My good friend Alex Martinez (Photosophic) has asked me for a little help exploring a fresh new direction for his online portfolio and blog home. So far I’ve come up with several polished concepts keeping the mark to a minimal. Bear in mind that what you’re seeing is very early in the process, however, I’m excited about some of the outcomes so far. I can’t wait to refine some of these and see them come to life both online and in a full identity system.

I’ve been following the work of Pablo Alfieri for some time now over at Playful. Pablo is a successful Art director from Buenos Aires who mainly focuses on 3D interactive and motion graphic pieces. Most recently, Pablo started a production studio called Plenty along with Mariano Farias from Gula, and are blowing campaigns for MTV, FOX and Chandon out of the water.

Very interesting work from the portfolio of Matt Kursmark, who designed this infographic series about circadian rhythms and “What Causes Jet Lag” as an assignment in his information graphics class at Ohio State University.

These panels are the result of my third year information graphics class. The assignment was to choose any sequence, cycle, or evolution and represent it graphically. The information was to be presented in two separate panels that were related but could also function independently of one another.

Before Argentina became a third world country (and in some areas a “fourth world” so to speak), we were a civilized first class nation. I stumbled on to this great video with the help of my mother. Its a great insight of not only what life was like in the young Argentina, but what life must have been in any young inspired nation at the turn of the 20th century before corrupt, unethical governments came into power with misguided interests. Some great stuff here.

My buddy over at photosophic captured some wonderful shots of what could be Banksy stencils right here in San Francisco. I really hope this isn’t a hoax as the appearance of his art in our city is a very important phenomenon. Banksy is without a doubt one of the more controversial and thought-provoking artist to have emerged in quite some time. In classic Banksy fashion, his work has been spotted around San Francisco since Wednesday without anyone catching a glimpse of him doing it.

Good photography is something I admire quite a bit, after all, as designers we use quite a bit of it in our work from time to time. I’m not an avid photographer myself but, I do like to occasionally play with a Holga or the iphone apps that replicate the effects of cameras like Holgas and Polaroids. Lately I have had an experimental itch to buy a serious camera and learn more about photography. I think its important to know the fundamentals of photography if you’re in the design industry. At one point or another, you will come across a project where you’ll have to direct, design, or produce photography. I started in this business by doing image production post photo shoot.

I may be behind as some more serious designers already have a camera and have learned early on the importance of experimenting with your own photography. So to those of you I say, I’m ready to take this to the next level. Hopefully in my next post, I will be talking about a shiny new camera.

I consider myself lucky to be getting paid to do what I really enjoy doing for a living. After all, that is one of the reasons why we envy pro athletes and movie starts. Although as designers we’re not in that circle making mega millions, we fall into a really lucky space to make our ends meet all the while exploring our creative endeavors. Many people in the world however, aren’t as lucky which is why we need more movements like Kismot. Kismot is a site that no only explores art in more remote places with less access to artistic resources like say, a simple paintbrush or paper, but exposes said artists via interviews, videos and images of their art. What i like most about Kismot is the simple idea that you dont have to donate your money to sponsor these artists the way you would sponsor a child in a third world country. Kismot provides to these artist by selling you their art directly—on a tee shirt of your very own! That’s right, Kismot gives back a percentage to the artist while exposing their art to a premium audience. Check them out for yourself: Kismot

Porteños are known to be very outspoken by nature, which is why Buenos Aires has been an epicenter for bohemian culture. As one wanders the streets of the city ignoring the made-for-tourism Tango dancers, you can see the walls covered in graffiti. Some of these are rants against the political clout, and others very skillfully done stencils of Maradona and other pop culture icons. One would get a sense that these guerilla style stencil graphics were made by Shepard Fairey or Banksy himself. The modern urban expression is strong in Buenos Aires and I appreciate it. However, there is another art form that exploded in the city over a century ago and it still very prevalent throughout Buenos Aires. Known as the “Filete” or “Fileteado,” this style of Rioplatense art form is more or less a type of hand-painted, blackletter signage and decoration (done by artisans known as fileteadores).

Thank you for coming on board and visiting, I can already feel 2010 is going to be a great year. Please bear with me as I continue to update and organize my blog, there will be several changes happening throughout the site as I find my footing here in the world of design blogs. I’m excited to be sharing with you a different perspective in the world of design, art and music.

I want to make a mention with this launch, a special thanks to Bradley Johnson. I took my first Flash course back in the day and Brad was the teacher of that class. He was one of the only few people who was kind enough to extend a hand to help when I ran into Action Script trouble. Just in this last installment I ran into an issue with my navigation as I was developing my site and well, he was there to help again, so thanks Brad!!