The OnWired Invitational

Firstly, thanks for all the e-mails! Keep ‘em coming.

Secondly, the Raleigh area is easy to network in, both professionally and socially.

With that said, I interviewed with the captains of OnWired on Friday – awesome people with a budding studio + lots of growing potential. They seem passionate about their work. The company really has that family-feel about it, which is important to me at this stage of my career. They have nice equipment too, and I should also mention it’s close to my pad. And they watch movies … at an actual cinema… during business hours. Needless to say, I was impressed.

As a sort of hazing for the position (kind of like in 300... eh, not really...), I was handed the challenge of choosing a company and creating three websites for it, each with a different “style”. I spent hours researching local businesses before I settled on Merge Records in Chapel Hill. Their website is okay now, but their logo lacks integrity. So, I figured if I was going to do this project, I may as well do something that I could potentially give away as a total package later. Accordingly, the identity snowballed…This was only a small portion of what I was cookin' up over the past few days. My weekend was completely devoured by research and tons of logo + web sketching (almost a dozen pages worth), but I’m comfortable with my progress. I have the first layout well in hand now, and I’ll post all three designs once I present them to Tony + Jon, which I’m planning to do Friday. I’m a homerun hitter though, so no half-way crap.

A special thanks goes out to my good friend Lenny Vella at Akron's elite polkadotpeeps, who gave some solid feedback on the logo as I approached the finish line. The small tweaks helped a lot; Ohio’s lucky to have talent like Lenny. And props to my non-designer friends and family – my “unwavering audience” – for your early opinions, too!

I’ll keep you posted on my professional status as it goes on. The sky’s the limit, so everybody keep up the good fight!