The intersection of design, food and wanderlust
Feast + West is a food and travel blog that is all about celebrating life's little luxuries, whether that’s mixing up a cocktail at home or planning a trip.
On my blog you will find that cooking and wanderlust go hand-in-hand, and that hidden gems are everywhere if you know what to look for. Indulging in life — whether via food, travel or a combination of the two — should be both easy and enjoyable.
F+W has been featured in Southern Living, Buzzfeed, Hufngton Post, Mashable, marie claire and Domino.
(Videos by Chris Henry Co.)
Discover a haven in the North Carolina mountains
Lake Junaluska is a true hidden gem in the North Carolina mountains. This annual magazine showcases everything it has to offer, whether you're planning a conference, retreat or a vacation.
One bite at a time — easy-to-digest e-cookbooks
The Cookful is a food website devoted to one topic at a time. Popcorn. Slow cooker dips. Farro. Sometimes, it's a flavor. Others, an ingredient. Others, a dish with many variations.
I work with editor Christine Pittman each month to design a series of downloadable ebooks, one edition per topic.
Charlotte Food Bloggers is a community of home cooks, chefs, bakers, mixologists, home brewers and restaurant reviewers who share a passion for good food and blogging.
Founded in 2010 and reformatted in 2016, the group aims to provide a supportive and welcoming environment, via in-person gatherings and virtual forums, to learn, share and socialize while celebrating the Queen City’s food scene.
I designed branding and other materials, such as business cards, as well as the website for Wordpress built on the Genesis Framework. It features a blog for members' work, a portal for applications and a directory of all members.
Co-leaders are Ashley Korizis, Chrissie Nelson and LeAndra Spicer.
Documenting university history
As editor of the Agromeck, N.C. State University's official yearbook, I worked to produce a historical record of the 2010-2011 school year. I art directed all of the design in the 376-page book, as well as managed seven section editors and a staff of 40 people, a budget of $90,000 and distribution of 1,000 books to seniors. The underlying theme for the book was "moving forward," as the University recovered the economic crisis and administrative turmoil in 2009. The fonts utilized are Vitesse and Gotham Extra Narrow.
On March 18, 2012, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association awarded the Agromeck its highest honor for collegiate yearbooks, the Gold Crown. It was one of seven yearbooks to win the award. On March 20, 2012, the Associated Collegiate Press named the Agromeck and ten other college yearbooks Pacemaker finalists. ACP will announce the winners of the contest in late October 2012.
A tiger's tale of transformation
For the annual Mottis holiday greeting, my team and I designed an interactive storytelling experience with a charitable twist — Mottisimals: A Tiger's Tale of Transformation.
Mottisimals (pronounced mo-TISS-ee-muhls) features the fictional story of Jellybean, a lonely and rare white tiger who receives a box of costumes bearing likeness to other animals. Jellybean tries on the various pieces and learns the value of being a unique creature. We invite visitors to create their own Mottisimals by selecting costume pieces for Jellybean as they read his story. At the end of the story, we ask each visitor to share his or her Mottisimal. For each of the first 1,500 Mottisimals created and shared, we will donate $1 to Carolina Tiger Rescue, a wildlife sanctuary in Pittsboro, N.C. Jellybean’s character is based on the real Jellybean, a white tiger housed at the facility along with more than 70 tigers, lions and other wild cats.
The creative team at Mottis designed all of the original Mottisimals illustrations and online experience. The illustration style is a contemporary take on folk art and papercraft. Jellybean’s story nods to children’s literature like Clement Clarke Moore’s The Night Before Christmas and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth.
The web development team at Illuminati Karate of Raleigh, N.C., donated programming expertise to bring the Mottisimals website and our vision for this digital experience to life. The site was built using WordPress and Gravity Forms, with a heavily customized interface that uses jQuery and new features of CSS3 and HTML5 for design customization.
'Long Live the Book' — Designing for books, with books
In the studio themed "The Library as a Museum," my classmates and I checked out library books published before 1950. My book, "Studer's Popular Ornithology: The Birds of North America" was published in 1889 and once rivaled John James Audubon's tomes. We used images from our library books to design an exhibition at the College of Design at North Carolina State University at the end of the semester. Read about our studio here.
Illustrating the Land of the Long Leaf Pine
Inspired by vintage travel posters and advertisements, i originally designed these North Carolina posters for a client, but the project went in another direction. However, I liked them so much, I wanted to display them here. I hope to do some more of these posters featuring some of my favorite spots in my home state. I illustrated each poster with my Wacom Tablet in Adobe Illustrator.
Documenting and keeping Wolfpack traditions
As the editor and sole designer for The Brick, a book for new students at N.C. State University to memorialize their college experience, I worked to create a brand for Student Government's new Tradition Keeper program. Ideally, students would complete, scrapbook-style, 40 or more of the 50 traditions in The Brick to earn a medal to wear at graduation. Each tradition in the book has an open spot for students to place a "memory." We wrote copy to define the traditions and their histories and paired them with file photos from the Agromeck yearbook and Technician student newspaper to show how other students completed the traditions.
Worked with Chandler Thompson, Andy Walsh and Sam Dennis, all members of Student Government, on this project.
Every day, the North Carolina Conservation Network advocates for a healthier environment, an open government and a better state. With recent changes in North Carolina's politics, NCCN sought a way to fight the powers-that-be with their 10-Year Action Plan. I worked with BC/DC Ideas on the design and illustration of this publication.
In 2012, I worked with Third Space Studios released their first-ever North Carolina Individual Donor Report based on 2011 non-profit fundraising data. After the success of the first, I worked with them again to design the 2012 report, which grew to cover a national scale. I also designed an infographic for marketing purposes. For the look, we went for a bright color scheme and simple layout with lots of white space. Fonts used are Helvetica Neue and Symbolset in SS Standard and SS Social.
View the full report.
Writing a love story to where we live, The Triangle
Inspired by photographer John de Guzmán's Big Apple version, NYC Baton, Brittany Iery and I founded our own for the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, titled RDU Baton.
Instagram photos from Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and the surrounding areas comprise the blog, which is powered by one local Instagram user each day. It's not about quality or quantity, though -- all photographers are welcome to participate. Content varies from cats and dinner plates to workspaces and landscapes. The blog curates all the phone photos into one place, a constantly updating exhibit of the Research Triangle. The content is then pushed to various social media avenues, and a new photographer takes over at midnight to continue the "relay race."
Co-founded in November 2012.
Federated Media hired me to design an infographic for their client, American Express OPEN Forum, a blog community for small business owners. This infographic accompanies the article, "10 Business Lessons You Should Know By Age 40" by Barry Moltz. The lines in the background subtly signify the network a businessperson builds throughout their career.
Federated Media hired me to design an infographic for their client, Citi Women & Co, a finance blog for working women. I designed the infographic to resemble an invitation to a dinner party.
Teaching others to explore their home cities
In this group project, I took on the role of branding and print work for our hypothetical organization, Urban Explorers, an interactive experience to help city-dwellers and tourists explore their surroundings -- scavenger-hunt style. My friends and fellow students Heidi Adams and Natalie Brown designed the mobile and web portions of the project, respectively. We worked well as a team to develop all things UE and develop an experience that hopefully may one day come to fruition and be as fun for participants as it was for us.
A magazine for kids of all ages
For a class project, we designed prototypes of magazines. Whim is the magazine I created for children ages 4 to 12 and their parents. Filled with six departments featuring age-appropriate, gender-neutral crafts and recipes for the kids and articles for Mom and Dad, Whim was an exercise in content curation and systems design.
