What I've been up to at my day job

Unfortunately, playing around with yarn and ink and paper doesn't quite pay the bills... But that's okay, because I like my day job pretty well too. I freelance as an art director and graphic designer, and over the past several months I've been working a gig that I am very lucky to have been a part of. Most of the time I work on magazine ads, TV commercials, billboards, or online banner ads, where a company is basically interrupting your life to tell you about themselves. But this last project I worked on was to create content that people would actually be interested in enough to voluntarily go look at. Which, I think, not only makes it more effective, but also in a way, more polite. It's the difference between someone barging in and yelling something at you, and someone saying, "Hey, if you have some time, let's talk – how about I buy you lunch?" Except in this case, it's "how about I make you some cool documentary films about some of your favorite musicians?"

The company was Gillette, and the agency that hired me was called Greenlight. They're associated with Red Light Management, an artist management company with a long roster of big names, including Dave Matthews Band, Tim McGraw, and The Decemberists. With their understanding of both the ad business and the music business, Greenlight helped Gillette create and promote a short film series called "Uncut," about how different famous musicians prepare themselves for performance. The films actually turned out to be pretty good little documentaries. What I worked on mostly was the print and various online promotions of the films, and the website that housed all the films and a bunch of extras, like band photos and other behind-the-scenes clips that didn't make it into the films. They also have these funny little shaving "tutorials" so you can learn how to "shave like a rockstar."

Here's the trailer for the films, and if you have time, check out the site!