GRAPHIC DESIGN AT LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS

Starting in the summer of 2023, I made a bold decision to depart St. Louis and start anew in New Orleans. The Design Department is both an analog and digital melting pot of talent and camaraderie that picks up where I left off in St. Louis. The program embraces traditional and contemporary design methodologies and pushes the boundaries of human interactions and digital experiences. I’m currently on a tenure-track journey to help make the program bigger and better. I’m constantly influenced by this city and its surroundings and can see its reflections in our program and the work our Loyola community is doing. I think you’ll agree that we’re on the right track.

Projects posted in chronological order starting with the most recent.

GREAT IDEAS OF HUMANITY

I was fortunate enough, along with a few of my colleagues, to submit a poster to the Great Ideas of Humanity Poster Exhibition at the Chicago Museum of Design. My quote by Charles Ives: “The fabric of existence weaves itself whole. You cannot set art off into a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance. There can be nothing “exclusive” about a substantial art.” I chose to associate myself with the city I call home, New Orleans—a place defined by its rich, vibrant celebration of life. It’s a deeply inclusive culture that thrives on connection and full-throttle human interaction. For me, it all weaves together into a living artistic tapestry of diverse and unique perspectives. I created several iterations and color studies to get the perfect mix of the collage technique I was going for. This all leads to the poster show at Loyola, which features over 50 posters, including mine.

In addition to having my work featured in the exhibition, I developed the visual identity for its Loyola presentation. Building on the existing system, I adapted it for our campus by introducing a warmer red palette and using quotation marks as iconic “highlighters” for great ideas—people, places, concepts, and more. The intention is for these quotes to appear throughout our community, promoting the event while drawing attention to the breadth of great ideas shaping our world. This identity extends across both print and digital materials. A simple usage guide was also created for consistency across all applications.

TWO SIDES POSTER EXHIBITION

I helped curate a project initiated in my Fall 2024 Data Visualization & Presentation course. In collaboration with the 2025 Peace Conference on Polarization, junior Graphic Design students developed work around four pressing topics: Immigration, the Death Penalty, Abortion, and GMOs. The primary goal was to create two posters for each issue—one representing each side of the debate. This required students to design thoughtful, meaningful visuals even when their own perspectives did not align with one of the viewpoints.

Students conducted in-depth research, carefully examining arguments on both sides of each topic. This research formed the foundation for informed, balanced, and visually compelling poster designs. They also explored Risograph printing, a distinctive two-color process that blends aspects of screen printing and photocopying, to enhance the expressive potential of their work.

The final posters were displayed in clear acrylic frames mounted perpendicular to the wall, allowing viewers to easily see both sides. The exhibition is currently installed on Monroe Library’s first-floor gallery wall—an exhibition space I worked with the interim dean to secure for ongoing student design showcases. See the fly-through video of this unique exhibition.

In collaboration with Daniela Marx.

NICHE BRAND IDENTITY SYSTEM

Offered through the Department of Design, Niche is a hands-on course that immerses students in the full experience of designing for a real retail environment. The course explores key aspects of retail design including branding, point-of-purchase displays, visual merchandising, in-store promotions, customer experience and new product development. I worked with our department chair to create a unique and fluid identity system that includes some guardrails to work within while allowing the system to evolve over time. I also added some brand language they can have fun with.

SNAIL MAIL

As part of my Professional Practice course this semester, I created an assignment where students designed a mailable piece of communication focused on either the sender (themselves) or the receiver. Each student drew a name from a hat and kept their recipient confidential. I included myself in the assignment and selected A’Naya LaGrandsmith. I chose to create a collaged card based on the letters of her name, incorporating phrases and references connected to our shared cities—New Orleans and St. Louis. I also used stickers and stamps from recycled materials to make it more earth friendly.

DESIGN CARDS

We're hyper-focused on recruiting this semester so I'm working with our department chair to create a variety of printed materials, such as alumni project cards, for our Admissions team to hand out when they travel across the country. These cards have a specially printed gloss overlay on the type to make them stand out.

SUMMER DESIGN CAMP 2025

Loyola's College of Music and Media hosts the Creative Summer Experience, a comprehensive boot camp that exposes high school students to careers in motion design, graphic design, book arts, photography, game design, film, theater and music. High school students from across the region are invited to register and learn from top-notch educators and industry experts about the endless professional opportunities. It’s a hands-on workshop designed to challenge and inspire high school students to explore a variety of methods and media, while engaging in a process that is collaborative, thought-provoking, and imaginative. Students will take away resume-worthy experiences and projects for their portfolios. I stepped in to teach the design courses and challenged myself to build off the successes that were started, but also create something new.

WEEK 1 / Modular Type Design Typography is a fundamental skill that distinguishes graphic designers from other creative professionals. It’s an essential part of our daily work—and a key reason why clients seek out and invest in our expertise (thank you, Nike, Apple, Starbucks). One specialized technique within this skillset is modular type, which enables designers to craft distinctive letterforms and, in some cases, develop custom logos and brand marks.

Zine Design Zine (short for magazine) design refers to the visual layout and presentation of a story, a small circulation, self-published project often reproduced via photocopying using analog processes. It’s a great way to share ideas with clients and creative partners to help visualize a concept or bring collaborators together for common understanding. Sora Tajima Morgan Le Zine posters by Reid Giusti, Cinco Wise, Sora Tajima, Sydney Harkins

WEEK 2 / 8-bit Creature Design Designers use pixel art for various reasons, often stemming from its unique aesthetic, technical accessibility, and nostalgic appeal. Pixel art is easy to create and animate and it can be a powerful tool for conveying information simply and efficiently. This week-long assignment helps students understand how designers work with scale and color to communicate an idea. They also used both analog and digital tools to create their designs. We were inspired by our Sci-Fi camp theme.

DIA TYPE STUDIES

I've been fascinated by Loyola alumni Mitch Paone's type tool and trying to understand its potential to how I work with and teach typography on a higher level and push my experimentation further. I'm attempting to layer images and color in interesting ways to advance my iterations further.

COLLEGE OF MUSIC & MEDIA HOLIDAY CARD 2025

I designed the 2024-25 holiday card for the dean using non-denominational words and phrases overprinted in holiday colors using our screen printing facilities. The design was used on shirts and totes, as well.

In collaboration with Daniela Marx and Matt Normand.

DESIGN SHOWCASE 2024

The annual Fall event did not disappoint. I’m proud of our students and faculty for working hard and sharing an incredible amount of work. My courses featured work by Type 2 students (freshmen/sophomore), Data Visualization & Presentation (junior studio) and The Collective Student-Led Design Studio (juniors/seniors).

PROJECTION MAPPING

Our team dug in hard to learn and create content for Loyola’s annual holiday event, Sneaux. It was all hands on deck to pull existing holiday content while creating new animations for the 2-hour experience. While we hired a consultant to help us get over the initial learning curve, I’d like to think we’re a bit more prepared for next year.

FALL 2024 MY PATH PRESENTATION

I presented my design journey to Professor Ben Benus’ Design History class in October. I shared my influeneces, inspirations, challenges, and opportunities to allow students to better understand my background and movtivations for the work I create and the courses I teach. I’m always ready to share how much work I created using a MacintoshSE with two 720K drives/floppy disks that had to be continually inserted and ejected depending on how complicated the project was. Still amazes me. I’d like to thank Ms April Greiman for inspiring us all to embrace the pixel revolution in the 1980s.

SUMMER 2024 FACULTY SHOW

I participated in and designed the identity for our faculty show: perípheríe. The show brought in former and current faculty with diverse backgrounds and skillsets. I really wanted to approach the show identity using analog processes. So we created vinyl letters, cut and applied them to the entry wall surface, rubbed colored and white chalk all over the letters and then removed the vinyl to expose the forms. It was an experiment that was somewhat successful.

My installation, 30 FRAGMENTS, was an interactive wall display that focused on my reality of building a life in a city that hasn’t quite caught up with the rest of the world. On one hand I’ve come to recognize that change does not come easy and on the other my thirst for change is the very thing that brought me to Loyola. It’s a fragmented existence that, for this show, is defined by the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I digitized my face to create Picasso-like fragments that were divided into 30 pieces of letter-sized neon yellow paper. Then underneath each of those was a lesson printed on a variety of neon-colored paper and stapled at the top. The viewer lifts up the top sheet of paper to reveal a lesson. I also designed lesson cards as give away items that viewers could take home.

MEDIA DAY BRAND IDENTITY SYSTEM

As part of my tenure-track requirements under the Service category, I create various brand work for my School and College. This particular project is focused on rebranding a popular event targeted to high school students and teachers across the state. Coordinated and run by our Communication Department, there were various objectives to design for: 1) The UX Senior Professional Practice class would be be designing an official app that will streamline registration and communications and 2) Shortening the name to Media Day and designing for a younger audience would be key. The color palette and type treatments are meant to give a modern vibe yet be readable and adaptable to all media usage.

SPRING 2024 PEACE CONFERENCE JOURNAL

Every spring, the junior design class creates and produces the journal handed out to the 3-day conference. Given timing issues, I took it upon myself to design and produce the 20-page plus cover publication. My colleague, Daniela Marx, created the patterns based on the conference theme of memory, peace, and conflict.

2024 SENIOR CAPSTONE

The theme for this year was ITERATE. Twenty-three students participated in creating immersive projects from everything to an interactive letterpress history experience to an app that helps residents be rescued or residents help rescue those affected by hurricanes to a ceramic tile numbering system that glow in dark for better night vision. More to come here.

EARLY SPRING 2024

A busy start to the year included branding work, color and image experiments, and my first Mardi Gras!

There’s only so many filters a design guy can make. But I’ll keep making more.

FALL 2023

What a start to my first year Loyola Design! If this is any indication of how things will go, I’m all in.