A Charrette is a special kind of design workshop, the goal being to find co-created solutions to community challenges. It's a powerful open innovation tool that can be used to find wild, diverse solutions to universal design challenges and problems. It's rooted in human-centered design principles, where empathy is the foundation of all design and innovation. The book’s purpose is to guide community members through the process and provide all the resources they’ll need.

I managed typography & visual design throughout the book, and using Adobe InDesign to lay out all spreads according to print standards. I used Adobe Illustrator to create all the graphics, icons, diagrams, and illustrations, as well as assisting in the research and content strategy for the book. This project was done for the CCAD MindMarket in Columbus, Ohio.

This was an interactive Facebook Canvas ad done for Ford, to highlight their By Design campaign during the airing of the 2017 Super Bowl spot. I was responsible for all the copywriting, and worked together with another Art Director to concept and create the visuals.

Sky & Telescope is an Astronomy publication dedicated to empowering and inspiring astronomers from all walks of life.  The goal of this integrated re-brand project was to communicate how Sky&Tel is both an expansive resource for amateurs and a worthy platform for professionals. It was extremely important to balance their values of not dumbing down the science content, unifying both amatuers and professionals in the pursuit for knowledge, and providing the latest astronomy news with convenience and readability.

All of the Creative Direction and Design work was done by me, as well as the packaging design, web and app design, branding & identity, copy-writing, and set design for the photography.

This is a pitch book I designed for the local creative agency, TILT, showcase concepts for an upcoming pitch. I worked alongside the creative director and two copywriters, and had a lot of fun with this one!

Creative Direction: Shanky Das

Copywriting: Jeff Warner, Alan Majewski

Based in Columbus, Ohio, North Market Spices is a spice shop offering a wide variety of the highest quality spices and herbs from around the country to cooks from all walks of life.

The goal for this winter catalog was to help novice cooks and aspiring foodies navigate through the multitudes of spice options, and to inspire them to stand up to the challenge of adventurous cooking with confidence.

This is just a sampling from that project.

4th Street Farms is a community garden in Columbus, OH. The goal for this project was to foster leadership development in the community by identifying strengths of community members and encouraging neighbors to embrace and empower each others dreams & visions, with a mind to use their own resources and passions to bring sustainable change where they see opportunity. The design was informed by the visual feel of the neighborhood, with pops of color from hand painted murals, vintage signs left on old buildings, the flowers and food budding amongst the green, and most of all, the wooden entrance to the garden which had been masterfully decorated by the neighborhood kids at its inauguration.

I created the messaging based on key insights gathered from multiple in-depth interviews and secondary research, hand painted the lettering with acrylic on canvas, and then scanned them into photoshop to create the door hangers.

This is a sampling of an Information Design & Editorial project done with CJI Research Corporation for the American Public Transportation Association. I built the brand guidelines, information design guidelines, and the editorial layout in Adobe InDesign to feature content written by the client. All charts, graphs, and statistical tables were designed in Adobe Illustrator with data taken from Microsoft Excel sheets. 

You can see the finished publication online here. It was also covered by CNN here.

A sampling of photo work from personal work and travels. 

This project was done for a locally owned winery, the Laneve Family Winery, that creates a limited edition bottle of red wine each year. The design is a nod to the clients father, who was a general in the marines, and went by the name, ‘Stone Fox.”

A Plant's Eye View is a science museum concept that I created for my senior thesis project at the Columbus College of Art & Design. It brings to life the complexities and dare I say, consciousness, of the plant world, in an attempt to educate, inspire, and tell intriguing stories that are rarely brought to light.

In a culmination of hand illustration, motion graphics, storytelling, coding, (and carpentry) the display was essentially a rear-projected screen, made responsive with the help of conductive paint, a Bare Conductive chip (a type of Arduino), Adobe Edge Animate, Adobe AfterEffects, and a plethora of wiring.

This project was the most challenging, fun, grueling, exciting and rewarding one I've ever done, and it gave me a new passion for play in my work. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I never thought I'd love talking about computer chips and botany, but, alas, here I am!

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The video was put together for the sake of submitting the work into the Columbus College of Art & Design’s Thesis Show, and The American Advertising Awards ADDY's, both of which were Juried. It gives a quick overview of what the project was meant to accomplish, and a glimpse of how the final project turned out.

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