Design Work – Cotton: Design and Education

The Importance of Practice

It is important to maintain a practice of design in order to better maintain relevancy in the classroom.

Though working as a designer is difficult to do while teaching and though it is not a requirement for being a great educator, it most certainly helps. Some universities require it as a means to achieve tenure, while others do not reward it, but by working as a designer an educator is able to maintain relevancy by staying up to date on software, methods, business practices, and trending aesthetics.

At the University of Southern Mississippi it can be difficult to use design practice as a research goal because of this much of the design work below is either limited in scope and scale, or has been done in “service” to the university.

Project: The Creative Space

Versatile Branding.

The Creative Space is a company dedicated to supporting professional and pre-professional Creatives by providing them with opportunities to cultivate their creative practices. Kamali Hill the founder of The Creative Space and an accomplished dancer and dance educator asked for a logo that had the versatility to showcase many different forms of art. By providing a literal canvas in the identity system this has allowed for the possibility of a near infinite number of possibilities.

Project: Two Can Keep a Secret

Fun Branding.

As a professional designer it can be rare for the perfect project to land in your lap, so when it does you have to just have fun. This is my first branding project for a podcast but when the client came to me with the premise and with their vision it was too good to pass up.

Using the phrase of “pushing daisies” and “speaking from the grave” I ran with this simple yet illustrative logo concept which allows for the gradient, texture, and imagery to change upon each season of the podcast.

Project: Repertory Dance Company Promotion

Promoting Movement

The Dance Program at Southern Miss has a storied legacy of creating incredible dancers who have gone on to choreograph and perform for major companies and move on to exciting graduate programs. The Repertory Dance Company at USM which is made up of the best of the best performs 2 concerts each semester. This year I was asked to personally create the promotion these concerts.

I have done work for the Dance Program in the past and one vital request that the client has made is that the work needs to express movement. In these pieces I used photographs taken by campus photographers and attempt to show this movement while also showing depth within the pieces.

Project: SPVA Website Design and Development

Twelve days of Web.

COVID-19 has presented the world with copious amounts of issues. For the relatively new School of Performing and Visual Arts this meant creating a platform to house venues for online broadcasts of performances, virtual gallery exhibitions, and hosting virtual recruitment events. Due to the nature of working within a bureaucracy the final approval for the creation of this platform came critically close to the first major event of the semester. This led to a monumental effort that resulted in the creation of a fully functional platform within 12 days. The results of this effort can be found by visiting the website by clicking the link below.

USM.EDU/SPVA

Motion Graphics

A relatively new area for my creative research has been my motion graphics and video work. This work has allowed me to collaborate with other artists such as ceramicist and dancer/choreographers and has seen our work presented at international conferences.

Additional Branding

Despite my web and wordpress experience branding and identity creation continues to be the bulk of my client work and my clients range from small businesses, start-ups, and non-profits.

10 Minutes or Less

As an educator it is vital to keep up with methods, trends, and technology. One of the ways that I work to keep my skills up to date is with 10 minute digital exercises. Below are few selected examples, check out my dribbble page for more.