alvies.org

Graphic design fresh from the mouse.

Most of the graphic design I've done uses techniques I learned on my own. I'm minimalist by nature, which you'll find readily apparent as you peruse this page. Doing a lot with a little is, in my opinion, high sophistication, as well as simply being easy on the eye. This has been a brief look into my mind. I'm deeply sorry to put you through it.

Peartree Weddings Business Card

Peartree Weddings Business Card

Completed: 10 May 2008
Front and back, CMYK design for Peartree Weddings business cards. Cards are standard vertical business card size, 2"x3.5".
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Hine-Licnikas Wedding Stationery

Hine-Licnikas Wedding Stationery

Completed: 1 April 2008
Design and management of printing process for all wedding stationery for the Hine-Licnikas Wedding. Items include invitation, rehearsal invitation, RSVP card, registry card, and other items.
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Peartree Weddings Logos

Peartree Weddings Logos

Completed: 27 November 2007
Three logo treatments for Peartree Weddings, a small wedding stationery/web design business in Massachusetts.
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CoN X Logo

CoN X Logo

Completed: 3 July 2007
I actually did the very first version of this logo almost two years ago, for the venerable old CoN. We never really got a whole lot of use out of it then, however, now that the site has turned ten years old, we have integrated it better into the overall look and feel. This was the original color scheme for the logo, called "Glissade." It's an update of the colors used for the current design of the site, known previously as "CoN5" but now rechristened as "Persona."
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Nanten, the Black Lion

Nanten, the Black Lion

Completed: 12 February 2006
This is a subtle re-imagining of the crest of the Nanten Knights from the Playstation and PSP game Final Fantasy Tactics. Source art for this crest is notoriously hard to come by - at the time, I mustered finding only this - so, I made the decision to make it a slightly more abstracted version of the Black Lion.
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Chats Noir

Chats Noir

Completed: 1 February 2005
These are a pair of cats in the classic "Chat Noir" style, intended for use as tattoos. These two cats were hand-drawn, and then transferred to Illustrator CS, redrawn, and colored. Sharing the same head design, these two can be used separately or in combination.
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NYLANA Membership Form

NYLANA Membership Form

Completed: 1 June 2004
A client of alvies.org, NYLANA, needed a new PDF membership application form. Their requirements included the ability to fill the form using Reader, or to print the form and fill it by hand. Additionally, the form needed to reflect the color and look of the current NYLANA site. This form was designed in Illustrator and Acrobat using a pre-existing logo.
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Sunrise Farms Logos

Sunrise Farms Logos

Completed: 10 May 2004
To keep in practice, I have been designing logos for fictional companies as of late. The client for this logo is a corporation working in the farming industry with a series of various types of farms. I designed a set of logos that represented a clean and modern, yet pastoral feel to the business. There are logos for different types of farms, as well as an umbrella logo done both in CMYK and 1-color to be used for print materials of both styles. This was done completely in Illustrator based on scanned sketches.
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Tribal Angel

Tribal Angel

Completed: 20 February 2004
An Illustrator vector based off of a sketch, the Tribal Angel is meant to be a tattoo design. The vector format allows it to be scaled seamlessly to any size. This drawing was first done freehand and then scanned and converted into Illustrator format. The concept behind it combines two popular tattoo themes - Christian iconography and "tribalism."
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Click the Vote "Check" Logos

Click the Vote "Check" Logos

Completed: 10 November 2003
Two logo concepts created as part of a research project for the digital advocacy group Click the Vote. The parameters of the assignment were to create a simple logo that used no text. On the Flag logo, the flag was drawn in Illustrator, with the checkmark being first rendered in 3D Studio Max and redrawn in Illustrator. On the Mosaic logo, the mosaic was drawn in Photoshop and imported into Illustrator.
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Click the Vote "Box" Logos

Click the Vote "Box" Logos

Completed: 10 November 2003
Two logo concepts created as part of a research project for the digital advocacy group Click the Vote. The parameters of the assignment were to create a simple logo that used no text. Both of these logos were drawn completely in Illustrator. The differentiation is one of color and of slight tweaks to the shape on the second one.
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Heart Cross

Heart Cross

Completed: 25 August 2003
I'd been playing with sketches of a very stylized cross for months, maybe as long as six months. I was never happy about any of the sketches until I decided that the heart would be a good fit. The overall piece was meant to resemble a more modern Celtic cross.
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Sketchypets

Sketchypets

Completed: 3 August 2003
When asked to come up with some potential new logo designs for the Waggin' Tails Shelter, Springfield's Animal Protective League, I devised two options. Sketchypets is the first, with two hand-drawn animals, redrawn and colored in Illustrator. The larger image shows several different treatments of the base design. The full presentation board showed the logo in use on merchandise and marketing as well.
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APL Silhouettes

APL Silhouettes

Completed: 3 August 2003
The second presentation concept was APL Silhouettes, with two silhouettes drawn based on individual photographs, redrawn and colored in Illustrator. The larger image shows several different treatments of the base design. The full presentation board showed the logo in use on merchandise and marketing as well.
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Lightning Vector

Lightning Vector

Completed: 2 July 2003
Using vectors to create cartoonish representations of real things has become a popular art style - witness the latest commercial for the Toyota Matrix. For this vector, I used Illustrator to draw an outline of a P-38 lightning and color it in. The source image was here.
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Yuna X-2 Wallpaper

Yuna X-2 Wallpaper

Completed: 14 March 2003
A followup to the Ornitier Wallpaper, this one features Yuna from the Playstation 2 game Final Fantasy X-2. The concept art of Tetsuya Nomura is clipped from its original background here, and placed onto one of my own original design. The font used in the background is Runic MT Condensed.
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Ornitier Wallpaper

Ornitier Wallpaper

Completed: 3 December 2002
This wallpaper, made entirely in Photoshop, is based on a character from the Playstation video game Final Fantasy IX. The image of the character was taken from an in-game video (which itself was based on concept art by the famed Japanese manga artist Yoshitaka Amano), and then cut out and placed onto a watery background based off of a piece found at Deviantart.com. The text uses the TTF font Morpheus and was manipulated in Photoshop to be part of the background. The shadows on text and character were designed and placed after completion of the main image.
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Alvies-Birnbaum Wedding Invitation

Alvies-Birnbaum Wedding Invitation

Completed: 1 August 2002
Angie and I had a desire to make our wedding unique with the small details; to that end, we decided to design our own wedding invitations. We wanted something simple, yet elegant and attractive; I custom-drew the celtic knot design as both an attractive graphical element and a tribute to the bride's heritage.
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Alvies-Birnbaum Wedding Reply Card

Alvies-Birnbaum Wedding Reply Card

Completed: 1 August 2002
Another example of the cohesive design present in all printed materials for the Alvies-Birnbaum wedding.
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Illinois Greendoor Brochure (4-C)

Illinois Greendoor Brochure (4-C)

Completed: 1 September 2001
Along with the website produced for the Illinois State Board of Education, the parameters of the contract also included a tri-fold brochure to promote the new site. This is the four-color version of that brochure.
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KCSA Logo

KCSA Logo

Completed: 3 February 2001
This logo was a design study for the Krannert Center Student Association at the University of Illinois. It is an example pulled together to demonstrate the changes that color and format could bring to a new logo.

The KCSA logo previously had been one-color for easy and inexpensive use on all media - this new logo was provided as an alternative for times when a CMYK logo could also be appropriate. This logo consists of a modified version of the Krannert Center logo and modified text.
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"Creation of M"

"Creation of M"

Completed: 4 April 2000
This particular image was created as a mockup for a billboard in a creative advertising class. It was created from a famous detail of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Man" and combined with edited images from the M&M's website. Illustration created with Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.
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"Magical"

"Magical"

Completed: 4 April 2000
This image was created as a mockup for a billboard in a creative advertising class. The M&M used was scanned from a real blue candy, and then despeckled and blurred slightly to create a more 'perfect' M&M. A new "m" was then created and placed onto the candy. The M&M pack was originally found on the M&M's website. Illustration created with Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.
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