I bought this keychain the first week I moved here.
Hard to believe it’s been four months since my last blog post. My new job as creative director of Men’s Journal has been keeping me really busy, and has been going very well. And when I’m not working, I’m exploring. I’m absolutely in love with New York City — I’m inspired by it everyday. I feel so lucky to be living here.
Here’s what I’ve been up to these last few months:
In March I flew out to Los Angeles with Jodi Peckman, Rolling Stone‘s photo director, to sit in on photographer Jim Wright‘s shoot with Friday Night Lights and Super 8 star Kyle Chandler, for the cover of the June issue of Men’s Journal:
Here’s a behind the scenes shot I snapped with my iPhone:
I drew up a rope typeface in Illustrator for the feature:
This Dave Duerson feature was in the May issue. We weren’t able to get his actual suicide note, but I recreated it based on a photo I saw — keeping his original handwriting and markings — and had our in-house photographer shoot it.
Back to the June issue: A feature on Jesse James. I was really excited to work with photographer Dan Winters for my first time on this one:
The day after the Kyle Chandler shoot, we headed down to Malibu to shoot Kid Rock for the July issue. Max Vadukul photographed him in his pool for the cover:
For the inside, an elaborate shoot at the beach. Here’s a behind the scenes shot I snapped with my iPhone:
And the opener:
For the summer package’s opener, I suggested we have a realistic beach scenario on the left page, and an idealized scenario on the right — topped off with dueling sandcastles. My editor Jason Fine wanted a VW bus made from sand, so we enlisted the 2010 U.S. Open Sandcastle champions for the job. Gregg Segal shot this in San Diego.
The grilling feature, photographed by Peter Frank Edwards, made me hungry every time I worked on it (even though I’m not big on fish).
An ominous opener for the feature on Navy Seals:
For the illustrations of Joint Special Ops branches, I hired Seattle-area illustrator Tyler Jacobson to give it a G.I. Joe file card feel:
I had a mirrored room set built for this portrait of theoretical physicist Brian Greene, who proposes that there are infinite versions of us throughout the universe. Photographed by John Midgely:
There’s even more exciting stuff in the August issue, on stands now.
