Between my day job and my own personal work, I tend to have quite a few creative projects simmering. Occasionally, I will be inspired by something that will completely divert my attention for a day or two. In this case I was really interested in the illustration style and bold colors used to create the classic Batman comic covers in the 50’s and 60’s. I thought it would be interesting to apply that style to the soon to be released movie, The Dark Knight Rises.

When I started getting heavily into photography back in 2008, I was really into the art of the portrait. My interest in portrait photography and the study of lighting techniques led me to some interesting commissions for friends, and later ended up being a valuable resource at my day job, as budgets got crunched in the economic downturn. I even managed to win a Louisville Graphic Design Association Gold Award for my black and white photo for the United Way/UPS fundraiser.

You never know what type of photos you will be taking in our department. I recently had the opportunity to photograph a new air mask system for our aircraft. The images were then used in informative magazine spread and for instructional purposes. I also captured images of the system in use in an actual cockpit for the magazine cover. Fellow designer, Brian Fellows, did the Leading Edge publication design.

While I tend to do more portrait work as of late in my day job, I still love to capture the hustle of the operations at UPS Worldport. These images were taken over the last few years to help boost our department’s reserve of operational photography. Some of these pictures have been used for a variety of different applications including informational posters, regional ads, and most recently the 2012 UPS Corporate Calendar.

I credit my Battlestar Galactica series of posters as my “mind explosion moment” because it charted a new direction in my personal work. This set of posters represents a departure from the other pieces in the series. I kept the three poster/three storyline theme from Star Trek and Mad Men, but I didn’t rely on a traditional minimalist approach. I created more detailed illustrations that were inspired by several different “retro” sources including sci-fi monster movies, early travel posters, and 50’s fashion and dress ads.

In early 2010 I got swept up in the minimalist movie and television poster design movement that was found on just about every design inspiration blog at the time. I was also looking for a new creative outlet, so the idea formed to create a series of posters to honor some of my favorite television shows. My Star Trek set of posters was the first of the series. Each uniform contains a little detail about the character it represents as a nod to the die-hard fans that know the series inside and out.