This week marked the end of a great project we did for FINN Jewelry here in New York.
EC was part of a great team assembled to give this hip jewelry company a fresh identity and new web digs.

I just wrapped development on the FINN Jewelry website. Checkout their beautiful products! The website includes some fun interactive elements that show the spirit of FINN’s creators, Soraya Silchenstedt and Candice Pool. Photography is by Alexi Lubomirski, photographer from Future Digital, another EC branding and web project. Design by Epidemik Coalition and Black Rose NYC.

Check out what our friends at Fresh.i.Am have been working on. They have just release some limited edition polished acrylic pendants which feature two distinct designs. They only made 100 of these so don’t sleep on ‘em. Check out both pendants here. Support Your Local Brands!!!

Name:
Nico Amortegui

Aka:  
Dude

Website:
blu-magazine.com & sirevista.com

Where are you from?
Bogota, Colombia

Who do you work for? 
Blü Magazine and Sí Revista

What are your Current Project(s)? 
To launch our new Spanish magazine and finish my black and white photography book.

Who would you love to work with?
El Che Guevara

If you had to give all your sneakers away to charity except for one pair, which ones would you keep? 
My 1977 Nikes

What’s on your iPod right now?
Carlos Vives, El Puma & Michael Jackson

What’s your Favorite ATL food?
Bacon cheeseburgers from Flip

What’s your Favorite ATL hangout?
El Bar

What are your Pet Peeves?
Bitching ‘n Complaining

Shout outs?
Don’t believe the hype

Our New Orleans buddies, The Buttons, just released this fun video for their track, Roller Rock. I remember seeing some photo outtakes of the video shoot from Jorge & Jhes a couple months back. If you look closely, you can see they got some face time in the vid. Hilarious! Spread the word!

I started sketching this graphic the other day thinking it might go well with PROCESS‘ Fall/Winter efforts. I still need to tweak the composition a little bit before re-rendering it for a print-ready situation. Peeps who are playing in our Fantasy Football League may have noticed a fully rendered comp of this graphic on my team’s profile (Dirty South Octopi). We’ll definitely fit it in the collection if I can make changes and meet production deadlines. Otherwise, it is a head start on some fun stuff for Spring.

Lately, I’ve been working with Audible Recording Boutique, formally known as Dirty South Productions, to change their identity to something more modern and fresh. They came to us needing a new look for their brand that spoke to not only hip hop artist but to an array of artists. There’s more to come for Audible so stay tuned.

Head over to our Portfolio and check out some of the recent logos we’ve completed. This update has been a long time coming…

Here’s a small taste of what went down at the Exposure show we participated in last week. Our segment with Megan Huntz starts at 1:57.

I have a feeling there’s an actual video coming soon, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Footwear designer, Jason Petrie, speaks about working with LeBron James on the Air Max LeBron VII. This is a rare opportunity to look under-the-hood of a highly anticipated sneaker. Over the weekend, I had a chance to speak with Jason about his design inspirations in Cleveland and I look forward to learning more from him in the future. Thanks to Nike for keeping the pathway between us designers wide-open!

Check out some of his preliminary sketches after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, at the Ed Davis Community Center in Akron, Ohio, Lebron James unveiled his new sneaker to a room full of local student athletes, media reps, and the rest of the world via webcast. Also present were sneaker designer Jason Petrie of Nike and the MC of the morning was one of my favorite comedians, Kenan Thompson from Saturday Night Live.

I want to jump right in and call out important design aspects of the new sneaker:

•The sneaker took 18 months from design conception to finished product.

• The most notable change from LeBron’s old models is the drastic changeover from Zoom Air to a full Air Max unit on the bottom of the shoe. This is the first time a full Air Max bag has been used in a basketball product.

• Since LeBron is a big player, his needs in a shoe require for it to be able to take a beating on court. However Nike was challenged to making the shoe more durable while simultaneously making it lighter in weight. Therefore, they employed Flywire technology, which we have seen previously in many performance products as well as a lot of the Nike Sportswear offerings in the Flymotion Cortez and Air Maxim.

• Jason Petrie wanted to focus in a day in the life of LeBron James as his inspiration. Calling from his lifestyle, be it luxury hotels, automobiles, high-end fashion, and on-court basketball references.

• The outsole has 5 flex grooves, representing the 5 players on the basketball court.

• The midsection bears 23 stripes, referencing his number.

• The outsole features a 3D decoder key which, when the shoe is rotated, displays LeBron’s credos — Passion, Fearless, Tradition, Community, Family & Loyalty

• 7 Flywire strands on the tongue reference the 7th model in his signature shoe series with Nike.

Finally, LeBron will be embarking on a 10 city world tour starting next week to promote his new sneaker in addition to a documentary about him titled, More than a Game

The sneaker itself will be released on October 24th, 2009. Check out more angles and colorways after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m headed to the land of King James to discover the life, story, and design behind this. Stay tuned to see more…

Good creatives draw inspirations from personal experiences. Many mentors of my own have emphasized the importance of putting myself and my own experiences into my creative efforts. Sometimes, it is very easy to struggle with the issue of What the Client Wants vs. What You Want to Do. When faced with a situation like this, it is best to pull back and search for new inspirations. Otherwise you put yourself in a miserable hole and you end up hating the work. Even worse, you give up and do “exactly-what-the-client-wants-and-you-want-to-jump-off-a-bridge-because-you-hate-yourself-for-being-such-a-pushover”. This leads to you delivering a P.O.S. that no one is happy with. And guess what? It’s your fault!

I’ve been lucky enough to travel over the last 10 days, and over the weekend I found this little nugget in Austin, Texas. It speaks volumes to me about some of the design decisions our creative team has made with our line, PROCESS, and where we are headed in the coming seasons. A bad designer would re-render this exact imagery and drop it on a tee or bag or whatever… For me, finding this gem is more about the “ah-ha” moment I had when I picked this up. This is truly the inspiration I needed for a thousand new ideas. Time to jam!

Our friend at Armchair Media, Aaron Byrd, has been working on his new typeface, Schoolblock®. It’s still in the works but here’s a lil taste of what he’s got cooking. As some of you might know, the design of a typeface takes awhile and it’s not something you rush. It’s like designing 26 logos and that’s not including the special characters. Schoolblock® will be available in eps format, meaning you will have to hand kern it yourself. No optical kerning for you non-designers.

It’s good to see great design coming out of Atlanta. I will post a download link for your consumption once it’s available.

Check out more here.

ATTN: I forgot to mention before that if you add Schoolblock® as a contact on Flickr, then you might just get your name designed by Aaron himself. Didn’t realize my name was so long.

Today, the StandardATL.com website relaunched with simplified navigation and the Listen Up section that I’ve been contributing to now occupies some prime real estate on the site. Bookmark the page and head over to the site often to not only find out about great gear to wear, but to stay up on music issues myself and the rest of the crew find interesting. And as always, leave comments!

The past few days, I’ve been working for Franco from XTM Online as he gears up for his big event, Exposure, on August 7th. Our line, We Are The Process, will be featured in his fashion show, as well as some of our favorite designers from Atlanta. This post isn’t really about the fashion show, per se. It’s more about one of the fundamental skills I learned while in design school that I was reminded of today. It dawned on me that this could be the proper forum to drop some knowledge on (or at least remind) a few readers on the benefits of sketching.

All too often, designers will skip the essential step of sketching. Going straight to the computer to work through all of your good and bad ideas typically leads to a generic/cold result. People forget that a freakin’ Apple computer is really just a design tool, not a way of doing things.

Usually my sketches aren’t very detailed (I like to spend more time getting the ideas out as quickly as possible), yet I still take the time to put pen to paper. Whether it is a layout challenge or a logo, you have to commit to working things out by hand before going to the computer. Sketching actually saves time in the long run!

I apologize if this post has put-off anyone. However, if you guys are into this kind of post, I have a lot more where that came from… “Logo Basics” could be a 10 part series in itself!

Ted and I recently added finishing tweaks and updates to Jamie Hopper’s photography portfolio site, JamieHopper.com. Head over there to check out the new interface, as well as a bunch of new Fashion and Editorial shots by one of our favorite local photographers.

Name:
GREG MIKE

Aka:  
GMIKE, GM, MR MIKE.

Website:
http://www.gregmike.com

Other projects I am involved in:
www.carpeusa.com
www.freemaven.com
www.themidnightsocialite.com
www.gmcreativegroup.com

Where are you from?
Danbury, Connecticut. (Located in southwest CT about 45 min from NYC) Only thing cool from there growing up was the DANBURY FAIR MALL and the graffiti scene.

Who do you work for? 
Primarily, I work for GM CREATIVE which is a one stop VISUAL / CREATIVE / FASHION DESIGN FIRM that I launched this past year. There are a few other projects I started in the past few years but as for those I am only involved on a creative direction and /or investment level.

What are your Current Project(s)? 
I have been spending my days handling various creative projects for clients ranging anywhere from designing and producing full fashion collections to branding and graphic / visual work. Most recently, We launched Dallas Austin’s line  “ROWDY” in LENOX MALL which is his first flagship store carrying everything from hoodies to teeshirts to accessories.

My evenings have consisted of focusing on a large series of pieces for a few ART SHOWS we will be doing this fall in ATL, SAN FRAN and NYC.  It’s consisting of 120 pieces, clothing, merch and more. Approximately 65 pieces have been completed and it’s looking like I will be finished by the mid September.  We will be launching the show details next month so stay tuned to http://www.gregmike.com for details.

Also, over the past few years, Caleb Gauge, Issac Madrid (SMUG) and I have been working on “FREEMAVEN”.  A business that is a culmination of all our areas of expertise: FASHION, MUSIC, ENTERTAINMENT and DESIGN.  We are letting it build organically and taking our time with it and have some really exciting things in store for the next few years.

Who would you love to work with?
Ron English because he’s so versatile and talented, Mike Giant because his line art and handskills are topnotch, Banksy because he’s so anonymous and genius, Zevs because he doesn’t give a fuck and Bob Ross cause he’s was so happy (R.I.P)..

If you had to give all your sneakers away to charity except for one pair, which ones would you keep? 
My black hightop converse chucks, because they are forever classic and they go with anything. Big ups to ARE BERNARD at ABADABBAS for keeping the 12’s coming.

What’s on your iPod right now?
Trouble & Bass, Duck Sauce, Donnis, B.O.B, Mike Posner, 90 songs from the 1990’s thanks to LARRY @ (PROCESS) and bunch of other ATL tunes and random remixes I downloaded and never listen to anymore.

What’s your Favorite ATL food?
El Myr or La Fonda, behind that it’s got to be MF SUSHI.

What’s your Favorite ATL hangout?
My design / art studio during the day and the condo at night. Relaxing and recapping.

What are your Pet Peeves?
kids crying on airplanes, clients with past due invoices, stubborn and non-driven individuals.

Shout outs?
KTL, Caleb Gauge, Tommy Gunz, Smug, 335mm, SchoolBoy and Asher Paul, H.Sauce, Donnis, Dallas A + Rowdy, Smiles, ACNY, The Whiz Kid, Gentlemen Jim and Carpe Family, Henny B, PROCESS, The Danger Dudes, Patty & ADLT SWIM, Petey Smallz, The LoudMouth and PS+CH Crew, Cory, MDNGHT, Both sides of the FAM, special thanks and shout outs to anyone who has been down for the cause!

A lil’ glimpse into the future…

All you sneaker buffs should head over to the Nike Sportswear website to check out their new feature about the Air Max lineage. There are great downloadable OG posters, videos explaining the evolution of the Air Max 1 to the newly released/redesigned Air Maxim, and this sweet design-centric timeline.

Yesterday, I was asked to freak a type treatment for Levi Maestro’s new mixtape (mixed by DJ Sourmilk) featuring songs from his Maestro Knows web series that has gotten hugely popular over the past months.

I decided to go with one of my favorite “display/headline” fonts, Trade Gothic Bold No. 20 Condensed, that I’ve been rockin’ since my design school days. Also, I’m hyped to finally throw down on one of Zach Wolfe’s shots. He’s been holding it down for ATL for years!

Download (via Sendspace): Maestro Knows & DJ Sourmilk Present… Season One Mixtape