I have to say, that in my time as a designer I've had a lot of difficult clients to work with but the worst client I've ever had is myself.  You might be surprised, but one of the hardest parts about being a designer and owning your own business is creating a logo.  Just think of it this way, if you had all the money in the world, you'd want everything right?  It's the same with being a designer.  I want everything and I'm constantly finding new inspiration and thinking "maybe I could do that with my logo?"

Needless to say, my business has had quite a few logos in its short time but I think I have finally got one that I'd like to stick with.  You may have seen a version of this logo being splashed around on the website lately but I was finally able to put the finishing touches on it last night.  I designed this logo in low resolution, which kind of stinks because at some point I'll have to go back and design it again for high resolution for business cards, etc.  Fortunately for me, I don't use very many business cards right now and it's not a priority.  

Let's preface this post by saying that this is not a photo. This is a vector graphic created entirely with Adobe Illustrator.

Most people don't think of Illustrator as a tool for creating photo-realistic images. For most, that's Photoshop's job. While that may be mostly true, a lot of people don't realize that Illustrator comes with some powerful tools for creating photo-realistic images. This graphic was an experiment with one of those tools.

After quite a bit of prodding by my family, I was finally able to find some time to work on my family's bakery website last week.  My family owns a highly acclaimed and well-known bakery in the area and they needed an update to their old website.  Aside from a major change to the site's design I also added a more comprehensive photo gallery to display our products.  You can view the complete website at http://www.dessertsbyhelen.com.

A while back Abduzeedo posted a tutorial on how to create an iPhone in Adobe Fireworks.  I like Fireworks a lot but I rarely work with it unless I am mocking up a website design.  I mostly work in Illustrator so it's a lot easier if I have an Illustrator file to work with.  Since I'm in New York this week and next and I have a lot of time on my hands, I decided to go ahead and design an iPhone in Illustrator.

Street Corner is another experiment in vector pixel art.  Originally, I was planning to design this piece as a low resolution test piece but I changed my mind and instead designed this piece as 790 x 1220 pixels with each square representing 5 pixels.  That means I had to select and color 38,552 squares.  As you can imagine this took me quite some time.

I based this piece off of another photo my friend Jacob Zimmer took.  In some of my earlier attempts in this style I attempted to take some shortcuts either by creating very smooth lines or by limiting the amount of detail I used.  In this piece I decided to include as much detail as possible but at the same time, use some really messy lines and a limited color palette.

I designed this mockup some time ago for a political consulting agency.  This design never went into development but I still thought the design was nice so I decided to replace the content with placeholder text and post it here.

"American Hero" is the latest in my series depicting American heroes.  In my last three pieces I paid tribute to General George S. Patton who famously commanded the American 3rd Army during WWII.  In this piece I decided to pay tribute to Senator John McCain who is currently running for President of the United States. 

I designed this piece some time ago.  It was a low resolution experimental piece so I chose not to post it at the time based on the fact that I couldn't really print it at a high resolution.  The more I looked at it however, the more I liked it so I decided to post it.  It reminds me of strawberries for some reason, hence the name.

In this piece, I wanted to see what would happen if I formed some glass-like elements into a spiral. This original document was created as a 24 x 24 inch document but I scaled it down to 18 x 24 for the online version. Needless to say each file save took nearly five minutes.

This is a website that I designed and built for an organization in Kentucky called Kentucky Consumers for Energy Competition (KCEC).  KCEC is a non-profit organization made up of large and small businesses, organizations and residential consumers who want choice in their natural gas suppliers.

This piece was an experiment with some of my earlier techniques creating glass-like objects.  I've been spending a lot of time lately working on the new website so I haven't had much time to experiment with new artistic techniques but this technique is certainly worth following up on.

After a lot of hard work, I'm finally ready to announce the launch of my new website!  The site finally started to come together last week after having to switch my hosting plan to allow for an upgrade to Movable Type 4 (my blogging software).  Once that was done it was just a matter of implementing my new design and gathering together all my artwork.

I developed Colorburned.com as a means to showcase my artwork, share my thoughts on current design trends, and from time to time, offer some unique design resources and tutorials to other designers.

This piece was a result of a couple adjustments that I made to the earlier glass flower that I designed.  In this piece I wanted the flower to have some more transparent elements.

This breathtaking piece was a result of a combination of a few techniques that I developed creating floral and glass patterns.

This is the first in my series adding complex elements to basic shapes.  I really like how the shapes in the center interact with each other.  I am also very happy with the border and center flare.

This is the second in my new series experimenting with new types of basic shapes.  In this piece I used an equilateral triangle as the base shape.  I also extrapolated on some of the techniques that I developed in an earlier design; adding some textures and additional lighting.

Blood Diamond is the third in my series using basic shapes.  I loved the look and style of the original piece that I designed and before I began branching off to do other things I wanted to first master the three basic shapes; circle, square and triangle.  Well, I didn't do a square because I felt that a diamond was a more compelling shape to work with.  In the future I want to experiment with combining more shapes and elements to see what happens.

A salute is a gesture, often made by the hand, used, to display respect.  In Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton", General George S. Patton, played by George C. Scott salutes members of the Third Army prior to delivering his famous "Blood and Guts" speech on the eve of the Allied invasion of France in 1941.  This piece is a portrayal of that moment.  It was designed using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

This was the second piece in my series depicting WWII hero General George S. Patton.  General Patton, who commanded the famous Third Army during WWII was famous for carrying a flashy ivory, handled .45 caliber Colt Single-Action revolver.  The inspiration for this piece was derived from Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton."

Standing in front of a massive American Flag, General George S. Patton salutes members of the Third Army prior to delivering his famous Blood and Guts speech on the eve of the Allied invasion of France in 1941.  This piece is a portrayal of that moment as depicted by Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Academy Award winning film "Patton."  It was designed using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

This was the first of my series paying tribute to American hero General George S. Patton. 

I derived the title for this piece from an episode of one of my favorite cartoons growing up, G.I. Joe.  For some reason, this episode terrified me.  During the episode, some of the characters melted away like wax.  For some reason that image stuck with me.  After I designed the piece, I thought of it immediately.  Surprisingly, this piece became one of my post popular designs.

This beautiful and colorful design is a continuation in my series of glass art textures.  The first piece I did using this technique was also one of my all time most popular pieces of art.

When I started this piece, I was wanting to design a composite piece.  I pictured a girl dancing in the foreground with some shapes swirling in the background.  As it turns out, I never found a suitable photo of a dancing girl, so instead I'm just posting the backdrop which is still pretty cool.

This is another experimental pattern.  This time I wanted to see how shapes moving in random perpendicular directions would interact with each other.

This was an experimental piece I designed using some new techniques that I developed dealing with basic shapes.

This is a vector self portrait of myself.  I based this drawing from a photo of myself.  I used Adobe Illustrator to then trace and color myself. 

Fashion sketching is an important step in all phases of garment creation.  It serves as a roadmap for fabric and color selection as well as the actual construction of the garment.  For the most part, fashion sketches are done by hand by talented artists and designers but many designers also use Adobe Illustrator to refine their sketches.  This sketch was my second attempt at refining a hand drawn sketch.

This is one of my all time favorite pieces.  I love how all the shapes and colors interact with one another.

For some reason this piece reminds me of Star Wars.  It reminds me of some of those infinitely long falls that seemed to occur so frequently in those films.

In this starburst I embedded the shape of a flower.

I was attempting to design a new logo for this site.  Somehow this design happened by accident.

This piece was inspired by one of my recent trips to New York City.  I've been taking quite a few trips up there lately and this piece kind of made itself while I was working with some simple 3D shapes.  

This was my fourth and (probably) final attempt at replicating retro artist James White's technique.  It's been a great learning experience trying to figure out how he gets very basic shapes to interact in such an incredible way.

This is another attempt at replicating retro artist James White's "Cosmic" technique.  Since my earlier attempts, I learned how to quickly create and position the shapes using illustrator.  Then how to bring those shapes into Photoshop to add layer and blending effects to simulate lighting.

This piece was another tribute to mixed media artist James White who uses basic shapes to create magnificent pieces of retro art.  This piece was an attempt to recreate his "Retro Light" style.

This was an experimental piece that I put together using basic 3D shapes.  I wanted it to look as if I was flying between groups of 3D bars.

I love working with flower shapes.  In this piece I wanted to design a flower made of glass.  I also added some additional decorative elements and a background.

I created this piece with a little bit of creative Photoshopping and a photo I took of the Las Vegas skyline.