WAYBACK is a nostalgia magazine that looks at the past through a modern, quirky lens. While it embraces the past, it also allows the reader to discover how our culture has changed and what has lead us to where we are now, for better or for worse. The flexible masthead is incorporated into each issue’s cover art, allowing for each issue to feel time period-specific rather than feeling like a purely contemporary look at the past.
The “Getaway Issue” looks at how American travel culture has shifted alongside consumerism and a fluctuating middle class. From the rise and fall of Kodachrome to the (slightly haunted) Victorian seaside resorts that boomed during Hollywood’s Gold Age, the 20th Century taught Americans to work hard, and vacation harder.
Concept/Design/Personal Project
Molekül is a purveyor of small batch tonic water inspired by the beauty and science of taste. Modern-day gin is created via the distillation of grain-based ethanol and proprietary botanicals, which results in various flavor molecules both competing and balancing one another. Quinine (the primary ingredient in tonic water) was traditionally used for medicinal purposes, but was thought to have been cut with gin to balance the intensity of its natural taste. Together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: when gin and tonic are combined, new molecular relationships form that are scientifically proven to be more appealing to our tastes than either on its own. Packaged as a modern take on traditional apothecary bottles, Molekül pays homage to these roots, while letting the beauty of taste take center stage.
Concept/Design/Motion
Illustration / Hand Lettering
Two contrasting cover concepts for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
The first concept explores the play’s surrealistic tone through illustration and collage. The second concept utilizes letters made from cut newspaper, intended to reflect the overarching themes of identity, stasis, and the human condition. The state of humanity is recorded and archived through journalism; we strive for progress, but often find our selves cutting, pasting, and reassembling our collective history into a new, yet inevitably familiar narrative. In Kushner’s words:
“In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.”
― Tony Kushner, Perestroika
Illustration / Hand Lettering
Event Identity / Personal Project
The NYCB Art Series is an annual event that highlights a contemporary artist by producing a temporary, site-specific installation in the lobby of the David H. Koch Theater, home to the New York City Ballet.
The 2018 Art Series featured Turkish-American artist Jihan Zencirli, who creates large-scale, non-helium balloon installations under the moniker Geronimo. Her work is inspired by the fleeting nature of her chosen medium and the idea of the “golden hour”, when shifting light can inspire heightened emotion.
My goal was to create a visual identity that would unite a longstanding New York institution and a contemporary artist whose medium is boldly playful and ephemeral. A system of flexible icons was inspired by the host institution, the artist’s medium itself, and the concept of shifting light.
Concept / Key Art / Photography
The Paper Press Book Series takes three existing, unrelated literary works and reinterprets their cover art as a single thematic expression in order to challenge our understanding of and interaction with the concept of the American Dream. The promise of equality in opportunity and free pursuit of prosperity is too often a false front, obscuring the systemic greed and social apathy that leaves so many Americans without mobility or hope. In this instance, paper, in varying forms (a napkin, a paper sack, a deck of cards) symbolizes a blank slate as well as the identity of each protagonists. As each story unfolds, the paper is sullied and all but forgotten—the end result a far cry from the promise it once held.
Concept / Illustration / Hand Lettering
Break Glass Chocolate embraces the scenarios we know and love from classic horror flicks. The outer packaging is reminiscent of the standard red emergency box while individually wrapped bars are hand drawn and depict scenes tied to the ingredients in each concoction.
Break Glass Chocolate: for the worst case scenario.
