Though I may be one of the biggest football lovers I know, I’ve never been to a World Cup match. Despite the packed crowds at every tournament the vast majority of soccer fans only ever experience the game’s greatest spectacle through the medium of television. While I wouldn’t turn down two tickets to Brasil ’14, nothing brings home the exotic glory of the World Cup quite like the sight of sun-drenched foreign stadia beamed via satellite from a faraway land, straight into one’s living room.

With this project I wanted to celebrate the relationship between TV and football, and how especially with the World Cup the two things become even more closely linked. In many ways the commentator’s is a frankly thankless task: often he’s a distraction or an irritation, other times he goes unheard beneath the cheering. I’ve always thought a commentator’s job is a bit like that of the referee. It requires enough personality to be able to put one’s authority on the game but not so much that it’s to the detriment of the spectacle or contest.

Most of these clips have been shown repeatedly down the years, their narration as familiar as lines from a pop song or hit movie. No goal has ever been ruined by lousy commentary, in fact a goal of great beauty or significance serves only to enhance the work of the commentator. Sometimes a goal’s commentary can become even more iconic than the goal itself, as in the case of Kenneth Wolstenholme’s oft-repeated “They think it’s all over” line in 1966. What they were saying may have been straightforward, but their tone gave their words greater power.

But although these are simply spontaneous reactions blurted out in the heat of a moment, when seen and not heard the words take on a different quality. The diagrams of the movement leading up to the scoring chance are simply a visual reference, further highlighting the futility of illustrating a goal and the odd sensation of experiencing commentary without footage.

In 2014 television plays a less fundamental role in our consumption of the World Cup, and we can replay any goal at any time in the palms of our hands. But I still prefer to watch games on TV, at home, where I can give the match my full concentration. Today’s commentators seem intent on creating a narrative before the game has started, and going overboard as they grapple to convey the enormity of the occasion. The role of the commentator has become more conversational, their speech peppered with pre-written puns and ham-fisted alliteration. The voices are still there, but it seems no-one’s really listening.

All of the artwork on this page is available as prints here.

After seeing my LPFC project the good people at Mundial invited me to contribute to the inaugural issue of the magazine. I was asked to produce a series of record covers featuring some of the potential stars — Mario Balotelli, Neymar, Edinson Cavani, Mesut Özil, Eden Hazard and Paul Pogba — of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Founded in 1964 by education pioneer Audrey Cohen, the Metropolitan College of New York celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2014 — as Senior Designer at Creative Source I was tasked with branding the college’s upcoming milestone. This began with designing the anniversary logo to be used on all marketing and high-profile advertising campaign across the city. This branding was expanded to the college’s invitation and event materials for its 50th Anniversary Gala at the Plaza Hotel. By far the most ambitious task was the creation of an interactive timeline illustrating the college’s remarkable history from 1964 to the present day. Installed on a fifty-foot wall at its Canal Street campus, the giant frieze incorporated photos, graphics, archival material and newspaper clippings, which were presented alongside significant news events overt the past half-century. A condensed printed version of the timeline was then mailed to donors and alumni. At the same downtown location, I designed a series of large-scale window decals at the same location, which advertised MCNY’s anniversary to pedestrians and motorists at street level.

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50th Anniversary Gala Program

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50th Anniversary Gala Invitation

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Printed Timeline

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Interactive Timeline Installation

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Canal Street Window Decals

These designs are available to purchase as prints and t-shirts here.

I originally devised this project in 2014 as a reaction to Manhattan’s rapidly changing retail landscape. It was both a fun design exercise that would also serve as a commentary on the unchecked corporate invasion on a city that once prided itself on its refusal to embrace suburban values. I recently updated the artwork to reflect the updated branding of some of the brands originally featured.

Press for this project

The Huffington Post
Fast Company blog Co.Create article by Joe Berkowitz
Fast Company Co.Design article by Dan Nosowitz
Dashburst article and interview by Lauren Mobertz
Design Taxi
Under Consideration blog Brand New
Mediabistro blog Stock Logos
Feel Desain
Mexican design blog, Paredro (en español)
PSFK
Downtown blog Bowery Boogie
Animal New York
Notes on New York
Killahbeez
Trend Hunter: Part 1 / Part 2
Show America

I designed this poster for a contest organized by Columbia Legacy through Creative Allies. The winning entry will be included in the forthcoming Miles Davis box-set, Miles at the Fillmore, a series of live recordings from the summer of 1970. If you like it you can vote for it here!

When I first visited Florence, in the summer of 1988, I was surprised to find that the city’s most famous square, Piazza della Signoria, had been reduced to little more than a gigantic hole in the ground. The purpose of this excavation was to unearth some of the myriad relics that lay below the surface of the piazza, but the project had become open-ended when archeologists discovered Roman baths, three churches, plus towers, streets, walls and cemeteries hidden beneath the city, all dating back centuries. Eventually a perspex floor was laid over their findings allowing pedestrians the chance to gaze into this forgotten world. The fact that such endless historical bounty sits just feet below one of the world’s most visited cities is a major reason why Florence remains the only major Italian city without a modern metro.

Years later, while living in Florence, I often recalled my first visit and sometimes wondered what was below the streets I now walked on daily. Which in turn led me to often ponder how different Florence might have been had it gone ahead with any of the several suggestions for an underground rail network put forward over the years. In 2010 Florence restored its tram service which had been closed down since 1958. The first line opened connects the suburb of Scandicci with the city’s main railway station, Stazione Santa Maria Novella. Work has since begun (belatedly) on one of three more projected lines, parts of which may be underground, leading some residents to opine that a genuine metro would have been a smarter long-term solution.

With this in mind, I finally decided to create my own hypothetical Metropolitana di Firenze, a project that has taken the best part of a year and forced me to branch outside the safe confines of the aesthetics of design and into the complex realm of public transport and urban planning. The first and most daunting task was to plot the network itself, something that posed a considerable challenge, and I soon realized how an inside knowledge of the working city is essential in order to even begin such an undertaking. I began by listing the city’s major points and drawing a rough map from memory, imagining the most useful locations for stations and the distances between them. The hardest part was plotting the actual train routes, deciding where they should start and finish without doubling up on other lines. Since Florence’s centro storico is relatively compact, I made sure each line connected an area of the city’s outskirts with its center; the same lines frequently interconnect with one another allowing passengers the flexibility to divert their own route. In my enthusiasm to cater to all residents in every part of town, I was ultimately able to service the whole city more than adequately with six lines, although Milan (3), Rome (2) and Naples (2) seem to get by with half as many.

With the possible exception of the London Underground, public transport logos are rarely memorable, which is why I deliberately kept this one fairly low-key. I wanted it to look like something that could have existed for several years without ever being considered for an update. That being said I wanted it to evoke aspects of Italian graphic design. The use of triangular shapes is a subtle nod to the Futurist movement which, in addition to being preoccupied with speed and technological advancement, is inexorably linked to Florence. I also chose a typeface that was clear and modern but not without personality. The logo is echoed throughout all of the metro’s printed collateral, creating a geometric window device which can be updated regularly to feature different images of the city. As is the norm for modern underground networks, tickets are swiped for entry and are available for a single-trip (€1.50), or as daily (€5), weekly (€25) or monthly (€70) cards.

The station platforms are highlighted with color-coded signage corresponding to the relevant line, while large wall-to-wall LCD screens project live footage of the street directly above, creating an ever-changing mural of light. Another twenty-first century innovation is the smartphone app, which allows travelers to plan their journey and learn the quickest route to their final destination. As I mentioned already, this project is solely hypothetical and admittedly unrealistic: the construction work alone for such a dense network would cause decades of disruption to thousands of people daily. I certainly do not expect Matteo Renzi to jump on the idea with any urgency. Rather, it is simply a self-assigned exercise to finally realize a concept that’s been floating around my head for about twenty-five years.

No doubt recognizing my credentials as a Serie A historian and football kit aficionado, the Italian literary magazine Inutile asked me to write an essay on a team’s shirt history. The magazine’s editor is an Inter fan so I put aside my purple allegiance to trace the 105-year journey of the nerazzurri. I also created a two-part, poster-size, timeline graphic charting the many sartorial highs (and occasional lows) of the famous Milanese club, finally putting to good use my encyclopedic vault of calcio-related archival material.

Winemaker Mario Andrion asked me to design a brand and bottle labels for his new winery, Azienda Agricola 499. I’d got to know Mario through my time working for Domenico Valentino, and consequently become a big fan of his wines. In 2010 I had the chance to visit him on the job in Italy, where for several years he has been producing exemplary wines for Castello di Verduno, one of the Langhe region’s top producers of Barolo and Barbaresco. For his new venture Mario teamed up with his friend and vine owner Gabriele Saffirio, on whose 14 acres are cultivated two outstanding indigenous varieties, Moscato and Freisa. Located in the tiny Piemontese hamlet of Camo, the company takes its name from the elevation (499 meters above sea level) of the vineyards.

From the outset Mario told me he wanted to use the sketch of an elder winemaker’s seasoned hands, representative of his own belief that great wines come from years of passion and hard work. The image is also a respectful nod to the many men and women who elevated the Langhe out of postwar poverty by working the very same land from which he has been able to forge his own career.

Award-winning producer Nikki Silver and best-selling author Tonya Lewis Lee were both successful women in their own right before deciding to partner to form ToniK Productions in 2012. Theirs is a film production company geared towards the development of original entertainment that is both family-friendly but also tackles the toughest issues faced by contemporary society. Some of ToniK’s most recent success stories include the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It and the feature-length drama Monster, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and is now also on Netflix… finally!

While the name “ToniK” is a clever portmanteau of its founders’ names, for the company logo Tonya and Nikki were interested in using a more literal interpretation of the word “tonic”. Hence the playful “bubbling cauldron” motif, out from which rise great ideas! Learn more about ToniK’s current projects here.

When he’s not “keeping the world safe for Italian wine,” Jeremy Parzen is a Telecaster-wielding member of faux-French indie rockers Nous Non Plus, for whom he goes by the puntastic nom de plume, Cal d’Hommage. Back in May Jeremy asked me to design the album artwork for the band’s new album, Le sexe et la politique. My path first crossed Jeremy’s in 2008 when I took over his wine marketing job here in New York after he’d returned to California. But we share more in common than just a mutual former employer. Already a fan of the band and its unique sensibilities, as a like-minded raging italophile and fellow Beatlemaniac I felt a personal responsibility to uphold my end of the deal.

Jeremy soon began sending me various rough mixes of tracks as they developed in his home studio in Austin, Texas, where he is now based. Having been afforded a peak inside the band’s inner sanctum, and aware of the personal significance of much of the material, I took my design lead from the poet-author-critic-filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75). Arguably twentieth century Italy’s most controversial celebrity, Pasolini’s notoriety is highlighted by a quote on the inside sleeve, while his eclectic career and life is celebrated in the track “Pasolini”.

Using an intense portrait by photographer Dino Pedriali on the front cover, I selected vintage mid-century postcard scenes of Ostia (the setting for Pasolini’s brutal seaside demise) for the back cover and inner sleeve. The predominance of red represents both the political leanings of the man as well as the at times shockingly honest and direct nature of his personality and work.

Released on the band’s own label, Terrible Kids Music (for which I also designed the logo), the record is a winning and infectious blend of avant-garde electronica and ’60s pop flourishes. Le sexe et la politique is available to buy now on iTunes, CD Baby and Amazon.

“Io penso che scandalizzare sia un diritto, essere scandalizzati un piacere,
e chi rifiuta il piacere di essere scandalizzato è un moralista.”
— Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975

I took this photo of a Campari Soda and my sunglasses on the roof of my Alphabet City apartment building in July 2012. It was only later that I noticed the eerie resemblance to the cover of the Yoko Ono album, Season of Glass.

Shortly after Vino Fine Wine & Spirits underwent a change in ownership in 2012 I was asked to update the popular wine shop’s brand identity. According to new owner Adam Linet the store’s existing logo appeared tired and the colors, while recalling its Italian origins, looked too “Christmassy”. Having previously worked for the company that had operated the store I knew the place, its products and clientele better than most. Adam brought along some fresh ideas, including an expanded inventory of top-quality, affordable wines and free samples on tap thanks to the installation of space-age wine fridges. The new logo is more modern and dynamic, while its accompanying collateral reflects the fun and vibrancy of the new Vino. Cheers!

Vino Fine Wine & Spirits is located at 121 East 27th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues) in Manhattan.

This was one of the first things I designed after moving to New York.
“Theme from New York, New York” written by Fred Ebb and John Kandor, 1977 (Capitol Records/EMI).