Tako Sumi Printing
Tako Sumi, is going to be an online printer. The name comes from the japanese word “tako” meaning octopus, and “sumi” meaning ink.
David Harry Stewart Photography
I was fortunate to help out this amazing photographer. I love his work. Check out his site when you have a chance. www.dhstewart.com
Cutefolio Gets A new Look
I’m planning on rebuilding the cutefolio.com site using ruby on rails, and a revenue sharing model for members who add images and videos to their page. I gave cutefolio a new look. I’ve turned the “folio” into a little monster what is going to be collecting the cute files in his belly.
DiscountMoviePasses.com Logo Comps Round 1
Here are some first looks for discountmoviepasses.com:
TonsOfBalls.com a micro business to sell SEO friendly articles
Here we go again, another test project. My brother started selling seo friendly articles pretty successfully. So, I’m writing a plan, and developing a basic site to enable article writers to sell SEO friendly articles. There is definitely more to come on this project. I came up with a really quick brand. With the concept of generating page views/ eye balls. Here’s what I have so far.
Tapping Paw Pet Sitters, Logo, Business Card, Tear Away Flyer
Tapping Paw Pet Sitters provide services for your pet like Dog walking and Cat sitting. I came up with a brand for them that was fun, inviting, friendly and safe. Come on! How could you not take one of these tear aways home with you?
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Video Marketing Association Logo Comps
Here are some comps that I did for the Video Marketing Association. They said they wanted: “Need a simple yet effective logo for the Video Marketing Association. Corporate in nature and all business.”
Shimizu Voice Logo Comps
Here are some looks for my uncle’s voice studio Shimizu Voice Studio.
Playing with Logos: Kid Types
Here is another simple comp created for a new kid’s site with the following brief:
Crisp, simple logo needed for a new company geared towards high income parents. Website (which will be kidtypes.com) is not yet designed but will be marketed to parents who want one-on-one parenting coaching to learn the personality types of their kids (as well as their own personality type) and how to tailor their parenting for each child. The website for the leading book on this concept is: http://www.nurturebynature.com/ which gives you an idea of what we mean by personality type (extravert, introvert, etc.)
I went with the caterpillar/butterfly analogy.
Encouraging Emails from Companies in the Sports Gaming Industry Praising Cheehee’s Site Design!
Its always nice to know that people appreciate your work. I was happy to receive both of these emails from sportsbooks who are interested in some kind of partnership with cheehee.com.
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Cheehee.com Development
Since we have released the first version of Cheehee.com, there have been many bugs and fixes that we have completed. We have also revised our business model, and our plans for how to develop the site further. I have been responsible for all of the production, management, information architecture, page design, and business development. This side project has turned into an interesting and time consuming venture.
Here are some new looks from what is coming and is in development.
Cheehee.com T-Shirt Fund Raiser
I came up with this idea to print some shirts to help promote my site cheehee.com. The idea came about at the start of football season, when the LA Times ran an ad paid for by UCLA Football’s Marketing department. The original ad was of new head coach Rick Neuheisel pointing with a quote that said “the football monopoly in los angeles is officially over!” This was a pretty successful campaign for UCLA until they lost.
Here are the shirts that I came up with. The idea was to have a contest selling shirts to both USC, and UCLA Fans. The numbers of shirts sold to each fan base would be calculated on a page hosted by cheehee.com. Unfortunately… UCLA ended up losing in the third game of the season, and continued to lose. You can view the original article here.
I think the best part of the story is that my fraternity brother’s father is one of the founders of RPA: Rubin Postaer and Associates, the advertising company who was hired to create the ad for UCLA. At one of the USC tailgates, we gave him a couple of the USC shirts to give to the lead designers that came up with the ad.
Cheehee.com Business Cards and Letterhead Design
The cards and stationary are still a work in progress for cheehee.com, they haven’t been printed yet. These are the looks that we are happy with as of now.
Logo Tests for Pricedrop.com
Pricedrop.com is a bargain site. Here are some concepts that I came up for them. The concept is based off of the creative brief that was provided.
Playing with Logos for Innovia
I enjoy testing out new logo concepts every once in a while. Experimenting with new concepts can be fun. Here are some concepts that I created for a company called innovia. 
DDL Roundhouse’s EP Cover Design
DDL Roundhouse is a new SoCal band, they are a blend of hip hop, jazz, funk, and a bit of reggae. I helped them out designing their cover, and disc label. Check out their Music here. 
Hobokenwest Site Re-Design
Hobokenwest has undergone many changes, and we are constantly refining our business model. Here are the comps that I did for a simple site. We are probably not going to use the site after all because we are tweaking our business model again, but I think its worth posting.
The Site Consists of a reel:
A simple home page which has a message and some quotes from past and current clients.
A Gallery which has a large thumbnail of the main menu of the featured project, and then an option to see a gallery view in a lightbox of the sub menus.
We would have a simple services page, and contact information on each page.
I also developed our workflow process, and I came up with a schematic for a backend app that will help us manage projects. This app is really important because there are so many dates and components to a single project, each delivery of an asset or component of the production affects one another, and if dates are missed by the client, we are held responsible for not meeting a DLT/ Street Date if we don’t notify our clients of delays caused by them delivering assets late.
The app consists of only 4 pages, but will track assets, dates and stages of producing a DVD project. I envisioned the project to be built in ruby on rails, and html/css to be used on the front end.
Always Backup your Sites
This week has given me two frustrating lessons in backup. [1] ALWAYS make sure that you have everything backed up. I created a project called cutefolio.com about a year ago. This past week, I tried installing the new version of drupal in which I built the site. Next thing you know my site is gone. The upside to this is that I am planning on re-building the site using another CMS, probably wordpress.
Sadly I had amassed a bunch of backlinks and even a mention on the Gawker Network site Jezebel.
[2] On cheehee.com we had a sleight database catastrophe. We didn’t have any backup system working, and the sheet pages part of the database ended up getting corrupted. We basically lost all of that data, and had to start over from december 14th. Lesson learned – ALWAYS BACKUP.
One up Records Logo & Business Card Design
I helped my friend Barry Fernando develop a brand for his new start-up record producing company. They make some pretty dope beats and have some cool up and coming hip hop artists.
The College Art book
Digging up my digital files, I found scans of my old art book. This is now 5 years old, but is pretty interesting to look back on. This book is printed on a beige paper, bound with aluminum threaded posts, and an acetate cover was used for the front and back. The presentation looked pretty good, if i had more time i probably would have gotten it bound because it was a little dificult to turn the pages because of the plastic covers.
Hobokenwest Marketing Email PDF
So I created a PDF that we could send our potential clients of past work that we have done and a short list of services. Here is a quick look at the pages.
Digital Court – 4 Track Audio Recorder
I’ve now been involved with working on a few projects from conception. Some projects have moved past the planning and research stages, but I think i’ve learned just as much from the projects that have never happened. By projects I also mean companies. For one reason or another they haven’t gotten off the ground, and in a lot of cases, this was probably a really good thing, because of timing, or not having the right team etc…
I’ve taken bits and pieces away from each experience, and have at least been able to learn what not to do if nothing else. After college, I found an opportunity, with partners, we wrote a plan, had meetings, drew up a schematic, and looked into manufacturing vs. partnering with someone for a licensing deal. With all that being said, we got stopped in the funding stages, and I think all of us were a little under experienced.
Wally Roth, ended up being a great mentor to Patrick, Joe, and myself. Here is the plan that we started.
ExquisiteWoman.com What happens when 3 guys test the waters with women’s jewelry
ExquisiteWoman.com, was the product of three guys experimenting with buying women’s jewelry wholesale and attempting to re-sell it online. This was not a smart thing for us to do. None of us had any real fashion sense, especially when dealing with women’s products. More than anything it was an excuse for us to get together, and work together on something.
We found jewelry downtown in Los Angeles that we could sell for a tiny profit. We built an online store in which i designed and used X-Cart for. Thinking back on the whole experience is pretty funny. I did like the logo design, and site design that I came up with.
