Family Logo

For a little family reunion, I took the family brand and made it into a logo. (my family heritage is steeped in cattle, dairy farms, and ice cream)

This is the document detailing the family brand (literally a cow brand).

And here's the modern result!

Tree of Life

In the Book of Mormon 1st Nephi 8 is recorded Lehi's Dream.

10 And it came to pass that I beheld a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one happy.

11 And it came to pass that I did go forth and partake of the fruit thereof; and I beheld that it was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen.

12 And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy; wherefore, I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also; for I knew that it was desirable above all other fruit.

I'd like to do more art about what I believe in. Lehi's dream is representative of much, but the tree and fruit especially stand for the Love of God and how happy we can be when we willingly follow His plan.

Happy Fathers Day

For fathers day my wife and I wanted to make personalized cards for our dads. We got my dad a day of slave labor in the yard and my wife's dad a night out with his girls and Italian food.

I got the idea for the grass text from a psdtuts tutorial.

The Italy design was just my own idea with a gradient, a crumpled paper background, and a brush I made from an image of the Italian Coat of Arms.

Photoshop Tutorials

After piddling around with photoshop a bit, I realized that it's not the most trivial program to use. After learning how to use it, it's great! So many powerful features and so many different ways to achieve desired effects. That said, the learning curve is steep.

So I played here and there, but couldn't really make sense of much. Luckily, I ran into some tutorial sites online. I eventually found psdtuts.com (which is still my favorite Photoshop site, hands down).

Even with tutorials, I had to constantly look up what tools they were talking about ... but after a little while it gets easier. So after my first full Photoshop Tutorial, I came out with this:



I learned a TON in this tutorial about layer effects, perspective (the floor), and how to copy effects (each letter is actually about 20 different letters on top of each other ... so you add it all up and that a lot of letters!). I love Photoshop and am excited to see where else I can go with it.

Icons and Buttons

Because of the site I am designing for ARUP, I first started searching the web for buttons to spice up the site. I found TONS of resources, among which include:

Cocoa Grove
jrdesign
studiomx
icondesigner
Louie Mantia
pixel press icons
yellow icon design

And the best I found were:

iconspedia
iconbase
deviant art

After a lot of looking, I decided to give my own buttons and icons a chance.

Not the best, by any means ... but a start. The more I've looked into icon design, the more I've realized I have to get a better eye for light and how it interacts with objects. Get the lighting and shadows right and you're already half way to creating a convincing icon.