Illustration focuses your audience on the message you want to communicate in a way that words alone cannot.

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Illustrating Sustainable Energy Systems

  • Residential Energy System

    Sustainable Energy System for Residential Application
  • Industrial/Manufacturing Facility

    Industrial/Manufacturing Property Energy System
  • Large Commercial Property

    Large-scale Sustainable Energy System

How does a sustainable energy system work anyway?

As we make the transition to sustainable energy, illustrating sustainable energy systems can help to inform the public about how they work. Anyone in a developed country uses energy on a daily basis, even if it is only to flip a light switch. But most of us have only a limited understanding of how that energy gets to our home or place of work. Many of us know even less about what makes energy “sustainable” or not.

More directly, energy companies need to provide information to city managers and/or property owners with which they can make decisions about energy projects.

Recently a client in the renewable energy industry asked us to help them tell their story with illustrations that would show the various components of a self-sustaining energy system and how they work together.

Our Process:

  • First, we interviewed the client and gathered information about the various parts of a sustainable energy system.
  • Rough sketches of the systems were created to make sure we had the details correctly represented.
  • We then developed illustrations that show how a self-sustaining energy system works for different types of properties, from a residential scale to an industrial scale.

For the client, these illustrations will serve as an overview for more detailed information about project development and the energy system products they sell.

Infographics & Analytics

Analytics  seem to be in use for every area of life these days. Chances are your business is making use of data analysis everyday, but how do you communicate to your customers what matters about the data?

Maybe we’re biased, but we’ve observed that images, especially infographics that relate to your company’s business, is one way to explain “what it all means” once you have the data.

We recently had the chance to develop an infographic for Veros — a real estate analytics firm. The big story was that the top markets were all west of the Mississippi and the bottom markets seemed to be east. The client wanted quite a bit of data about specific markets, so our challenge was to organize that in a manner that still allowed a viewer to get the big picture at a glance.

Tips for creating infographics:

  • Pie charts are best to compare percentages to the whole, and for categories that are less than 5% of the total, it may be best to group as “Other”.
  • Line charts can effectively show fluctuations over time
  • Yes, you can combine more than one type of chart in an infographic; the rule is to keep thing visually simple so the most important facts can be understood in a glance.

Here’s an example infographic:

2014 Q3 VeroFORECAST Infographic

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drum art design for Plastic Zombies band

Drum & T-shirt Art for Plastic Zombies

Much of our work is for businesses, and therefore ‘clean and corporate’ — but that just wouldn’t have fit the bill for this punk-influenced band local to Southern California. While the overall artwork did need to go with the turquoise finish of one of the band’s drums, there were no other rules: befitting the punk influence at the heart of their music, band members were fine with either amusing or offending potential audiences.

Check back soon: when available, we’ll plan to provide a link to their schedule, for those of you who are live music fans!

fun illustration for memorial day

Happy Memorial Day!

My favorite canine hits the road, and more…apparently.

This illustration was done in Illustrator, with the canine photo masked in Photoshop and then dropped into the composition.

Typeface for whimsical title was FontDiner’s Loungy. They’re a type foundry that specializes in retro fonts. (Loungy is listed under Free Silverware)

Illo Competition

If you don’t already know about 3×3 magazine, it’s the go to place for finding illustration resources online. Great stuff there!

Window Seat - Illustration for Children's Book
Each year, 3×3 publishes Illo, a collection of the best illustration for print. The book features a variety of categories of illustration — from advertising, to editorial, children’s, and conceptual. Recently, I was delighted to get an invitation to submit an illustration for the 2014 international competition. It will be awhile before I know whether my entry will be selected for publication in Illo, but I had lots of fun developing this one!

The original was done in Adobe Illustrator.

The organization holds numerous events, including portfolio reviews — provided you are located near their studio in Brooklyn, NY.

Visit the site: http://3x3mag.com/

Book Cover Design

Mooove Ahead! book cover design

Just finished a fun project, a book cover design for author Tony Wong. An illustration of a “corporate herd” wraps from front to back of the book cover design.

The topic is career development, and Tony dishes all that stuff they didn’t tell you in school! Chapters include tips on dealing with the “Boss from Hell”, specific advice to get ahead sooner, and much more.

Want to buy a copy? Soft cover, and e-book formats are available!
Visit the author’s website: moooveahead.com

Got questions? Click the button and get in touch!

Portfolio Items