From Spring 2014 through Spring 2015, my good buddy Drew and I brewed several hard ciders in the dark depths our college closets. Not only did we feel an obligation to fulfill this cliche of the white male college student, but we also viewed this project as an opportunity to apply our college training towards something fun. For Drew, a chemistry major, homebrewing was a welcome reprieve from his mandatory, 3-hour labs. It was chemistry on his terms. For myself, it was a couple things. Foremost, it was a fun distraction from school work. Secondly, it was a great way to spend time with Drew, especially when we were no longer living in the same apartment. Lastly, but certainly not least-ly, it was an opportunity for me to practice graphic design and brand development. After tossing around potential names for our cider, Drew and I finally decided to call our concoction "Old Juice." I try to insert humor into my artwork and design wherever possible, and it was just too easy with hard cider. In the simplest terms possible, hard cider is made by letting apple juice (+ yeast) get old: hence, Old Juice!

As a Tufts student, I have a lived a very paradoxical lifestyle. My junior year I lived in an alternative artists' co-op known as the Crafts House instead of living in my fraternity house. Most of my housemates in the Crafts House were and likely still are very confused by me, as many of them would like to abolish Greek Life at Tufts altogether. Ironically, so would I. Don't get me wrong, I admire and care for all of the men in the organization; many of them are close friends of mine. However, the only reason I am still in the fraternity is because I feel like it is more productive to change a problematic institution from the inside than it is to just shake your head disapprovingly from the outside.

Last Fall, my fraternity went through the challenging process of disaffiliating from our national fraternity. We did so to divorce ourselves from the toxic hypermasculinity, classism, misogyny, racism, and homo/transphobia ingrained within the history, past and present, of that fraternity. What did this mean for me as a designer? We needed a new brand!

In the Fall of 2015, I began what would quickly become the most intense academic experience of my college career: my senior design capstone project in human factors engineering (explained below). I was extremely fortunate to be able to work on a multidisciplinary team that included students outside of my major, namely electrical engineers and computer scientists. Working on the Bouncer team has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. My team and I worked tirelessly for a year to develop an innovative product that would protect our friends from one of the most sinister issues still present on college campuses today: the issue of illicit drink tampering and drug-facilitated sexual assault (or "date rape"). My role on this team was not simply that of graphic designer. In fact, graphic design was hardly apart of my role. My primary function on the Bouncer team was that of a human factors engineer, which means that I did all of our interface design and usability testing. But we also needed a logo! 

This semester I am taking a course in Web Programming, at long last! The course is teaching me the skills needed to build websites and apps from scratch. As someone who aspires to be a bridge between traditionally unrelated or oppositional disciplines, this skill set excites me. For years I've only been able to design a website on paper (that is, in Adobe Illustrator). But now, I can not only design the website, but I can also build it! 

The final project for the course is to build a gaming app and website. My team and I are currently in the process of building Vhoto, a mobile app that allows people to submit photos in response to specific themes. After photos are submitted, they are organized into tournament brackets and voted on until there is only one photo remaining: the winning vhoto!

This Fall I was invited to join a campus startup called sPARK, which aims to capture the kinetic energy generated at kid's playgrounds as an alternative energy source. My first contribution to the project came in the form of these logos. I'm excited to continue expanding and refining the image of this creative startup!

In Fall 2014, I took my first Graphic Design course at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Over the course of the semester, each students developed a series of logos for a small library an hour west of Boston, the Southborough Library. In the end, one of these logos would be selected by the library as its new logo. To my great surprise, my logo was selected!