Notespark is a popular note-taking, sharing, and syncing app for iPhones, iPads, and the web. The brief: We have a good product but our mark is meh, please make it awesome.

The mark needed to convey notes and syncing. The existing Notespark brand (lockup, aesthetic) was open for reconsideration although there wasn't going to be a big investment in redoing the pre-sale web site. The existing brand wasn't particularly strong, but did distinguish from others in the market. The goal: create differentiation in a well-defined competitive space with a strong and unique mark that communicates function and character.

A popular trend in music marketing these days is for an artist to release 'remix stems' for popular tracks. The encouragement to "make your own remix and share with friends" helps bolster album and ep sales as well as drive additional derivative income through sales of the stems themselves. Sometimes those fan mixes are compelling enough they're bundled together and made into an official release.

Stripmall Architecture are long-time friends Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom (Anymore, Halou, R/R Coseboom) collaborating with guitarist Tim Hingston and drummer Patrick Harte to make properly guitarish electronic-infused indie-pop. As Stripmall Architecture, they have several singles, an album, and another one on the way. They're currently working on remix stems for a few of their tracks.

Remixes often extend a theme or layer in frisky dance beats and hip-hop overdubs. This is not the remix I'm doing, if you could call what I'm doing a remix at all. It's far more a (re)construction of something new from something which never saw it coming.

"Not for anyone" was a somewhat curious project as key elements of the art direction were already set. I expanded on the direction with more photo-composite collage, noise, and type treatments to create this four-panel cd package.

Count had done the typeface selection for an Inu ep release earlier this year and he wanted to stay with it for this subsequent full album. The typefaces used, versions of Bell Gothic, happen to have an interesting back story. The album is inspired by the social, economic and environmental struggles in the modern world, and it is being released at a very interesting time for music distribution on the whole; micro-labels, mp3 downloads, tweet-for-a-track, facebook, short-run special releases... Titling artwork for one dying medium (cd's) using a typeface designed for another (phone books) felt somehow appropriate, if maybe a little dour.

The old-school type contrasts with internet resources for most of the art. The image Count selected for the cover and all the imagery layers I used for the panel collages were all from photographers he had found and contacted through wanderings on Flickr. Much of my additional grit-ifying is done up with brushes from Brazilian artist and typographer Eduardo Recife of Misprinted Type.

"The band's sound is a melting pot of alternative stylings, with synth and noise rock elements, layered guitars and ambient vocals." (Filter) File next to Elbow, Radiohead, Sigur Ros. Check out inuband.com or catch them on Twitter and Facebook

The Adobe / Macromedia merger (some say "acquisition") created a massive product brand and identity strategy challenge: two distinctly different companies became one, with the combined product offering somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred unique identities, which all must evolve into a cohesive and functional system (which in turn must also represent Adobe as a proud parent brand.)

At the beginning of this year, I had the fortune to be roped into an epic project re-defining the web presence for Adobe. Within a month, a vision and plan were created, a team was pulled together, I was assigned their manager and leader of design, and the adventure kicked off.

As with the three Creative Suite desktop brand projects, I have a tiny team to lead in creating a ground-up re-imagining of the massive, complex, and cumbersome (HAND BUILT!) half-decade-old site. The challenges are many, we've been handed a limited timeline, and have huge "success" metrics hanging over us. Should be fun...