FoundSounds is an iOS app that bridges the gap between art project and social network. Created by sound artist David Jensenius, FoundSounds allows users to record and share sounds that they find intriguing, surprising, or disruptive. Recordings are geotagged, and users can browse through sounds by scrolling through a timeline or exploring a map.

Upon seeing an early beta version of the app, we started to become intrigued by the possibility and began offering suggesting on tweaks to the design and UI. After several rounds of suggestions we took on more of collaborative roll in helping to develop the design and UI, allowing David to focus on the coding and back-end work.

While on the surface what might most easily be described as an "Instagram for Sounds", FoundSounds differs from traditional social networks in several noteworthy ways. First, it creates a community of sound seekers rather than encouraging users to follow specific individuals.

"Collaborating with Jeff helped breathe life into FoundSounds. His design elements and user experience suggestions helped define the product. The design language and iconography are instantly recognizable and one of the most regularly complemented parts of the project. Jeff’s work has been irreplaceable."

—David Jensenius, FoundSounds Creator

In addition to the app design, we also brought additional continuity to the project by designing the FoundSounds website.

Launch Music Conference & Festival brought more than 200 performing artists, dozens of music industry professionals, and thousands of music fans and attendees each year to downtown Lancaster, PA.

Managing the visual identity for a recurring event — especially one the scale of Launch — is no small task. In its fifth year, the challenge was to retain a consistent branding from prior years while ensuring that they avoided becoming stale by freshening the visuals to give each year’s even its own visual identity — something of a brand within a brand.

For the inaugural year of the event (when building the brand from the ground up), the obvious solution was to go with the path of least resistance and embrace the obvious “space theme”.

Sifting through public domain imagery for a jumping off point, we settled on a photograph of NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper. Somewhat unintentionally, this carried through five years of the event — with various photos of Cooper and his peers from that era being manipulated and utilized in the imagery.

Being that the photographs were clearly from the 1960′s, each year’s look contained somewhat of a “retro” feel (there’s something enchanting about the “retro futurist” imagery from the 1960′s).

In 2013, I combined the approach with a more modern “paint spatter” feel and after compiling a 16 page Brand Standards Guide to keep a consistency between my work and that of other designers brought in to help work on the event, we ended up with a unique feel that was most importantly consistent throughout.

After 6 years in business producing healthy grab and go food options, Lifestyle Foods branding had become disjointed and unharmonious. With a disparate look amongst its various products and an out-of-touch marketing approach, Lifestyle Foods was sorely in need of a brand overhaul.

As part of a conscious decision to position Lifestyle Foods offerings as premium products that deserved higher price points, we simplified the visual tone of the brand, opting for simple packaging with bright contrasting colors against a base black background.

The addition of a spot UV coating to pull out design elements against the black background resulted in a sleek and stylish presentation.

Furthering the idea of the sleek new look, marketing materials favored a simple approach, letting large product photos speak for themselves, with judicious use of negative space to ensure those product images demanded attention.

Lastly, we worked to refine the brand’s messaging. Honing in on the idea that while there are many options on the market that convenient yet unhealthy, as well as healthy but inconvenient, Lifestyle Foods products lived at the crossroads of healthy and convenient so we coined the term ‘Health-venience’ to describe how the products fit into consumer’s lifestyle.

The end result was a cohesive and unifying presentation of the brand that helped to balance the goals of simplicity and upscale positioning. To ensure the integrity of the brand and minimize potential for deviation that could undermine it, all of the work was documented in a 40+ brand standards guide.

We were brought on to develop a brand identity and website for carpeting brand SmartSoft, with the goal of helping to make it stand out from competitors, whose branding can feel stiff and dated.

The cloud-shaped flourish coming off of the first letter helps convey the idea of softness, something that is further reinforced by the rounded curves of the typeface. The resulting logo is modern, light and fun.

The website required a simple approach that helped reinforce the logo’s modern and light feel. Tying everything together, we suggested the simple tagline “Heavenly Soft. Unbelievably Smart.” which helped tie the SmartSoft concept to its marketing points.

With the release of a movie regarding this famous psychology experiment pending, we were enlisted to do a complete redesign of the official website of the Stanford Prison Experiment with the goal of creating a responsive, mobile-friendly design that could carry the site — which had more than 150 million visitors to date — into the future.

Having a wealth of gritty, dynamic video stills at our disposal, we utilized those assets to create a rich, immersive version of the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment that is optimized for desktop, tablet or mobile experience.