My only produced work

Is from high school, when our Guinness Book of World Records featured Canned Food Drive chose my shirt design for the 2008 drive.

Always loved being creative.

Here it is:

 

"We mean business"

Building Descriptions

The company I interned at this summer had the pleasure of naming a building. After coming up with names and picking our favorites, I got to write some fun, short descriptions that were actually used to pitch the names to the client. The direction the client wanted us to go in was focusing on the neighborhood, BAM in Brooklyn. That they are representing the New Brooklyn. And that the residents would have VIP caliber amenities.

Here’s the descriptions:

Wilde:

Homage to the funky and beloved author of  the late 1800s. Oscar Wilde was an eccentric man that was constantly pushing boundaries. The name is a perfect fit for the artsy neighborhood of BAM. The Wilde would be the classiest place to live in Brooklyn, with amenities that are over the top, extravagant, and absolutely wild. All the while maintaining the neighborhood’s strong tradition of cutting edge art that, like the building’s residents, are always pushing the limits.

Ovation:

Just as an outstanding performance draws spontaneous appreciation from its audience, so too can a residence. The residents of BAM, and Brooklyn in general, are no stranger to great performances, being active participants in art. Ovation would be a building worthy of their appreciation, the name refers to the wonderful arts scene while also being a reminder that only the truly great ones are worthy of an ovation. The building, as well as its residents, can look forward to a lifetime filled with rapturous applause and praise.

Scene 29:

This building is the scene. With the hippest music, events, views, and amenities. Scene 29 is not only the place to be seen, it is the building to live in. In the greatest scene in Brooklyn. The BAM district is a place for great culture, and art. The building name alludes to this art scene as well as the address of the building in 29. The hippest scene in Brooklyn lives in Scene 29, it is a place to be seen for up and coming professionals. If all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, Scene 29 is where the world’s finest talent converge.

The One:

You look across from where you are and see the object of your affections, and at once you know. This is what happens when you meet the one. This building is The One, its beauty and grace is unprecedented in its residents eyes. They know they live in the number one building in Brooklyn, and they are not shy about boasting about how lucky they have been to have found The One. The one that they can share their live with, that no one could ever come between and that they will forever cherish. Resident’s friends will look on in envy as they wish they could be a part of such a life-changing love affair.

Shelter*:

Within a world where the best breakfast is served at Egg, and analog record players are favored over iPods. Minimalism and simplicity are qualities cherished by the burgeoning hipster culture that began in Brooklyn. While the dictionary definition of shelter may be the bare minimum one would require from their apartment, shelter would only be the beginning of what this building would offer them. With such a simplistic name, we let the residents define the building for themselves and let them shape it to be not only everything they could need, but give them the space to make it everything they want.

The Collective: 

The Collective is a place where elite musical and artistic talents converge, feasting on all the inspiration that the neighborhood and their new neighbors have to offer. The Collective immediately suggests that this building is more than a random assortment of people. It is a collection, a building that has its own community of people who are creating and participating in art. It is an exclusive, and desirable community to be a part of. A collective of people who are the most influential, most trendy,  and most successful in Brooklyn, all under one roof. Anyone who wants to be a part of something bigger, wants to be a part of The Collective.

b Flats:

A fun and trendy allusion to both the music scene that is prominent in the BAM district, as well as to apartment spaces, in flats. This clever name relates easily to Brooklyn, the ‘b’ representative of either Brooklyn or BAM, and the name suggestive of the street, Flatbush, on which the building is located. Not only that, but flats harkens to a more hip, European living space that has become very desirable. With b flats, it’s all relative.

*my suggestion

Back in SF

After a scanner-less summer in NYC, I have returned! Smarter and better than ever. I came home to a copy of “Breaking In,” I highly recommend it. Something on the first page jumped out at me. An ECD at W+K (drool) said that when he’s looking at a student’s book he wants to see “something that makes [him] think, ‘I bet that the person who made that is a smart guy or a smart girl.'” So, really, that’s what I hope comes out of these next posts of have. Because I have 11 ads, consisting of 3 campaigns and one one-off, one website, two short stories, and some poetic building descriptions I did for my internship.

A rant about an article that is wrong

So, this man is completely wrong. Good job. What a stretch of an article that proves completely useless and misleading.

He states that the new Heineken light ad is a rip-off of the Dos Equis most interesting man in the world. The writer of said article, Avi Dan, states that the commercial opens on a man “who could easily be ‘Son of the Most Interesting Man.'” But if anyone who watches the ad (please, readers of off-base article, watch the ad!) can plainly see, the video is not focused on the man, the man is merely the wearer of what is deemed important in the ad–the snake skin jacket. Dan claims that the ad depicts the wearer of snake-skin jacket as “worldly, confident and adventurous.”  Let’s compare the activities done by the protagonist in these commercials, in the Heineken light ad snake skin jacket dude goes to a job interview, plays golf, and gives the dueces to the bet taker. Yes, attending a snake fighting boat excursion falls into those other categories, but it is merely the event that drives the concept home. The other events do nothing to showcase his worldly, adventurous persona. Have you ever woke up and thought, “today I’m gonna be real adventurous at my job interview!”? Probably not. Compared with The Most Interesting Man in the World emerging from a thick sheet of ice in his pajamas, fish in hand; exploring caves; and sword-fighting with samurais, I can hardly agree with Dan that the two are comparable.

The line sums up the ad at the end, “There are some things best saved for the right occasion,” plays off the idea that a light beer isn’t best for all the time, and trying to market it as such is a mistake. The snake jacket is a one time thing here, while the most interesting man is a recurring character. The concepts are completely different. The man and events are insignificant in this case. The wearer of jacket creates precarious situations for himself by wearing the fashion faux-paus to a job interview and to the golf courses. But the same idea works if you show a woman in a wedding dress. It’s a concept that works with multiple different executions, thus different than the The Most Interesting Man.

Essentially, Dan is wrong because the big idea in each advertisement is different. The big idea in the Dos Equis ad “most interesting man only drinks Dos Equis.” The big idea for the new Heineken ads is, “some things are only good in certain situations.” Dos Equis idea is more comparable to Old Spices’ “Smell Like a Man” Man, the big idea for that campaign being “interesting/good looking man only uses Old Spice body wash.”

Dan must be confused because the tone of the ads are the same, but that’s where the similarities end.

All right, now I have to sign up for a Forbes account so I can put this as a comment on the article. So frustrating. Here are the videos to compare: