Situated in the heart of Sacramento’s Arts District and named after the city’s flower, Camellia is an independent wholesale coffee roaster and cafe.

Co-founders Ryan Harden and Rob Watson needed an identity that set their brand apart from a city filled to the brim with coffee shops.

Looking at other coffee shops in the Sacramento area I wanted to move as far away from what was typically expected. Rather than putting the logo front-and-center we chose to celebrate the coffee itself with a color pallet and illustrations inspired by the flavors or special process of each roast.

Cafe photography courtesy of WOOL design.

Andis Wines is a 22,000 square foot state of the art winemaking facility in Amador County.

As a special gift for their wine club members Andis produced three small batches of three unconventional wines for what is typically found in their region: an Orange, Schoppettino, and Semillon.

Andis wanted the labels for these wines to be as unique and special as the wines themselves. Each label showcases an intricate illustration with images based on the wine’s original historical origin.

The Roost is a speakeasy bar accessed through a hidden door in the back of BAWK! restaurant. Showcasing a 13 foot bottle wall, The Roost offers an intimate experience for its patrons celebrating and highlighting the history of alcohol and spirits.

Historically, establishments that sold alcohol during prohibition would charge customers to see an attraction, often an animal, and then serve “complementary” alcoholic drinks to skirt around the law. These bars earned the name “blind pig” and in keeping with tradition, the Roost’s “blind” animal attraction is represented by a headless rooster.

Bar photography courtesy of Troy Wolf.

Your face shape is unique and can be easily complemented with the right glasses or sunglasses if you know what to look for. Eyeconic® made that process even easier by creating a campaign centered around a video explaining what to look for in a frame to best fit your face.

Accompanying the video was a module on the site’s “How to Buy Eyewear” landing page. The module provided the videos information in a simple scalable formate as an alternative to watching the video. The module also provided links to sorted product pages based on each shape category.

Produced in a collaborative environment working at VSP.

As one of their fund raising events, Verge Center for the Arts hosts an annual art auction, with this year’s event was hosted fully online. With the prospect of putting together a much smaller event than past year’s I had the chance to do something different to make the most of the situation. The invite became an 11x17 French fold program with a commemorative illustration on the back when fully opened.

3 color Resograph printed in-house at Verge Center for the Arts.

Tiger is a contemporary dim sum restaurant offering American style tapas in downtown Sacramento. Located in a newly renovated district near the Kings arena, Tiger boasts an impressive two story dining experience. The basement level bar features graffiti left from when the building was vacant before the restoration.

The owners wanted to create a space that was elevated and posh, but also gritty and lowbrow. They used the term filthy gorgeous to describe this aesthetic.

The restaurant’s identity is filled with references to street art culture connecting back to basement artwork and newly added murals.

Restaurant photography courtesy of Tiger.

Empress Tavern is a meat-centric restaurant housed underneath the historic Crest Theater in downtown Sacramento.

The Empress team set out to create a beautiful space that felt elegant, but that also would be accessible to the casual diner. Executive chef and owner, Mike Thiemann, really wanted visitors to feel like they had discovered a space that had always existed. That prompt heavily influenced the creation of Empress’ identity.

The collateral and menus use typographic styles and fonts inspired by the deco era the theater was built in, while the monoline illustrations and design elements nod to the neon artwork of the Crest’s signage.

Restaurant photography courtesy of Ryan Donahue.

Eddy's De Luxe produces quality pomades, hair dressing and waxes for men. Based in Sacramento, and shipped internationally.

Owner Rea Macsems, a barber by trade and lover of all things 1950s and Rockabilly, created her first line of pomade, Cock Grease, in 2007. Then in 2017 launched Eddy’s De Luxe to reach a larger more general audience.

Rea still wanted the new label to relate to her current products. Where Cock Grease catered to the rat-rod and Rockabilly scenes, Eddy’s would focus towards the more refined straight-laced.

Both the mark and labels draw inspiration from trade mark logos and industrial typography from the 50s and 60s to connect Eddy’s look and feel to blue collar Americana.

For as long as I’ve been creating gig posters, it’s always been a dream to create something for a band like Explosions in the Sky. So when the chance came to create one for Sacramento’s TBD Fest, I had to go all out.

The idea for this poster came from a Native American story I heard on a podcast. In it the two fighting wolves represent the good and evil tendencies that reside in all of us. This battle of peace and power captures the sound of the band.

The poster is a 19x25 two color screen print on 80 lb. French Speckletone.

Founded as the Capital Artists Studio Tour in 2006, Sac Open Studios has grown to become the largest Sacramento art event of its kind, now with more than 200 participating artists.

In 2014 the event found a new home at the Verge Center for the Arts and was rebranded as Sac Open Studios, now one of Verge’s largest programs.

The event needed a new look that fit within Verge’s primary brand, this included a new logo and color pallet.

Words on Walls is a mural project created by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission (SMAC) as part of their Art in Public Places program.

Designers and illustrators were paired with local poets to create murals based on poems inspired by the Del Paso Boulevard neighborhood.

Brasserie Capitale is a Parisian restaurant in downtown Sacramento offering both traditional and modern French food.

Owner Aziz Bellabri-Salah wanted a typographic forward identity that felt like you had just walked into a small bistro to avoid the negative stereotype that French food can be snobby. The menus featured hand drawn lettering, rulings, and ink washes to help the oversized menus look approachable and not stuffy.

Edible Sacramento is the original food magazine of the Sacramento region, dating back to 2001. Edible Sacramento tells compelling stories that support and promote the growers, producers, innovative chefs, and beverage artisans and other culinary professionals.

In 2013 I was brought on to redesign the magazine and for the next 4 years served as the magazine’s lead designer and art director.

Capella is a software startup company based in San Jose, CA. Capella focuses on software based solutions for video compression, recognition and streaming technologies.

Mother is a funky casual restaurant that celebrates the almighty vegetable and coincidentally is both vegan and vegetarian friendly.

The sister eatery to the meat focused Empress Tavern, owners, Mike and Lisa Thiemann, and Ryan Donahue wanted to create a space the served high quality food that was accessible to any diner.

The identity needed to be as fresh, playful and contemporary as the restaurant itself. A modern script font, gingham pattern, and clever wordplay nod to a loving motherly experience.

River Crossing: I Want to Communicate With You is a public art project, developed by Joshua Sofaer, to give the residents of Sacramento and West Sacramento the opportunity to name the public docks after someone.

I was brought on to the project to help create an outreach initiative that included an animated video explaining the project, informative brochure, and outdoor advertisements to gain interest in the project and to collect written stories about the nominees.

I based identity of the project on the color pallet of nautical signal flags, which helped keep the visuals simple and allowed me to be more abstract with diversity.

Illustrated infographics created for the LA Times Brand Publishing department educating people on smart ways to use and save water during a drought.

Lubin Talks is a monthly event put together by the PTA of David Lubin Elementary school. Guest speakers are brought in to speak to students on a variety of topics ranging from creativity to tolerance.

The promotional posters were hung around the school’s campus and needed to be appealing to kids, but also get the attention of parents. The posters’ illustrations use bold bright colors and shapes to attract the attention of students, while using powerful visual metaphors to grab the interest of adults.

The East Sac Garden Tour is an annual Mother’s day event benefiting the students of David Lubin Elementary School. Each year local business work with residents of East Sac, transforming their gardens into beautiful displays people can visit.

The posters from previous years focused on flowers specifically. Rather than continuing with the same look, I wanted to create a poster that told the story of experiencing how amazing these gardens are and celebrate the relationship between mother and child.

I was excited to create my first poster for a internationally touring band for the Launch Music Festival along with a ton of other great illustrators and designers. My poster for Cults features a couple dancing within a ritual circle fueled by the band’s music as the other members of the cult watch.

The poster is three color screen print on French Pop-Tone Sweet Tooth.

Located in a dense, diverse environment, the Del Paso Design District is a new community for design, digital and light manufacturing businesses.

The new district will include theaters, public spaces and markets, film series, artist-in-residence programs, and a boutique hotel.

I was asked by the district’s marketing team to create an art print featuring both current and future attractions the boulevard would showcase. The poster was then printed live at the Good Market, a monthly “farmer’s market” featuring local makers and artists.

The poster is a 20x16 three color screen print on 100 lb. French Paper Muscle Tone.

I was fortunate to be able to see Nothing when they came through Sacramento a number of years ago. When I was asked to create a poster for their appearance at the second TBD Fest, I did my best to be as professional as possible without screaming, “YES PLEASE!”.

The idea from the poster came from an interview in which the band’s founder talked a lot about his struggles with depression and searching to find himself.

The poster is a 3 color print on 80 lb. French Paper Black Licorice Pop-Tone.