After spending over three months collaborating with the DOC NYC team, I was thrilled to make the journey to New York for the festival and what follows is a quick recap of my experience. The festival really does a wonderful job of bringing together the documentary community and celebrating their accomplishments. For anyone who hasn't had the chance to attend this documentary utopia, I highly recommend it.
Last Fall, I had the wonderful opportunity to design a poster for the Belin Film Festival, a brand new film festival based in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The experience presented a whole host of new challenges, and employed some design techniques I’d never attempted before. I was lucky to have some incredible collaborators in my corner, and being it was such a fun and unique process, I thought it would be worthwhile to breakdown how the poster went from concept to print.
Now that the dust has settled from one of the biggest blunders in Oscars history, I thought I'd take a moment to celebrate the chosen few from Hollywood's biggest night by spotlighting some brilliant alternate posters done for the winning films. So, whether you agree or disagree with the results of the 89th Academy Awards, at least we can all agree that we'd love to have some of these hanging on our walls.
Movies have had a lot of fun playing with the romance genre and the theme of love. And if you're anything like me, instead of checking out the latest Hollywood RomCom, you often find yourself gravitating towards something a bit more sinister. So, to celebrate the polarizing holiday Valentine's Day, I decided to whip up a quick collection of divine alternate posters inspired by some of my favorite dark romantic movies. Your favorite anti-love movie not on this list, leave it in the comments section below.
When Variant was hired to develop a key art campaign for DO NOT RESIST, a new documentary that explores the militarization of police forces across the United States, my mind jumped to visions of what the media overwhelms us with day in and day out. I was transported to those horrific visuals of police brutality, stories of lives lost due to excessive force, and the almost common sight of police officers dressed for war at a peaceful protest.
Inspiration is all around us and we often don't have to look very hard for it. As someone who is just starting out in the key art universe, one of my favorite yearly traditions is looking back and remembering the film art that inspired me. And while there were a ton of amazing posters created in 2016, I've picked out 16 that had the biggest impact on me.
On Friday September 2nd, I had the great pleasure of hosting "The Art of The Movies," a group show featuring work inspired by the silver screen by six local artists. This was the first show I've had the pleasure of curating since moving into the co-working space @ The Workshop. I've had the chance to get out to a few First Friday's since relocating to Scranton, and have been extremely impressed with the energy and quality of the arts scene. Even though the show came together pretty fast and furious, I was lucky enough to have some awesome artist and designer friends who share my love for cinema.
Flashback to Wednesday, March 23rd - I find myself in New York City visiting the 9/11 memorial for the first time. I decided to take the trip after being hired by 590 Films to craft key art for THE TREES, a thoughtful documentary about the planning and development of the World Trade Center Memorial Plaza. As I walked around the grounds, snapping photos and doodling in my sketchbook, I couldn’t help notice - for a place that had experienced an unspeakable amount of awfulness and trauma 15 years ago - how beautiful it has become and how much hope is in the air.
What follows is a very loving (sometimes long-winded) recap of my experience attending this year's Weapons of Mass Creation. Not only am I beyond thrilled with my experience, I'm making it a personal goal to tell as many people about this gem. Whether you're just out of design school, a creative entrepreneur, working full-time but doing the side hustle thing, or a few years into running your own shop, you need to attend this conference. In a world full of email communications, Skype meetings and Slack hangouts, this is a chance to spend some real-world quality time with a ton of amazing like-minded creatives. I would encourage any creative that hasn't been to WMC to give this post a read and seriously consider making the trip next year.
Now in it’s eighth year, DOC NYC is an annual documentary film festival located in New York City. Co-founded by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen, the festival is the country's largest documentary film festival with over 300 films and events and 200 special guests. Being this was my first year collaborating with the team, I felt it was crucial to really dive into what makes the festival special. From early conversations with Thom and Raphaela, it became clear that it is put on with a lot of passion and love - not only celebrating documentaries, but also the community of filmmakers and industry professionals behind everything new and noteworthy in the world of nonfiction.