ON-GOING Client Work for a Religious Organization
One of the clients I do work for at Arthur J. Gallagher is a religious organization, for which the team manages their benefit guides. On a monthly basis, I design a poster and email newsletter they publish, which highlights different topics related to some aspect of well-being and benefits they are eligible for through the organization.
Over the last two years, these posters have evolved. The client tends to send very text-heavy content. In the beginning, we would put all of their text on the posters, but we have managed to convince them to use less content for the poster. Usually, though, I have to reduce the text myself, or use generative AI to help summarize larger bodies of text.
The posters entail one lead topic and two smaller topics. The lead topic is meant to occupy the most real estate on the poster, whereas the other topics share the bottom third of the poster.
The email campaigns are designed in Constant Contact and contain the same content, but have different imagery.
As of last year, we began incorporating generative AI. I personally try to refrain from using images generated with AI, but it has been encouraged and almost is a requirement these days with some of the work Gallagher does. So, I spent some time with AI prompts in Adobe Firefly to see what it could generate.
The poster that says “Power Up Your Plate” is one of the first posters I worked on that includes AI imagery. The other is “Hooked on Health,” where I changed the face of the fisherman to look surprised and down at the little doctor on his hook.
A majority of these posters does not include generative AI. None of the other work I have on display on my portfolio includes AI imagery.
Rittenhouse Sound A Cappella Chorus Winter and Summer Campaigns
The leader of the Rittenhouse Sound A Capella Chorus contacted me through Catchafire to work on a project for his team’s Winter show.
He needed a poster and a postcard made up for their program called “Sounds of the Season,” which is an annual event. He gave me the content and we had a brief discussion about the design direction, but he left most of the creativity to me.
I had originally come up with three concepts, unsure of which direction to lean into, either showing people singing or just focusing on musical notes with a holiday feel.
Rittenhouse sound liked the idea of having a tree made up of sheet music. It is a simple and clean design, which allows room for text without being too cluttered.
The postcard copies the same design of the poster. It is a portrait layout on the front while the back is the traditional style of postcard layout.
The group was so pleased with the work that they requested further work by creating a media kit for them. We still have an active partnership.
LINGO - Leave It In The Ground Report of Oil and Gas Drilling
ASTM Committee F47 Brochure
This brochure was for ASTM International Committee F47, which sets standards for Commercial Spacecraft. ASTM has committees dedicated to technology that may not be fully realized, yet, but it is important to set standards ahead of time, so that when a new technology does become available, it is safe and efficient. ASTM’s standards are voluntary and any group/company/organization can purchase these standards and be certified by ASTM.
This brochure utilizes stock imagery found on the NASA website as well as courtesy imagery from Virgin Galactic.
ASTM has a few different color palette options, which consist of primary and secondary colors that are meant to work together. For this brochure, I chose a cooler palette, that emphasizes blue and grey, which matches the space theme. The fonts are in ASTM’s branding. Even though the committees operate independently of ASTM, they use ASTM branding, so any and all materials created for committees reflect ASTM’s branding guidelines.
This brochure had a lot of information that needed to fit in a small area, so the challenge was to make it fit, but have enough negative space, as well as keeping the page count in mind, since this would be printed. The only page not shown is the back page.
ASTM Magazine StandardizationNews
One of my main responsibilities while working at ASTM was to create the magazine every two months. The magazine is called “StandardizationNews,” and discusses many topics, ranging from committee work, science, technology, medicine, and the environment.
Every January/February issue dedicates one of its feature wells to the new ASTM President. The features are where the most creativity is allowed since most of the magazine has fixed layouts for their sections.
I received the bank of photos from the in-house photo and video team, which I then edited for the magazine and laid out as shown. Sometimes, the lighting and coloring of photos can be off, so I will correct them as necessary by using Photoshop.
I worked closely with the editorial department, who would send me the content for the magazine. I would place the text and if there were any problems with the fit of the text, I would ask them to trim or abbreviate where they could.
In this particular layout, I wanted to keep the spreads the same to showcase what I could of the images. There were so many to choose from, but such limited space. The interview itself was short, so I was able to place the content wherever necessary to balance photo with imagery.
This and newer editions of “StandardizationNews” can be found on the organization’s website.
