For an article titled “This Year, Lead Like a Designer” which encourages teachers to use design thinking in their classroom. Design thinking is a cyclical process which looks something like this: empathize > define > ideate > prototype > test > repeat.

This is a personal piece that I made to celebrate the release of Dirty Computer, Janelle Monae’s fourth studio album. It was inspired by her song “Pynk” which includes the lyric “Pynk like the paradise found…”

Published by ASCD, 2018.

I had the honor of illustrating and designing the posters for Theater J's upcoming season. This marks the fourth consecutive year that I’ve worked on their season artwork and branding. Typically, a season consists of 6-7 posters, but due to theater renovations the theater will only be producing four shows.

This year, the posters were designed to look even more branded than years past. To do this, I used a consistent and limited color palette; ditched the hand lettering for the play's titles because it was deemed too difficult to work with across a wide variety of marketing materials; and I created a red tab using handwriting to establish the season. As a result, the posters look clean, bold, and fresh.

Here is a description of each play:

Actually
Tom and Amber, freshmen at Princeton University, seem to be on the same page about where their relationship is heading, until suddenly they aren’t. What begins as a casual hook up turns into a Title IX trial in which both students have everything to lose. Tackling the highly charged topic of sexual consent, this provocative new play by Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51) investigates the intersection of gender and race in campus politics today, offering a nuanced and psychologically rich portrait of a generation.

The Jewish Queen Lear
At long last, the most widely performed script in the Yiddish theatrical canon receives its English-language world premiere. Written in 1898, Gordin’s story of power and pride revolves around Mirele Efros, a wealthy widow and clever business woman who wants to find a good wife for her son. When her children turn against her, Mirele experiences a fall of Shakespearean proportions. Wildly successful in its time, Gordin’s masterpiece shines in a scintillating new translation.

Talley's Folley
This Pulitzer Prize-winning romantic comedy is a poignant valentine to unlikely love. On a moonlit night in 1944 Missouri, middle-aged Jewish accountant Matt Freidman has only one chance to win the heart of Sally Talley, a 31-year-old ‘old maid’ from a bigoted Protestant family. After a lifetime of believing they’ll never truly belong in the world around them, Matt and Sally reawaken one another to love, ultimately finding that they do belong – together. Directed by Aaron Posner, Talley’s Folly is a funny and heart-warming theatrical duet.

The Pianist of Willesden Lane
Set in Vienna in 1938 and London during the Blitzkrieg, The Pianist of Willesden Lane tells the true and inspiring story of Lisa Jura, a young Jewish pianist whose dream of making her concert debut at the storied Musikverein concert hall is dashed by the onset of World War II. Despite devastating personal loss, music enables Jura to endure and pursue her dreams. Performed by Jura’s daughter, Grammy-nominated pianist Mona Golabek, The Pianist of Willesden Lanecombines enthralling story telling with breath-taking live performances of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and more.

Hand lettered type treatment for the cover of Educational Leadership Magazine. 

This piece was for an Urban Institute report on model practices for parents in prisons and jails and how these institutions can reduce barriers to family connections.

Cover illustration and quarter page illustration for ASCD's Education Update newsletter. The article offers techniques for teachers on conquering classroom management amidst the chaos of their day-to-day routines. 

This illustration is a block print and digital hybrid. 

CreativeMornings is a global breakfast lecture series that currently runs in over 140 cities around the world. Every month they invite an illustrator to illustrate the monthly theme. I was hired to illustrate the theme of BROKEN. The final illustration was used in every hosting city and was sent out globally in an email to creative types around the world. 

This piece is inspired by an old t-shirt design that I saw about fifteen years ago. The t-shirt used to spell "JESUS" using only the negative space around each letterform. Given the current political climate, and thinking of all of the death, destruction, discrimination, and hypocrisy that happens daily in the name of religion, I wanted to create a design that was the antithesis of the JESUS design I had seen so many years ago.

Mostly hand lettered poster advertising La Plata High School's annual craft fair. 

Defend Our Future, a project of the Environmental Defense Fund, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to empowering young people of all political persuasions who are interested in advancing climate change and clean energy solutions that grow our economy and protect the world for future generations.

My role as a designer for Defend Our Future consisted of creating weekly "snackable" content for the project's social media accounts, in addition to designing press kits, tool kits, and one sheets. I coordinated daily with an account leader to collaborate on images that encouraged social media followers to act on climate. Content contained imagery and text that showcased what is beautiful about our planet; leaders in climate change; shocking stats; and quotes from famous artists and authors. 

To create these images, I would often incorporate illustration, hand lettering, and photo collage. 

Half page illustration for ASCD's Education Update for an article titled: "When Teaching Climate Change, Knowledge is Power."

This gif about setting routines for the first days of school was created for ASCD Express, ASCD's e-newsletter.

Some hand lettering for a project that ultimately ended up going in a different direction. 

Harper Macaw is a fine chocolate factory located in Washington, D.C. Their mission is to turn chocolate into a force for tropical reforestation. 

I was hired to paint two murals: one for their Point of Sale, and a second in the factory itself. I wanted to create a tropical motif for both murals, with the larger mural incorporating cacao pods which come from nature in a variety of jewel tones. Pictured here are my initial sketches, and my process from blank slate to completion. 

Three Ring Studio worked on CulturalDC's Source Festival branding for the final four years of its unparalleled ten year run. 

Every year, the festival has three themes. Playwrights are invited to submit works based on these themes. Source's month-long festival is composed of full length plays, ten minute plays, and artistic blind dates (artistic interpretations of the festival's overarching themes). 

The themes for 2016 were "Heroes and Home," "Secrets and Sound," and "Dreams and Dischord." We worked with photographer Daria Johnson-Green to capture the full-length play actors, interpreting their future roles. The biggest challenge was photographing with the actors and actresses before they had even rehearsed their scripts, but the end result is quite beautiful. 

The final photographs were combined with hand lettering and illustrated patterns that convey dischord, familiarity, and sound. 

Materials produced for this branding effort included: print ads, web ads, festival program, marquee posters, social media graphics, and save the date postcards. 

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation promotes racial healing while addressing structural racism. Their primary focus is to inform and change hearts, minds and the deeply-held, often unconscious biases that are frequently at the core of structural racism. 

This brochure was designed to promote W.K. Kellogg Foundation's America Healing, an initiative designed to ensure that all children in the U.S. have an equitable and promising future.

This personal piece was created out of frustration due to America's inability to move the needle on gun control. 

This album cover for Baltimore-based dance and hip hop artist, TT the Artist, was art directed, designed, and hand lettered by Three Ring Studio in collaboration with TT herself.

Photograph by Nicole Fallek.

Halsa Restaurant, a farm-to-table style restaurant, located in the heart of Brookland, D.C., hired us to create woodblock-style illustrations for use in their branding. The initial scope of work included illustrations for use on tote bags, menus, and note cards. Some of these illustrations, including the social media friendly giant chicken, were used in two wheat pasted murals for the exterior of the location, which we pasted up ourselves. 

After the restaurants launch, we were hired to design carry-out bags, coffee cups, stickers, and to-go container wraps. 

Poster design created to promote La Plata High School's 2017 Show Troupe program. 

KING is a Grammy nominated soul trio that I have had the pleasure of working with three times. Pictured here is my single cover and design for "Mister Chameleon," the second single off of their debut album. Below that is an album cover proposal that was ultimately not used. 

ASCD is the world's most trusted resource in education. In 2014, we redesigned their Education Update newsletter, giving it a fresh new look focusing on strong conceptual illustration and easy to read content.

Full page and two spot illustrations created for an article titled "Who in Your Class Needs Help," which goes on to describe how teachers can aid students with mental health issues.

This animated gif was illustrated and hand lettered for AIGA DC to use on their Instagram to promote new blog posts.

Three Ring Studio was hired to create branding illustrations for an Austin, Texas-style diner that was scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. in 2017. 

We were hired to create fun, tongue-in-cheek visuals that would compliment the quirky diner style of this restaurant. The illustrations were created using a limited Texas flag-inspired color palette, and incorporate unexpected visuals—check out the cowboy's veggie pistols, and the cowgirl's pasta hair. The shank of both the jackalope and the cowboy are indicated in a hand-lettered style that mimics the Shawshank Diner logo, which was designed prior to Three Ring Studio coming on board. 

This was our third year working with Theater J on the poster art and hand lettered titling for their upcoming season. This year we focused on simple concepts and a limited color palette, helping to establish the Theater J brand and set their art apart from competing theaters whose focus is primarily photography-based. 

This postcard was created for Creative Mornings DC. Creative Mornings is a free monthly breakfast lecture series that invites creative types of all stripes to give short lectures focusing on a global theme that is implemented by local chapters internationally. 

This postcard was created to promote the DC chapter and was accepted into the Society of Illustrators annual publication.

Logo and Poster design for Port Tobacco Players 2017 production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Company.