This portfolio brings together work across book covers, logos, advertising pieces, and constructed artwork. The projects use a consistent set of visual tools: clear typography, limited color, simple geometry, and forms drawn from older print traditions, like posters, pamphlets, engraving, ticket design, and early commercial graphics.
The treatments shift with the subject matter. Book covers range from abstract compositions for the Provocations series to period or documentary layouts for historical and policy texts. Logos move between geometric systems, monograms, and heraldic or engraved forms. Advertising work draws on propaganda layouts, institutional insignia, and straightforward typographic structures. The artwork extends these same concerns into larger, self-contained images.
Across all of it, the emphasis is on proportion, spacing, and direct visual ideas rather than stylistic effects. Each piece is built from a small number of elements arranged with clarity and restraint.
I approach each design project with the same focus: reducing the noise, sharpening the message, and creating something that holds up over time. The influences are mid-century modernism, strong geometry, disciplined typography, and the restrained use of color. Whether the work is for print, digital, or a larger branding system, the goal is always to create something clear, functional, and visually grounded.
Feel free to contact me via email or twitter if you have a suitable project.
Book Covers
These covers use a mix of approaches depending on the nature of the text. For the Provocations series, each book uses an abstract constructed image built from simple geometry, limited color, and references to print traditions. The images are not illustrations of the content; they function as independent compositions that reflect the subject without relying on literal political imagery.
Other covers draw from different sources: period typography for historical subjects, engraved portraiture for speeches and essay collections, documentary and archival material for policy reports, and straightforward layouts for projects that call for minimal treatment. The visual language shifts with the text but stays within familiar print conventions: clear type, restrained color, and uncomplicated composition.
Across the projects, the emphasis is on formal structure rather than stylistic effect. Each cover is built from a small set of elements arranged with the same interest in proportion, spacing, and typographic clarity.
Logos
The logos shown here use a range of approaches depending on the character of the project: geometric marks, monograms, engraved or heraldic forms, mid-century corporate structures, and simple typographic treatments. Some rely on abstract shape construction; others draw from older visual traditions such as heraldry, engraving, or classic sign-painting. The work is built on proportion, spacing, and the relationship between line and counter-form. Each mark keeps to a limited set of shapes or letterforms and avoids effects or ornament. Color is handled minimally, usually drawn from a narrow palette tied to the project’s context. The logos vary in tone — from contemporary geometric systems to historical or illustrative styles — but all are handled with the same emphasis on clear forms and controlled structure.
Advertising
This work uses the familiar visual languages of posters, tickets, propaganda sheets, medals, and older commercial printing. The treatment depends on the subject: engraved portraiture for Lincoln–Douglas, medal conventions for institutional projects, mid-century travel-poster structure for the Visit Iran series, and simple contemporary layouts for policy and counter-terror pieces. The compositions are straightforward — limited color, clear type, and a single organizing idea. Each piece relies on recognizable print forms rather than illustration or digital effects, and the tone ranges from formal to satirical depending on what the project requires.
Artwork
These pieces began as part of the Provocations book series for the Claremont Institute. The challenge was to create book covers that communicated the essence of a political idea without relying on the clichés of political cover design. Instead of literal illustration, the goal was to build a new, abstract image for each title — something grounded in geometry, classical proportion, and the visual language of mid-century print culture.
Each piece uses documents, technical drawings, typographic fragments, and civic iconography only as raw material. They’re reorganized into compositions that operate at two levels: they hint at the subject of the book, but they also work independently as abstract images with their own internal logic. The focus is on structure — circles, grids, diagonals, controlled color — and on treating political content as form rather than commentary.
What emerged is a body of work that isn’t “book-cover art” in the normal sense. These are constructed images: disciplined, print-driven abstractions that can stand on their own, apart from the texts they introduce.
