From April 2017 through January 2019, I had a dream job—Creative Director on a book of photography telling the story of Kenny Chesney’s touring life. The photos were all shot down through the years by three incredibly talented photographers—Allister Ann, Glen Rose and Jill Trunnell.

It was a small team—Kenny, editor Holly Gleason, me, and print consultant Twyla Lambert-Clark. All of the printing and bindery work was done right here in Middle Tennessee.

I would take pages to Kenny in batches and he was the perfect client. He knew instantly what he liked and what he didn’t. I got the pleasure of working with my printer to come up with the perfect combination of black and pantone ink to mimic silver gelatin prints on the page. I specified certified FSC paper for this project and the best part of the job was working with local people on a world-class document. We won a 2020 gold ADDY for conventional printing and finishing and a silver ADDY in book design for this once-in-a-lifetime project.

Here are the crazy specs for this book:

456 Pages, 571 Photographs, 9.4 pounds
Limited Signed + Numbered Edition of 3500
Art Quality 100 Pound FSC Silk Stock paper + book jacket stock
80 Pound Cougar FSC cover paper for end sheets
5/4 color with matte scuff-free film laminate cover process
5/5+ Satin Aqueous Process on pages, another protective coating
Embossed Linen Cover * Premium Cowhide Binding
Silver Gilded Page Edges * Custom Cobalt Blue Headbands
Shrink-Wrapped * Delivered in Custom Protective Carton

Created, printed, bound in Middle Tennessee

I was hired in 2018 to renovate this beloved bi-monthly publication featuring articles on native species, history, recreation, Tennessee State Parks, and Tennessee culture. The magazine was founded in 1937, and had a longterm staff who would now be reporting to me.

In my first year, we rebranded with a new logo that worked under the Tennessee State Parks brand umbrella. I worked with Art Director Jeff Law to refresh the magazine’s grid, and we began printing on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink—the “greenest” combination possible on the print world circa 2018.

In addition to revamping the magazine’s logo, layout specs and printing methods, I also created and added a digital publication and revised the magazine's website. I added a new subscription management platform, hired our first intern, created and continue to manage two social media streams.

Now that the magazine is all spiffed up and looking good, my daily responsibilities include aiding our editor and art director in planning each issue and working with our circulation manager and marketing team to increase circulation and subscriber satisfaction.

I served as the Interim Art Director for the Nashville Scene newsweekly for three months, October–December 2016. It was an opportunity to really get creative and wrap my head around some great content created by the Scene's writers and staff photographers.

I also got to tap the uber-talented Holly Carden to illustrate our Election Issue, which was such a treat!

This is a brief gallery of some of the work I created at the Scene. Those weekly deadlines make you work hard and smart and focused, and it was a challenge and a pleasure keeping the presses rolling for a while.

As the Art Director for Tennessee State Parks, I am called upon to create a wide range of materials. Here’s a few of my favorites.

I was contacted by the good folks at the South Cumberland Community Fund to help rebrand the organization. As volunteer communications advisor, I worked closely with Executive Director Tom Sanders and Graphic Designer Allie Cahoon to rethink the 501c3’s logo and brand standards.

The Fund is an organization dedicated to improving people’s lives on the Cumberland Plateau, and working together to build a better future for all. So the first order of business was to address the group’s logo, which seemed old-fashioned with its nondescript serif typeface. We jettisoned that, brought in a mix of modern faces for a fresh, forward-thinking look, and decided to focus on the organization’s name.

I also assisted with the newsletter. Previously, there was not a very distinct structure underpinning the newsletter’s content, so we began with a grid, headers and page numbers, and a consistent page margin. Thoughtful typefaces, a brand-centric color palette, and thoughtful use of white space keeps it fresh and easy to navigate.

I helped co-found community radio station WXNA-Nashville. It was an incredible journey building a non-profit radio station from scratch, and you guys better put this into my obit because it’s one of the things I am most proud of achieving in this lifetime.

Part of laying the groundwork for a successful station was its branding. The founding board members decided on the call letters WXNA as a team. We liked the letterform X because there is inherently so much meaning behind the mark—it marks the spot, it’s a place of crossing, and it’s just cool structurally. The NA stands for Nashville.

Once we had the call letters, it was time to design the logo. I enjoyed working with Roger Blanton and Laura Powers on the mark. Over a series of meetings, we mulled over what we wanted to convey and determined that the story we wanted to tell was “small but mighty.” Roger acted as graphic designer and I was art directing. “What is small but mighty? An ant? Yeah, but who wants an ant as our logo?”

Roger had the brilliant idea to use fireworks/dynamite to create the X, and away we went. You can’t have a good radio station without a logo that looks great on a T-shirt and I am so proud of what we achieved together.

I’m also proud of our successful Kickstarter campaign. We managed to raise the funds needed to start the station, and I was designing and writing our Facebook social media posts. Some of them are shown here. The gritty images conveyed the idea that this was a genuine, analog, street-level campaign. Once we got near the end of the fundraiser, posts showing how many days we had left, the percentage and total amount still needed were a great way to update our following.

And, yes! We did it! WXNA 101.5 fm is still going strong here in Music City, giving our community a great crossroads for noncommercial music, specialty shows, and a place for people to learn, grow, and educate one another.

In 2018, I had the pleasure of Art Directing designer and colleague Jeff Law on a logo package for Tennessee State Parks’ hotels, several of which were undergoing renovations or being completely rebuilt at the time. We needed to create an identity that worked alongside the branding for Tennessee State Parks, but that also stood by itself and allowed these sophisticated properties to visually compete with well-known hotel chains.

We used the same typefaces as used by Parks, and Jeff and I collaborated on the icon with the building in it.

Then, I took the logo and applied it to a series of customer touch points including info books for Lodge rooms, ink pens, notepads, keycards, door hangers, etc. The brand has been very well-received, and we are constantly working to use it to build unity within these disparate properties while also helping to showcase the unique qualities of each Lodge.

The Year in Music is an annual special issue of the Nashville Scene newsweekly. I art directed and designed the cover and the seven-page cover story, in addition to all the regular columns and stories inside. It was a lot to achieve in a week.

I enjoyed working with photographer Daniel Meigs on the photo shoot with Adia Victoria, and sourcing and then using all the imagery in the timeline infographic, which spans five pages.

Adia is an elegant, thoughtful artist, so I wanted the overall presentation and typography to follow suit. For the gold graphics that tie the various stories together, I drew inspiration from the level meter used to monitor amplitude on soundboards in recording studios and radio stations.

In addition to the version for print, I also designed a timeline for the Scene's website, which ran vertically instead of horizontally.

I am proud of my contributions to this issue, and am glad I got to work with the awesome Scene team for three great, fun, fast-paced months. 

Working for the state, I am frequently called upon to “crunch” a lot of content into informational one-pagers. Depending on the target audience, these may range from being kind of fun and upbeat (for college kids) to more professional-appearing (Tennessee Legislature). I enjoy this kind of work because I’m a type geek. I like making a grid and using it, along with brand standards, to focus the design and keep everything readable and compelling.

Two of my fellow lady deejay friends asked me to put together an identity kit for their new deejay services partnership. They already had a great name, “Church of Boogie” and a slogan, “In Boogie We Trust,” and some general ideas on the direction of the brand’s visuals. They were also smart enough to ask for simple B&W graphics which could be easily reproduced.

My clients said they loved the idea of a church building, woman praying, or praying hands incorporated into the logo.

Because my clients had already done so much smart thinking, this one came together very easily. I thought it would be really symbolic and cool to make a record the figure’s halo—the most recognizable shorthand for the divine.

I art directed and designed this comprehensive campaign in 2013. 

The Flatrock neighborhood in Nashville is a popular one for immigrants from many different countries, so my idea was to show hope and people working together for a bright future.

Originally, I was just hired to design the poster, but my client was so happy with the design, and positive feedback he received when putting the posters out around town, that he decided to spend some money to advertise the event in print and on the web. He even got some T-shirts printed up.

I worked for three months as the Interim Art Director for the Nashville Scene while their usual AD was out on leave, and this was my first cover design.

The story was an insightful essay about the author's experience in relation to the changing landscape of Nashville as a city undergoing significant growth. My idea was to use one of those old snowglobes from the souvenir shops to symbolize "old Nashville," and to have construction cranes—which litter our downtown landscape—exploding out of the top of the snowglobe.

I really enjoyed going to work on the snowglobe with a Dremel tool, cutting away the shattered top, and then working with talented photographer Eric England to style and capture a great photo of the snowglobe. I took the hero shot into Photoshop to composite the photo illustration with the cranes.

In 2007, I designed and produced this website and hardback book for The School of Journalism at Southern IIlinois University Carbondale as part of my Master of Arts degree.

The Cairo Project was the culmination of six semesters of student journalism work—a critical and unsparing investigation into one of the most unique cities in America. 

My role began as a journalist, going down to photograph the town every weekend for a full semester. I then helped edit the photos, and handled all aspects of print and website design and production for the entire project. 

Bandwidth was and remains a problem for the citizens of Cairo. I built the site in BBEdit, using Soundslides so that the site would load quickly on slower configurations.

The book's front and back covers show the two sides of Cairo in the 20th century—the bleak desolation of its formerly-grand streets, and hope for better days to come. 

It was everyone's hope that we could effect positive change on a political level by shining a light on the dire living conditions in present-day Cairo. I chose an American red, white and blue color palette to reinforce the fact that Cairo is an American town, worthy of consideration and care. I used an Egyptian typestyle as a sly nod to the fact that this part of Illinois is called "Little Egypt," but also to underscore the town's rich industrial and cultural history.

Jim Glaser self-released a CD called Me and My Dream, and he needed an identity for his label, Solitare Records (the spelling is his).

I thought the label name suggested playing cards—and since he played on the recording, which would then be played by the audience, I ran with that iconography.

Of the four suits, a diamond felt most appropriate since it's precious, and a heart would be too twee for Jim's company. I wanted to stick with a red suit to bring verve and excitement to the mark.

I wrapped an S around the diamond to soften up its angular edges a bit, and then encompassed the mark in a banner that also includes a nod to record grooves.

The mark works well at small sizes, against dark and light backgrounds, and the diamond and S stand up without the banner on a CD spine.

As the Brand Manager—Creative Identity at Cokesbury, I branded the company's Furnishings and Project Services department, a new growth opportunity for the company. One of the problems I had to overcome was the perception that Cokesbury is an old and out-of-touch retailer, so my first job was to provide a modern feel for the department and its materials, keeping the church audience in mind.

Through a series of meetings, we determined that the goods and services being offered were for three kinds of spaces—rooms for worship, learning, and various kinds of gathering spaces.

I used images of surfaces on the cover to frame the context immediately. The maroon, gold and navy blue became the department's brand colors.

Without a real budget for artwork, I had to source vendor photography for this piece as well as a printed look book that can also be seen here.

I designed a system of two logos for the Nashville Community Darkroom, a grassroots community 501(c)3 that I also helped co-found.

Since the organization is a non-profit, I thought it best to use just one color—black—for the brand because we could generate materials inexpensively on a copy machine. The black against white color scheme is also symbolic of the black and white film being processed and printed in the darkroom.

I decided on two marks instead of one to show that the darkroom is open to amateurs as well as more experienced photographers. So the SLR camera can be used for beginners' classes and workshops, while the twin-lens Rolleiflex works for the more advanced classes.

I was hired to design and produce a series of posters for a traveling museum exhibit, A River Through Illinois. The exhibition was comprised of both photographs and texts, many of which were included in a companion 238-page hardback book.

My challenges with this series were several. Each poster had to look different, as the museums were all in the same part of the U.S. Each poster was paid for by a different museum (with a different budget, and applicable sponsors), and each went to a different press to be printed. And each poster was jam-packed with text, as the writer needed to be represented as well as the photographer. 

The layout and color palette of each poster was designed to be responsive to, and support, the hero image being featured. 

Wilmington Plantation was built in 1926 as the General Oglethorpe Hotel, a luxury resort on the bank of the Intracoastal Waterway in Savannah. In 2004, I was hired to create a campaign to introduce the grand old residence to a new market.

The first thing I created was a fan. Instead of prospective buyers being given a brochure when they came for a tour, they received a fan with a photo in front and info on the back. It's hot in Savannah, so the fan was useful, interactive, and helped cement the image of "gracious Southern living." 

During a marketing survey, we found that stakeholders valued the history of the property. I hired a photographer to make a lot of brilliant new imagery of Wilmington Plantation, which I juxtaposed with "historic" surfaces, colors, and typography on all pieces.