I'm Moving!

In multiple ways than one I will be moving.  First off I redesigned my Portfolio site and will retire "Owls Pellet" as my blog will now be located on my hosted website zachwaggoner.com, and second I will be moving to San Francisco next Thursday.  We are really excited and can't wait for the 3 day trip to our new adventure.  Any-who, if you have been following me feel free to make your way to my new portfolio site as I make my way to the big city of San Fran.  I will be updating super often as I make my way to employment.

Personal Business Card *Fun

Front

Back

Hanging around the office today and printing company business cards got my brain a flowin'.  I had the art around on my computer so I started playing around. I say it looks like a trading card.  Others had more erotic ideas...ha

Christmas Card: 10 minutes GO!

I get this all the time, I am working on something, someone comes in my office tells me, "Hey, don't spend too much time on this or  anything, but make it look good.  Ha. This time it was a Christmas card for our annual party.  Well I had 10 minutes and came up with this.  K, Back to work.

Log Cabin 2.0

After a bit of a hiatus, I have put back in action Log Cabin.  I will hopefully finish it for this upcoming Addy awards.  If you are reading this having no clue what I'm talking about, I started a project earlier this year called Log Cabin.  It is a web project of mine where Web designers can come hang out in an outdoorsy atmosphere read articles, check out tutorials in "The Woods", and talk amongst each other in the forum I created, called "Camp Fire". I also threw in a merch section called "Bear Necessities".  When I am finished with this project it will be fully functional on any device making it a fully responsive site.  It has been quite a journey and can't wait to start filling up the site with content.  Can't quite remember the deadline for the Addy's but am starting to feel the heat.  I have probably spent the last two weeks hitting the functionality of the site pretty hard and have finally come to the UX aspect as I can now step back, make it mobile, and think about more aesthetics.  Also got a pretty nifty domain name I'm pretty excited about.  I don't want to give too much away but here are some updated pics below.

Extreme Biking Poster for Project

Don't post much from work but thought this wasn't too crazy to post.  A little poster created for one of the brands that they will take to present to the community where we are building their new bike park.  Figured this would help keep some motivation while it is being constructed.

I took the photography in Arkansas this summer during one of the premier shoots for the brand.

Skate Posters

So at work lately has been interesting.  We came up with the idea to not do full blown skateparks in areas, but just skate spots that just casually filled up existing parks.  The cool part is that we want to make the parks mores social.  By adding qr codes leading to sites where skaters can talk about the park or "check in" out of town skaters can now get in touch with the town and find where other skate spots are. It is pretty cool and dig the design and layout I made.  *toot toot, anyways check it out.

Responsive Design: Project 1

So while working at my glorious job, I kept getting the President popping in my office telling me, "Hey, the website looks wierd on an iPad." With a full schedule of catalogs to print, brands to manage, translations to translate in the websites themselves, photos to retouch.. well you get the idea. It was hard to see why, after looking at the analytics and noticing that only .83 percent of the users use the iPad, to put effort in my day in customizing it for that platform.  Fear not I pushed aside some time and started a responsive site for one of the brands I manage.  Its scalable from 960px all the way down to basically what ever phone you have.  Not really wanting to deal with " OK it looks good on the Ipad but know my friends "enter device here" looks weird," I decided to just go with responsive design rather than adaptive.  You can see for your self by taking the browser window and adjusting it to any width from as wide as you can go to really narrow the design will fluctuate as you slide.  It was a lot of fun and will enjoy the moments ahead at polishing it up when I get some time, but hey the technology works ! ha

If your lazy and don't want to go to the site I've provided images below that show how it works.

http://www.progressivebikeramps.com

How many social medias does it take to get noticed?

That seems to be a tough question, but if it has a fun UI and it allows you to show off what you create I'm down.  You can now find my organized self on zerply, as they explain it, "It's like LinkedIn for creatives".  If you have worked with me and don't mind saying a few good words follow the link and "endorse me" if you know me and hate me...why are you on this site? ha anyways thanks bunches and see you around either in real person or on one of the 7 social medias I'm on.

http://zerply.com/zachwaggoner/endorse

Filter Bros. Promotional Flyer Thing

My friend needed something to hand to businesses for his little start up company he is getting into in Austin TX.  Nothing too crazy just keeping busy designing something after getting off work...from designing all day. ha. #neverending.

Filter Brah Get it, got it, good!

Paint the Town Green and Gold MSSU

So I know I'm a Gorilla, but I do live in Joplin and always wanted my home town to be more of a college town.  I had the opportunity to create a mural at Atlas Safe Rooms last weekend for a competition for Paint the town Green and Gold for MSSU.  I got sent an email from my marketing director that they wanted to put something together for the event but didn't really know where to start.  he sent me a pic and from the angle he gave me my mind shot off.  I remember back when I was in school there were these cool 3d perspective trailer trucks where if while you are passing them the contents on the truck looked 3d.  Being able to see 2 sides of the Atlas Showroom gave me enough reason that we could do this.  Having a helpful drawing buddy sitting next to me helped as well.  I showed him some images of what I was thinking.  We both kind of put all our eggs in one basket but were down for the challenge.  We never really told our marketing director until I asked for a budget. ha We got the go ahead and headed for materials.  With a couple buckets of paint, and 20 some odd hours of work we finally created a 3d mural on the outside of the structure that I hope everybody enjoys.  We had a lot of onlookers during the weekend so hopefully thats a good sign.  It was a really fun challenging project to create produce and execute all in a short amount of time to meet monday's deadline.  And now the images.

Inspiration

3D rendering via Photoshop

Execution on 20 3' glass panels

Joplin Elementary School Coloring Book

Today I got to go to West Central Elementary in Joplin to present the kindergarteners with a coloring book that the marketing team at the Joplin Admin Building put together.  I got to help create digital illustrations of a Joplin High Schools students drawings.  It was a lot of fun to hand these out.  Eddie the Eagle came along to rial up the kiddos.  They were so excited to hug the enlarged bird it was actually pretty cute.  They cheered when they were going to graduate...2025...geez that is forever away haha.  Anyways I handed out the coloring books to cheerful kids and got my picture taken by some of the Joplin marketing team as well as from some Tv stations and the Joplin Globe.  It is great to see little ones enjoy something so simple.  Kind of jealous ;) Anyways here are some pics of the book which was actually drawn by my cousins son, Jeremiah Johnson.  Didn't even recognize the kid, since I haven't seen him since he was like 9! Crazy fun day.

Back cover of Coloring book

A couple of the illustrations I digitized with the pen tool in Illustrator

Front Cover of Coloring Book

Logo Process: Filter Brothers

My long time buddy is on his way back to Austin for one of his entrepruneur ventures here in a few weeks and came to me to create a logo for him for his company, Filter Brothers, a pool filter service that cleans and restores filters in personal in-ground pools.  I had one of my business cards around and he thought something like what I had done for my fictitious company "Wagon Design" would be kind of cool.  Less talking and more showing.  Long story short he digs the logo and will be heading down to Austin with a stack of business cards and a pricing sheet to get him started.

Inspiration laying on my desk from my fictitious company "Wagon Design Studio"

The Process to creating the Filter Bros. Logo/Brand

Fake Mailer for Fun

So we headed to Arkansas earlier this week for a photoshoot with some sponsored riders for Progressive Bike Ramps and got some great shots.  One of the shots I was setting up required my good ol buddy and VP of Progressive bike ramps to stand on the ramp to make sure the flash was correctly placed...what really happened was a great photo op for him.  Got back to the office had a few laughs and put this together to test out Jason's ego ;) lotta fun have a look

Colors

So most of my designs contain some sort of variation between these colors.  I don't know if it a personal thing or if they are "trendy" but I need to branch out and try new colors.  They all seem to go together to me.  I'm personally not a big fan of green and it's complimentary color is red.  I love to use complimentary colors together but when thinking of usability I have to some what feel sorry for color blind people who view it, since they probably can't tell what in the world is going on. Ha I bet it's not that bad but figured I would put this up to see in reference as to what the colors of Fall 2012 and 2013 will be.  Ever since I started designing these colors have attracted my eye, and so I believe that it is time to let it go and move on and richen my color pallet.  Any suggestions?

Busy workin'

So this year I have been fortunate to join a company that has broadened my horizon and pushed me to create new things for new products.  This year 2 major companies have been rolled out and I have been lucky enough to be part of it all.  First off this year I was asked to create a website for a safe room/storm shelter idea that would blossom very soon.  It's name is Atlas and a logo and branding would be needed as well.  I have watched this brand come to be and have had the opportunity to make all the marketing material from brochures, websites, instruction manuals to a new store front in the Joplin Mall.

The other brand that was created when I arrived full time was Progressive Bike Ramps.  A new way of building bike parks in recreational areas, allowed me to brand and come up with all the marketing materials for this brand as well.  New website, photo shoots with pro sponsored riders, catalogs, logos, and an abundant of meetings I can say I'm a happy camper.  Today was one of the photo shoots and thought I would present a sneek peek of what is to come.

Content is King

Just one of those days. Sat down and created some flyers.  Sometimes frustration causes the weirdest flow of creativity. 

In the zone..

Ping Pong Championship

So I have this idea of buying a ping pong table setting it up at work and competing against co-workers. I've never really gotten into Fantasy Football and I'm sure that is way cooler than this, but I think this would keep my mind busy during the winter.  Anyways here is what I came up with to start things off.  Now off to find a Ping Pong table...

Ping Pong Banner

PacMan's Long Lost Brother

So it's Friday at the office, a bit rainy from a hurricane down south and nothing to pressing at work.  I started out with the word echo and this is what came from it.  So here it is... the evolution of a random logo.

Pitt State Interview For 2012 Joplin Addy's

Last Hurrah at Pitt before graduating.  Some of the B-roll is kind-o funny, but after all the years I spent at Pittsburg State University, it is a good feeling to be recognized.  Thanks Again Pitt.

Adobe Light Room..chickawhat?

I can dig.

Good bye Photoshop and Indesign Hello Lightroom!