I love working on Halloween-themed designs. I love me a good Halloween aesthetic and I relish the opportunity to get spooky! Which is why I get so excited to work on Crosstown’s Fright-Tober event every year. 2023 marks the third time I’ve had the chance to do Fright-Tober and for the third year in a row I’ve taken last year’s design and made it even spookier! As you can see from the designs, this year I’ve leveled-up the wordmark with some custom type work. I’ve added in a second color to really spook things up, and I’ve made the illustration more complex by adding in the Concourse building to the skull’s nose (following my Splashdown designs from 2022 the higher-ups decided that moving forward they wanted the building depicted in all of the graphics for our community events and I’m honestly happier to meet the challenge!).

Fright-Tober is a wonderful event that brings the community together to enjoy free screenings of classic Halloween films for kids and adults alike. I love being able to bring the spirit of the season to the neighborhood and I already can’t wait for next year! Maybe I’ll add some monsters or something!

One of my responsibilities at Crosstown Concourse was to design things for our apartments, Parcels. A major project I took on for Parcels was to design a wrap for their package delivery lockers made by Parcel Pending (no relation).

It was a long and winding road that started out without a lot of direction or guidance but, after a few drafts, we ended up using a lot of old photographs of the mail room workers from when the Concourse was a Sears distribution center. I had to scan, upscale, and edit a ton of old photos and old Sears catalogs dating back to the 1940s to get all the materials I needed but after a few weeks of prep it all worked out great. From there, we moved on to printing. Due to the complexity of the design, we had some difficulty with the printing process. But we worked everything out with the printers and got everything in working shape.

I honestly couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. It always gives me a swell of pride to walk by them in the building and I’m excited to work on something of that size again soon.

A big part of my job designing for Crosstown Arts and the Concourse building is creating visuals for all of our community events. One such event is the Mid-Autumn Festival, a yearly collaboration we do with the Vietnamese American Community. Up until this year we've used some graphics from a wonderful local agency called Loaded For Bear that have been around since before my time. But this year I felt it was time to really invest in a solid refresh! I kept a lot of the vibe from the original poster (the lanterns, the gradients, the line art motif, etc.) but built everything else based on feedback from the Vietnamese American Community. They wanted it to feel less fancy and more family friendly and I really ran with that - new fonts, new illustrations, and a brand new wordmark for the festival. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to see everybody show up and enjoy their moon cakes!

The Concourse building prides itself on being a “vertical village.” So when Fall starting coming around and things were getting a little chillier we decided to run a campaign to get people excited at all the indoor fun we have. “It’s a Park with a Roof!” was the impetus and from there I had a lot of free rein to flesh it out. I decided to stick pretty close to the original Concourse branding for all of the framing elements to keep it grounded in our aesthetic but I made sure the logo type felt human and warm - perhaps even cartoonishly so! We really wanted to reach out to parents and families in the area and these colors and this style, in general, felt like a great fit.

Every year at the Crosstown Concourse we partner with the hispanic community of Memphis to host a celebration of Day of the Dead. Up until now the organizations we partner with have been handling the graphics but this year we took on the responsibility ourselves. We were sent a ton of really great photography to use and I just it from there. I chose two photos I thought had the most power to them and photoshopped them together. From there I used the deep red/purple to teal/blue color scheme that the photos brought to the table and based the rest of the poster on that. The wordmark was pretty much made from scratch. I started with some fun display fonts, Herencia and Antipol, and heavily edited them to create a fun and spooky wordmark. After that I fleshed out the look and feel with a lot of custom icons and little illustrations. The most challenging thing was expanding the design for our social media campaign but with a bit of elbow grease I was able to make everything work while maintaining that fun and spooky tone. I really had a great time working on this one and I can’t wait for everyone to enjoy the festivities!

In the summer of 2021 we wanted to come up with a way to reintroduce people to Concourse. A lot had changed during the pandemic lockdown and we thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce ourselves while also showing people that Concourse is a great place to come and safely explore now that the world is opening back up.

As far as technicals go, I was tasked with coming up with typical ROS sizes, Google Ad sizes, social media sizes, as well as an 11x17 poster. After four different rounds of concepts and meetings we came to a solution that I think really nailed it. We’ve also received a ton of positive feedback about this campaign and that really meant a lot.

When lockdown was easing up we were tasked with coming up with a way to showcase how Concourse is still a great place to visit where you can maintain plenty of social distance and still feel safe. We decided to use lots of imagery of people spaced out, color washes to show people in their own private, personal spaces, and plenty of tracking on the typography to convey space. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

Part of what makes the Crosstown Concourse so special is that we have a lot of local businesses providing amenities in a way that only a local business can. One of those businesses is The Curb Market. From time to time I would have the chance to take the already existing Curb branding (shoutout to Farmhouse!) and adapt it to fit the new things that The Curb has to offer - The Curb Market Deli and The Curb Market Hot Bar are a few great examples! While the Hot Bar was more of a direct extension of The Curb’s branding, I tried to make sure that the Deli - a newer addition to the store - branding felt similar enough to The Curb’s overall aesthetic while also making it stand out with its own identity. From there I designed menus, collateral, vinyl signage, and tons of supportive materials to help make both the Hot Bar and the Deli fit right in.

I’ve also had the opportunity to design a lot of miscellaneous things for The Curb - posters, ads, cards to identify local producers and sellers, vinyl graphics for the walls and windows, and even a giant mural in the entryway! It’s enormous and took a lot of back and forth with the fabricators but we figured it out together and it looks great! I couldn’t be happier.