Yes, Man!

There will be more to come on this very soon, but to summarize, I visited Rwanda this November, and it changed my life forever. Below is the teaser for the short film I shot there, Yes, Man! It is the story of the legendary London breaker Pervez (Live 2 Break) sharing hope, life and hip hop culture at a center for former street children in Kigali. Original music written and recorded by Beyondo. FILM DEBUTS ONLINE ON FRIDAY, MARCH 30 (here, on my website, Vimeo and Facebook)!

Philly Handstyle Goes All City in London

Here is the story of how a dude from Philly got his handwriting all over the London Underground, and legally too.

Miracles & Charms is in its final month at the Wellcome Collection. This is a good time to expose what went on behind-the-scenes to produce the visual identity for this successful pair of exhibits. High-profile exhibits like these are usually branded by external design agencies, but this time around everything was done in-house by my homies and me.

The Wellcome Collection describes the exhibits on their website:

"Wellcome Collection's autumn exhibition programme explores the extraordinary in the everyday with two shows: Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings, the first major display of Mexican votive paintings outside Mexico; and Felicity Powell: Charmed Life, an exhibition of unseen London amulets from Henry Wellcome's collection, selected and arranged by the artist Felicity Powell. Drawing lines between faith, mortality and healing, Miracles & Charms offers a poignant insight into the tribulations of daily life and human responses to chance and suffering."

Here's an example of one of the cool Mexican paintings:

It all started with a tiny thumbnail sketch in Maz's notebook of the title "Miracles & Charms". I took this concept and sketched out the lettering for both exhibits. The handwritten style matched the Mexican paintings well, so we went for it.

From the sketches, I made clean vector files. The "Miracles & Charms" file was sent off to be cut out of solid copper by a water jet. At this point, I was getting pretty excited.  Maz and I made a miracle-like painting and decided to float the copper piece over it on a sheet of glass.

David and Malcolm setting up the photo shoot:

Maz lines up the golden deliciousness:

Once David took the money-maker shot, Malcolm, Maz and I applied it to all the advertising and exhibit graphics, and Martha whipped up a video trailer. Here are some of the outputs:

Thank you to the big whigs at the Wellcome Collection for having faith in us little guys and committing to our creative vision, and thank you to King Kadism for astounding me as a youth with his perfected handstyles, exploding out of the darkness of Philadelphia's subway tunnels.

Designing with Live Insects

I have to thank Sophia for being a cool enough client to agree to the idea of photographing live ants to promote the free event, Miniatures, at the Wellcome Collection this Thursday.

After ordering an ant colony through the post (complete with queen!), I built this glass front box hoping to contain the ants during the shoot. The "MINIATURES" typography was cut out of the green background as small as I possibly could with a scalpel.

Luis' giant hand

The Wellcome Collection photographer, David Sayer, showed incredible patience in shooting the ants as well as trying to get them all back into their test tube when we were finished. There was something about handling live ants, their queen and even a pile of their eggs that put chills down my spine and reminded me of scenes from Alien. Luckily, nothing has burst through my chest yet, and the ants have found a home in Sophia's husband's ant farm.

The web ads were made from a looping video of the ants. The trick to getting the little buggers to walk on the typography was a few drops of sugar water. I'm looking forward to a real, old school flea circus at the event too. If you happen to be in London this Thursday, come down to the Wellcome Collection and check it out for free.

Scientific Illustrations and Design

I have not posted in ages, and all I've got is the usual lame, "I was busy eating cake," excuse. It's the last day of 2011, so I thought I should try to squeeze one more post in this year.

Lately, I've gotten to do some scientific illustrations, and I'm a bit of a science geek, so it has been lots of fun. Biology and physics were about the only two classes I stayed awake for in high school. The below poster "Cellular Respiration" is being hung in biology classes in secondary schools across the UK, so I tried my hardest to make a very complex and hard-to-learn system look at least somewhat cool. I hope this helps kids study, and I also hope I get to do more science related stuff in 2012.

These first two images are layout/illustrations for Wellcome Trust's publication, 'BigPicture'. The magazine (left) is A4 and includes a foldout A1 poster (right). Bringing cutting-edge science into the classroom and published twice a year, 'Big Picture' is a free post-16 resource for teachers that explores issues around biology and medicine. You can download a PDF of the poster and issue for free.

Next up are two illustrations for the latest issue of Wellcome News, followed by the original sketch for the neuron illustration. A free, low-res PDF of the entire issue is available here.

Spit Break Pop

Sometimes there are people involved in a scene who are almost invisible. Yet at the same time, without them, that scene wouldn't even exist. To me, Spit is exactly that to Philly hip hop. I believe it is safe to say that at one time in the 90s he was the ONLY person in the city honing the craft of traditional breaking. I owe a lot of my own dance foundation to jamming with him in the late 90s, and this video is a way for me to say thanks and hopefully shine a little light on the guy. Spit embodies the hip hop spirit of being yourself, having fun and forever honing your skill.

I want to say thank you to another personal mentor and Philly pioneer, Raphael Xavier, for his introduction to the video.

Enjoy!

Sled Book Exchange

When I was visiting my parents' home last Christmas, it was nice to see the new generation of neighborhood kids sledding on the same hill we used to. I gave out some copies of the Ladybug book, and the most amazing thing happened.



After I left, a couple of the kids made me a book of their own as a thank you. Their mother wrote this story about them delivering it:



"There was much discussion as Layla and Scarlett headed out the door with the book in hand.  'I'm shy to speak,' said Layla, to which Scooch replied, 'Oh, I'm not...You carry the book and I'll speak.'  As it turned out, I guess they just left the book on the porch.  As you can see, it was never finished."



So... in this video, I help finish it for them.

 Music by Eric Biondo.

Hurricane Hummingbirds

Strong winds and heavy rain didn't stop the hummingbirds from feasting during Irene last week. According to the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region, this little guy is a Ruby-throated Hummingbird. I shot this in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.