Journal of the Core Curriculum (2004-2005)

Overview | Published annually by Boston University, the Core Journal is a multi-disciplinarian collection of art, poetry, scholarly papers, and essays. I served on the journal for two years, serving as Editor-in-Chief in 2005. For that fourteenth edition, we chose a theme evoking travel journals, i.e., something out of Gulliver's Travels, thus the fantastically map on the cover. Running the journal was a fun albeit taxing experience; my designwork highlight was including a flipbook Greek trireme at the bottom of each page. As one flipped through the book, the trireme sailed across the page, collided into another ship and sank. No one ever seems to notice these sorts of things in publications, but I love them!

River Cities' Reader/AdMospheres (2004)

Overview | Always eager to scratch my Photoshop itch, I spent a summer doing design work for the Quad Cities independent newspaper, the River Cities' Reader, which eventually turned into some additional work for the AdMospheres advertising agency. While most of my work wasn't flashy, it was great doing practical projects with Photoshop and I finally got a bunch of experience with the rest of Adobe's Creative Suite. I also got to publish a pretty pathetic cartoon featuring myself reflecting over getting dumped...those were good times.

Devil's Diary (1999-2002)

Overview | Devil's Diary was the "alternative" student publication at my high school. I was a proud staff member throughout my high school career, and I like to think I helped bring the book into the 21st Century. When I started, the book was put together with scissors, tape, and copy paper; when I left, Devil's Diary had been introduced to computer--and full color covers! In the 1999 (has it been a decade?) edition, I published an essay entitled "Am I God?" that, coming from Catholic schools, was stunned was even printed; this event marked a formative event in my philosophical development.

BlackhawK Yearbook (2001-2002)

Overview | Oh my high school yearbook! The saga of my experience on the staff of the BlackhawK yearbook (and newspaper) is worthy of hundreds or thousands of words. During my senior year, as the mirror year of 2002, our theme had something to do with Alice in Wonderland, and somehow I got drafted into creating themative division that blurred (my) illustrations of Wonderland with cheesy staged photographs. The above image, while shockingly primative Photoshop work now, was, I kid not, good enough to win a JEA award in 2001. I was proud of my work then, but now? I'm almost embarrassed to show even the award winning division page. Still, some of my closest friends from high school were made on the yearbook staff; alas, we've all done a good job trying to forget some of the miserable long nights spent on it.

BlackhawK Newspaper (2000-2002)

Overview | Like the yearbook, my high school newspaper was also the source of much dramatic angst. I served as the resident editorial cartoonist, jack of all trades designer, and, oh yes, review critic. The sad part is most of my work on the paper isn't reflective of my skill at the time, since invariably everything was thrown together under a tremendous time crunch. The image in the center was, somehow, considered one of four superior editorial cartoons in a sea of several hundred at a JEA convention in 2001. (I'm not sure what the judges were seeing...yikes.)