LAtinas – Charity Launch Party eFlyer

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I recently became involved with LAtinas, a charity that helps provide government and public policy training to deserving female high school juniors and seniors from low-income communities, particularly, as the name implies, Latinas around the Los Angeles area. I’ve been helping them out with some design and promotions work, and I recently created this flyer, which will be distributed via email as well as print, to help promote their launch party coming up in late April, in downtown LA. The goal is to raise awareness, and to hopefully bring in attendees, as well as new sponsors and donors. The organization is an offshoot of LOFT (Latinos On Fast Track), and should be getting its own website soon.

You can currently donate online via YouCaring.com.

Laserfiche – Promotional Video

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I don’t think any designer likes spec work, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil. Over the weekend, I put together this video piece as a sample of what I can do for Laserfiche, tapping into my abilities in design, motion graphics animation, video and sound editing, and marketing, as a multimedia designer and an MBA. The only asset provided was the raw green-screen interview footage, captured at 2 vantage-points simultaneously, which I have edited down to what you see here. All other elements, such as logos and icons, I have created from scratch (or recreated from online reference, in the case of the Laserfiche logo). I used Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, and Audition, as well as Apple’s Garageband, and Maxon’s Cinema 4D.

I should add, the source audio was pretty bad, which didn’t give me much to work with, but I’ve improved it as much as I could through some processing in Audition.

Learn WordPress – AMA Event Flyer

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If you’re in the LA area and curious about how to get started building out a website of your own, head out to this event, presented by Patrick Greenough, president of Technology of the American Marketing Association, Los Angeles, who I have been working with for a few months to improve the organization’s overall branding and quality of marketing communications. I designed this e-flyer as part of that effort. At the talk, he’ll be focusing on how to get started with WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System). I can vouch for the usefulness of this platform – my own site is built off a WordPress framework!

Smart Data – AMA Event Flyer

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Here’s my latest e-flyer for the American Marketing Association. We’re back to Areal Restaurant, for what the AMA and The LA Marketing Analytics Group are hoping will become a monthly, or at least a semi-monthly speaker series. The focus again is on the role of data in marketing, and they have two speakers, Greg Durkin, VP of Research at Warner Bros. Pictures and Duane Bedard of eSage Group, who will be talking about their use of data and analytics in understanding consumers and predicting market behavior.

Wine Pairing Mixer – Event Flyer

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My involvement with the American Marketing Association continues, and this time I’ve designed an e-flyer for their February wine mixer, to be held in Santa Monica at Bodega Wine Bar. This venue offers a classy place for business and marketing professionals to mix, mingle, and sample various wines and wine pairings.

You can still RSVP at amalosangeles.com

Storytelling to Engage – Event Flyer

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It’s not the new year yet, but I’ve already designed an e-flyer for the first AMA, Los Angeles event of 2014, shown above here (and, currently, on the official AMA LA site). The American Marketing Association, Los Angeles, together with eSage Group, will be welcoming Doug Barasch, Senior Director of Digital Marketing and Strategy at Universal Music Group, to share his experience as a marketer as it relates to everything storytelling. Marketers have long known about the importance and power of storytelling in gaining and keeping a captive audience. However, thanks to the tools and channels available today, marketers now have the opportunity to allow audiences to become more deeply immersed in stories, and become active participants in building them, through games, social media, contests, and various forms of crowdsourcing. As with any other marketing tool, measurement is also key in order to track effectiveness. Doug Barasch will be discussing it all at Areal Restaurant in Santa Monica on the evening of Tuesday, January 7th.

 

Fun with 3D: Retro-Futuristic Space Capsule

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After my last posting (see “One Eyed Monster”), I felt the urge to continue working in 3D space with the scifi theme, but with something more directly retro-futuristic in styling and content. This was the result. I again based my model off an original sketch, but I was inspired by images of old-school tin toys, which I found in a book appropriately titled Robots and Spaceships. The book compiles several examples of US and Japanese space/scifi themed toys from the 1950’s and 1960’s. I combined that with a more contemporary and minimalist aesthetic, like a mashup with a Marc Newson or a Philippe Starck design. Once I had finished it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain pill shaped speaker/ipod dock design, but this, again, was completely unintentional. Trust me, I wouldn’t want to bring upon the wrath of Dr. Dre, since he made it abundantly clear in “Forgot About Dre” that he’s held on to his weaponry from his gangster days in Compton. Word.

Fun with 3D: One Eyed Monster

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I’m still not really sure what this is supposed to be – a robot, or some type of alien life-form. Maybe both? It started as a quick doodle that I decided to bring into Cinema 4D, just for kicks. I initially had something more robotic/mechanical in mind, but as I started to build it, I began to veer more towards a more organic form. Hmmm… adding a mouth would probably make sense now, no? But really, who knows how the hell life on another planet functions or looks? I’ll stick to that story for now. Either way, making this has got me wanting to build something retro-scifi inspired. I’m thinking ray-guns.

PS – Any similarities to Mike Wazowski are purely coincidental.

Holiday Mixer at The Golden Gopher

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Here’s my latest flyer for the American Marketing Association, this time for a Holiday Mixer that will bring together AMALA members with those of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA). I made two slightly different versions, one for e-communications, one for print (shown above). You likely won’t be seeing snow in Los Angeles any time soon, barring some extreme climate change, but in honor of the holidays, and the event venue (Downtown LA’s Golden Gopher), I chose to bring the snow to Downtown LA. Happy Holidays!

Low Poly Testing – Sombrero Scene

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I’ve continued my explorations into “Low Poly” modeling and rendering, and above is one of my sample renders. True to my Mexican roots, I started this scene with a sombrero, and ended up rounding it out with a maguey (agave plant) and a nondescript bottle that we’ll just say is tequila. Personally, I’ve become a fan of the style, and the abstractions and the overall minimalist aesthetic it introduces. Plus, I won’t lie, objects are just way easier to build when you’re not worried about realism or any type of strict precision. However, I’m finding the simplicity of the forms ends up placing more weight on proper lighting, which is an interesting challenge in itself.

More explorations into low poly 3D likely coming soon.