My dad kept 50’s repair manuals around the house. In those old technical photos, they would airbrush the uber-important parts of the picture to make the detail extra sharp.

I’ve seen a few Photoshoppers imitating that technique. For some reason, once I put the “fuzzy paper” in the background, my mind clicked right into that particular look and feel for the rest of the creative.

EA Games is experimenting with new revenue models. I was commissioned to build a site to show EA how CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketing sites work.

Many of the big established brands out there have little to no idea how to generate online leads with CPA since the industry has classically been dominated by spam peddlers.

This is a site I whipped up for Battlefield Heroes, a new Free Download, Free Play game to be release in the near future by the EA team.

Here are a few of my favorite email creative designs from the last little bit. This group is a basic exercise in photo-manipulation.

The email creative genre as a whole entirely lacks vision! My mind practically completes an ad from start to publish when even the slightest tincture of wit can be inserted. It’s the banal, straightforward pitches that REALLY stump me. Seriously.

Unfortunately, publishers are generally a superstitious bunch that stick with conventions over inventions. I’m sure a few ad-guys out there can commiserate! I never stop trying though. That’s my job as a designer.

I do a little light musicking on the side. This is a fancy, dancy little business card I conjured up to impress would-be big shot record exec passersby. (Front ‘n’ Back)

If you really want to hear my music, chack-it-owt at myspace.com/pianojake.

I set up a little Wordpress blog for my music. Now if I could only solve the “update regularly” problem, we’d be cookin’ with gas.

Apparently I really, really liked Rosewood the night I designed all my music promo materials. Hah. I guess it encapsulates the Rhinestone Cowboy in me. I don’t really write Neon Disco Rockabilly saloon tunes tho. Maybe I’ll rethink that sometime.

I used a severely altered photo of an area rug for the backdrop on these cards. The client eventually settled on the red theme for the final product.

Not much to them really. The focus here was controlling the mess. I don’t mind following trends (grunge-esque) as long as execution is kept within the delicate boundaries of good taste.