Munch Monster Logo Design

This is a logo design I did about a year ago for online friends Steve and Kelly West who were starting a food-themed blog, MunchMonster.com. I never got around to posting it back then, and since the site is being semi-relaunched after some time off I thought this would be a good time to finally show off my logo design.

The site features recipes and food-related editorials from Steve as well as mouthwatering food photography by Kelly. I’m a big fan of both cooking and food photography so I was really excited to work on this logo. I wanted to create a logo that conveyed an organic, natural feel to go with the food theme. To do this I tried to make the logo emulate a lable you might find on a locally grown, farmer’s market type product.

This was the first round of thumbnails I did:

Even at this early point, I already had an Idea of which thumbnails were worth persuing and Steve and Kelly agreed so we moved on to round 2.

From there we decided on thumbnail #1 and moved on to colors. I wanted to use earthy, “organic” colors and stuck mostly to browns and greens and even some lighter blues.  We eventually decided on a color and I think the finished product ended up looking pretty nice.

Once we decided on a logo, I began designing the navigation bar as well as the general layout of site. I used a paper texture in the header to hint at the idea of a brown paper bag filled with groceries and a stone texture as the background image to mimic the feel of a marble kitchen counter top.

This is what the final design looked like:

You can check out the logo in action (as well as some great recipes and food-related articles) over at MunchMonster.com. And while you’re over there, take a look at some of my photos which are featured in one of the site’s food photography galleries!

 

Nine Re-Skin for Cinema Blend

This is a site re-skin I did for CinemaBlend.com to promote the theatrical movie “Nine”. This is my favorite re-skin I’ve done for the site so far. Sometimes the movie studios can get really picky with the design but they seemed to like this one. They only had minor adjustments from my original mock-up which was pretty cool.

Click for larger version

 

Clear the Clutter CD Design

This is a CD design that I did for my dad’s most recent album. I did all of the design work as well as the photography used for the artwork. I’m happy with the way it turned out.

 

New Weekly Blend Audio Show Logo

Here’s the new logo I got to do for Cinema Blend’s podcast The Weekly Blend Audio Show. We felt the old logo needed to be updated to fit with the site’s new cleaner design and this is what I came up with. The graphic would also be used in the top story slideshow on the site’s main page, which means there would be text placed over the left side of it. Because of this I went for a simple design with an emphasis on typography.  I’m pleased with the final result.

Update: A few weeks after I designed the new logo, the creators of the Weekly Blend Audio Show decided to start their own site and move the podcast over there, as well as make a few changes to my logo design.  The Weekly Blend can now be found over at WidescreenWarrior.com. If you like movies, I highly recommend checking out their podcast, as it’s easiliy the most entertaining movie-themed podcast I’ve been able to find online.

 

CB Slideshow Graphics

Here are a few graphics I’ve designed for Cinema Blend over the past couple of months. These were all made for the slide-show on the main page which rotates through the site’s top stories of the day.

Weekend Box Office

DVD Blend

Sundance 2009 Coverage

News:Blended

 

Got my light!

I really love food photography, but I’ve always had a hard time getting good lighting inside the house.  It was getting to the point where I would time my cooking with the weather so I could take the food and photograph it in the sunlight.  A friend recommended the Lowel Ego to me, and after a few weeks of putting it off, I finally ordered one last week.  It came Friday and it is awesome!

I made some oatmeal Saturday morning and took a few shots to test the light out.  I’m really happy with the way they turned out.  Here are a few shots to look at:

Remember you can check out all of my food photography and regular photography on my flickr page!

 

Bistro Italiano

Got to work on this menu the other day at work.  In the direct mail industry, we don’t get many chances to sit down with an ad and make it look good.  Time is usually the biggest priority.  That’s why it’s always nice to get a chance to really focus on making an ad look nice.  It also doesn’t hurt when the client gives you free (or mostly free) creative range.  This ad/menu was built entirely from scratch, with the clients only directions being to organize the menu in a certain order, and to put that horrible burst on the back.  I’m happy with the way it turned out.  I think it looks nice.

Front:

Back:

 

Cinema Blend Does Comic Con

I recently got to work on some graphics for Cinema Blend for their coverage of Comic Con.  I had a lot of fun working on these and playing with a comic book style for the images.

You can check out all of the different graphics I made, as well as some fantastic Comic Con coverage, over at Cinema Blend.

 

Check me out on Flickr!

Now that I’m done with school I’ve had some time to focus on one of my favorite hobbies… photography.

I recentley dug up my Flickr account, deleted all of my old junk (mostly vacation snapshots, etc) and added  some new photography.  So if you’re interested, please head over to my new and improved Flickr account and check it out!

- Matt

 

Valassis Sample Work

Thought I would share a couple jobs I’ve worked on recently at my work. Since I work in direct mail I don’t always get a chance to make really nice ads, but when I do I always jump at the chance. Here are two of my favorite ads I’ve worked on. Both of these were made completely from scratch although based off of ideas requested by the client.