Nth Degree is an acronym for the owner of Nth Degree media. Nth Degree is a media based start up company that edits movie trailers for Big Brain Media.

The owner is a sci-fi fan and I wanted to incorporate his love of sci-fi with a vision for the infinite possibilities. I also wanted something simple. I probably created 15-20 different logos but none seemed simple or original enough.

I wanted the logo with high contrast and negative space. By just playing around with the obvious “o” degree glyph, I noticed the drop shadow created an eclipse. Once the eclipse was presented, with its’ simplicity, I felt like the possibilities for branding were, indeed, endless.

**I have an After Effects piece with this one. I should be putting this up soon**

The Red Cross had a campaign called, “Heroes. Give Blood.”

In the past, The Red Cross creatively incorporated an actual red cross within the ads. After manipulating the slab serif text, I noticed that a cross appeared between the “H” and the “E.” Using that graphic element as a focal point, I used the word “Heroes” as a headline and simple copy lead in. Very subtle, effective design.

Supreme Concrete was a project for a start up concrete company in Chicago. There wasn’t too much time for allotted for this particular logo. I had to come up with something very quickly. I felt like we needed a logo to be less abstract and more icon oriented. So I went with a basic Chicago skyline and a truck. They also wanted a patch for their work shirts, and they wanted the logo to also go on their trucks. So I came up with a patch-like logo and I was able to incorporate the Four Star Flag of Chicago into the logo too. It worked out perfectly for their trucks.

I have worked for Queue Advertising off and on since 2007 as a freelance designer. Over that time, I was assigned projects from PowerPoint presentations, web design production, sell sheets, banners, event design, logos, etc...

Listed are the branding projects I did for Queue Advertising: (Left to right)

1) A full length banner which was hung in the stairwell leading down to Queue's office.

2) Queue's website was designed in the Joomla. I coordinated the projects listed and prepped them for their website.

3) A leave behind brochure that displayed logos, information of Queue and past campaign work.

4) Another leave behind, sell sheet leave behind for prospective clients.

https://www.queueadvertising.com

This project was one of those out-of-the-ordinary projects that both tested and stimulated design thinking.

Deathscribe is an annual literary and theatrical event wherein 5 playwrights submit plays for competition. Each play is enacted on stage similar to a Prairie Home Companion-like live show. In the end, the judges decide the winning play and performance. All of the plays are ghoulish in nature.

The need was for full screen displays to be projected behind each performance. I created images unique to each play to capture the mood of the play and enhance appeal to the audience. 

Great fun, great results. Starting in 2016, I’ve subsequently designed for this event up until 2020 when it was cancelled due to COVID.

This project was a small, tri-fold leave-behind brochure for Queue Advertising. Queue wanted to emphasize how their advertising could potentially impact a company's growth and brand.

I came up with the idea of using, Newton's Cradle as a simple metaphor for what Queue's potential impact could be.

I really liked this piece, as did they.

Complete Nutrition commissioned me to create a sell sheet in and a retail ad campaign that highlighted their growing market for women. It was important to retain the male market but the focus was mainly to promote feminism and strength.

 I wanted the ads to be simple, clean but also convey strength. 

The Lansing State Journal was rebranding to online LSJ Media and needed a landing page image for their sports section. A large amount of the content would be team, player and game analysis.

With Lansing being a college town and sports for the local team being a main source for the content, I found a stock photo of a football player and manipulated the colors to green and white to coincide with the local team.

The concept needed both traditional and new era impact, which is what I gave it.

A newspaper needed an ad for their sports coverage for the March Madness section.

Initially, this ad was full-page, but I resized this image for smaller ads and for digital banners on the paper's website.

The Michigan State University Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU) needed ad campaigns for 1) retaining recent grads from leaving MSUFCU and joining other banks or federal credit unions after graduation and 2) enticing older graduates to rejoin MSUFCU.

Copywriter Tom Helderman came up with the tagline, "Don't Leave Your Green Behind," as a reference to MSU's color scheme and, of course, money for the recent graduate campaign. I thought of the second tagline, "It Really Is Greener On Our Side," for the campaign to entice the older graduates.

The campaign was successful and sold for over $200,000 worth of ‘new business' for the institution. The ads appeared in the local newspaper and a monthly area women’s magazine. 

The Fowlerville Proving Ground (FTTP) brochure was a six-page gatefold design. This testing ground near Detroit, Michigan is used by domestic and international auto manufacturers for developmental testing, analysis and modification of automobiles.

 The images provided weren't extensive but we made it work with what we were given.

Van Ermen Smith is an engineering firm that produces limited prototype machinery before submitting them for mass production.

 Van Ermen Smith has a subsidiary company called, Van Ermen Idea Factory, where engineers could cultivate revolutionary ideas, techniques and experiments. 

I initially wanted to go beyond the light-bulb/idea metaphor but noticed that, if done well, the Van Ermen initials, VE, could be formed when using the more modern light-bulb.