SAG DESIGN

I was honored to be asked to design the promotional materials for the UTEP Theatre Arts Department’s presentation of Alice in Wonderland. I based my concept around the upside down world that is Wonderland. I used iconic imagery from this classic tale. I took the well known visual element of the Queen and playing cards to illustrated a poster that can be hung up or down and still have the same layout.

In 2010 I was honored to be asked to represent my degree field as an alumni artist in this one-time art show at The Rubin Center. The Rubin Center, located on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso, asked me to provide two or three pieces that represented the work I had been creating since my graduation. I chose to display three of my recent book designs.

This is a book I designed for Cinco Puntos Press, an independent publisher of culturally rich and diverse books.

This concept revolves around the main character, a young middle-school aged girl named Chela. When Chela’s father has a stroke, her grandmother comes to help. The house fills up with the smell of old lady perfume. The design is meant to look like a child’s scrapbook. I created the visuals throughout this book that come back and touch upon themes and trials of this tender and heartbreaking story of coming of age.

This is a series of books I designed for Cinco Puntos Press, an independent publisher of culturally rich and diverse books.

This series of children’s books was conceived by Cindy Weil of NYC. She had the idea of using beautiful folk-art from families of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, as a means to introduce Spanish and Mexican culture to children in the United States. She had an idea, but didn’t know how to execute that. So I came in and worked with her to develop a simple and engaging way to lay this concept out as books. The results have been extremely well-received. This series has received multiple awards and the paper-back rights were bought by Scholastic Books in order to distribute them in classrooms across the U.S.

This is a book I designed for Cinco Puntos Press, an independent publisher of culturally rich and diverse books.

For this title I teamed up with the dynamic illustrator from San Antonio named Xavier Garza. The Great and Might Nikko is a Luchador counting book for toddlers in English and Spanish. My concept was to layout it out in comic book fashion to give it that fun and easy read for beginning readers. To this date, this is one of my favorite titles I have worked on.

This is a book I designed for Cinco Puntos Press, an independent publisher of culturally rich and diverse books.

This is a novel on the myths and history of México written in a narrative form. It stitches together the fragmented mythology of pre-Colombian Mexico into an exciting, unified narrative in the tradition of the Iliad. I teamed up with the illustrators know as Los Dos to create this intriguing novel .

This is a series of books I designed for Cinco Puntos Press, an independent publisher of culturally rich and diverse books.

The Maximilian books are middle-reader, Luchador, pulp mystery novels. I created a working template in a punchy, Lucha Libre style that could easily grow with the series. We currently have three books in the series that have been published. A fourth one is sure to come!

In 2007 Helen of Troy was proud to announce its expanding portfolio of products. This was a period of growing consumer confidence and they had recently acquired Bed Head® and their line of OXO® products were achieving much market success. I was asked to design an annual report that projected this optimism to stockholders as well as highlight their well-performing product lines.

Logos are always an exciting and fun project for a designer. It’s an opportunity to create the identity of a brand from the ground-up. Here are just a small sample of some of the identity projects I’ve worked on over the years.

Ulta Beauty needed a set of ultra-portable, cute hair irons to market to young adults. My design included different colored leopard printed mini hair irons with matching pvc outer and cardboard inner packaging.

Beauty industry brand Wigo was developing a high-end line of products gear towards professional stylist. I was giving a substantial budget for the production of this project and used that to create a special and memorable package for them. This line of products had blue glowing LED lights that indicated temperature, so I used iridescent foil with a blue overlay that would glow when struck by light.

I worked on the AT&T account at my agency for over five years. Over that time I created countless print ads for them. Here are a few samples.

Luxury yacht builder, Ocean Alexander, needed a print campaign that highlighted the high-quality construction and attention to detail they put into every ship they build. Our solution was to create a campaign that drew parallels with the divine construction found in nature. Most yacht ads have a similar format in the market place, so in order to set the ads apart from the competition, we reduced the size of the boat to give generous white space and prominently featured beautiful nature photography.

Credits:

Art Direction and Design: Sergio A. Gómez

Copy and Creative Direction: Ronda Doré

The Wigo Taifun II was a high-end, metal-casing professional hairdryer. My client wanted an ad that reflected the high quality of materials and components used in this product. I art directed the photoshoot on a metallic surface and added a clean, simple type and design to the ad for the final look.

Hot Tools® Helix® brand hair irons are a professional brand iron that can reach maximum heat in a very quick amount of time. In the demanding world of hair salons, this is an important aspect for an ironing product - quick, high, consistent heat. This ad needed to really bring home that quality in this product.

Professional stylist preferred brand Hot Tools®, was launching a special edition, designer set of beauty tools. They were Dragon skinned and my client wanted a fun ad that still highlighted the fact that, though this was a playful, fun design, it was still a serious, professional, styling tool.

In 2006, Price’s Creameries was gearing up to celebrate their 100 year anniversary. I was asked to develop an identity and stationary set to commemorate the occasion.

Every year Peter Piper Pizza, a national chain of fun, kid-friendly pizza restaurants, holds a Manager Convention. My job is to make sure it is a unique and memorable event for everyone involved. For this particular year, the event was being held in New Orleans, so we themed the event, Bayou Bash. We created custom made voodoo dolls of the company mascot as well as a scroll of spells that cleverly layout the agenda. This campaign included an invitation, room decor, multiple animated emails, and a custom website that was completely interactive with sound, animation, and games.

Credits:

Voodoo Doll Production: Kristal Linney

Graphic Design: Yasmin Marquez

Copy Writing: Jose Bencomo

Creative and Art Direction: Sergio A. Gómez