early in my thoughts of becoming an artist one day…. But man, I really want to make this higher on the list. Good job Strom. I tip my hat to you.

3. SkyPark- Am I Pretty?
In terms of artwork and vision this doesn’t hold a candle to Floyds “Animals”, but in terms of pushing me towards a life of design this one is almost as influential as it gets. It was the scratchy, grunge look that gave it appeal to the whole package. The scary masks with the hidden meaning behind the album title made it particularly eerie. The main reason I’d say this is so high on this list as it kind of paved way for many of my original sketches for CD packages back when I was in high school. I remember I had a graphic design class in school and we had a project to make a simple 3-page brochure on any topic we chose. I asked my teacher if I could go beyond the brochure and make a 10-page CD booklet instead. He said it was ok and I went to town making my first CD album cover for a fictitious band called “SkyLark”. And I used the same type of grungy scratched look as well. And as they say, it’s all history from there.

2. Five Iron Frenzy – Our Newest Album Ever
After becoming fully hooked on Five Irons first album, I really wanted to get my hands on the second album from them, “our newest Album ever”. I had a gift card for a Christian bookstore in Palm Harbor that was near my grandmother’s house, but it was about a 45 min drive for me. When she found out I was rabid about getting this CD but so far away from any place that sells it, she offered to pick it up for me down at the bookstore by her house and drop it off to my house early in the morning on her way up to Tennessee for her vacation (my house wasn’t exactly on her way, but she was truly a sweetheart). So the next morning I woke up to go to school and as I left the house I looked in the motor home we had parked in the driveway, and just as she said she would, She left it in the motor home so she wouldn’t wake anyone up that early in the morning. (she was awesome). Needless to say it was like Christmas morning. I was so excited to have it. One problem though, I had to go to school and couldn’t listen to it until I got home that day. AHHH! So what do I do? I sit at school looking at the front cover all day long. I study the painting. The light shine on the mans goggles and the dog faced creatures in suits. I was amazed by it. I fell in love with it, And by the time I left school that day I was drawing all over my folders and papers, dog faced creatures in suits. It only became worse when I got home and listened to the music. The art became one with the music and it was the eye opening for me when it came to becoming an artist and creating album art. I saw then how much a piece of artwork can be as enjoyable as the music it represents, and even though I knew I could never play music that anyone will ever enjoy, I could perhaps one day create art that they will.

1.Five Iron Frenzy – Quantity is job 1
So I hadn’t realized that the guy who made one of the great videogames of my youth, Earthworm Jim, was responsible for the fantastic artwork that engrossed me so much. Doug TenNapel’s Paintings and offbeat style just captivated me. This third installment to Five Iron Frenzys Discography was the straw that broke the camels back. I started transitioning myself from a pencil and paper artist to messing around with paints. I explored more of my creative side and learned to feel the music and let it influence the art that was to represent it. It was influential as I knew around this time that Graphic design, With a focus on becoming an artist doing Album art, was the path I wanted to lead. Of course a good bit has changed since then. The music industry isn’t the same and now everything is an mp3, there’s so much less impact on what the CD package looks and feels like. It’s all electronic now. There’s no more feeling of opening a new package and flipping through the pages and seeing all the new things that are being done by new artists. It’s a shame really. But I’m here now and I wont take it back for anything. Thank you Doug TenNapel and thank you Strom Thorgerson, and thank you everyone one else who had a hand in these album covers. You may not have known it when you made them but you really influenced a life.

Photoshop fun: sig making

With Football season right around the corner, it's hard not to be excited. I love football season and I of course, loyally follow the Buccaneers.

So the other night I was tinkering around in Photoshop and put some new players acquired this off-season in Bucs uniforms. Making it a little unique as those particular players haven't played a game for the Bucs yet and there are really no images of these players suited up. I posted them in a Bucs forum I frequent and got a very positive response from my little endevors.

One poster in the forum was curious as to how I put these players into these uniforms. That gave me the idea to make a video about how I go about doing that. It was interesting, making the video. I had never recorded my desktop before and wanted it to come out all right the first time. This isnt for a client so I wasnt about to get all in a tizzy for nothing.

I figured I would use the Bucs newest 1st round draft pick, Josh Freeman, as my subject matter. Needless to say it was quite a process. The sig only took an hour to make start to finish, but I wouldn't be able to put that on you tube to share with everyone with it that long, so I had to render the video and condense the speed. Then I rendered again and condensed the speed again getting the video down to a few minutes. An hour long project wound up being spread out over a couple days.

I think its a neat little venture into bridging the gaps between design, film making, and the behind the scenes process to it all. It was a fun, albeit long project. I may not be apposed to making another one or two sometime in the future.

The art of saying goodbye

It's hard for me to do usually... Saying goodbye in the form of a letter or card is a challenge for myself more often than not. I was never really one to be mushy or leave little notes in peoples birthday cards, yearbooks, or subpoenas. So when two co workers of mine who recently decided to put in thier notice of resignation, I knew the goodbye cards would eventually make thier way around the office, putting myself in a spot to think of something more personal to say in writing than "have a good life". And since I consider myself friends with these individuals, I didn't want to send them off with a shrug and a wave.

So to much of my delight when I found out that instead of a card, the office will be putting together a Zine for each of them as a goodbye shot before they take off. Each employee here has their own page to say whatever it is they want, or to decorate it how they wish. In my case that means I can be personable without being mushy and I can say some things I guess I cant write out using my design work. How fun!

Heres each of my designs I submitted. One for each Zine. I don't imagine you may quite get the content of them because they are somewhat inside jokes between me and my respective friend, but hopefully you can appreciate the design aesthetic. If this is how we do cards from now on, I may do cards more often.

Starting out this morning...

So I get into work this AM and find my trusty dusty 6" desk fan has crapped the bed. I try the whole unplugging and replugging in routine to find it obviously isn't getting any better, so I go on the task of disassembling it and diagnosing the problem. I go on to fixing it and reassembling it and now its running better than it ever has. Considering the little guy is probably older than I am its quite a nice feeling to feel this accomplished this early in the am. I've extended his life probably another 25 years or so and I'm sure hes grateful. I guess you can say hes a fan of my work... waaa waaa waaaaaaa.

My Newest Painting

the gift brings peace
Originally uploaded by I Can Dream In <<