MikeRDzign Graphic Design

11/29/2025

This last Halloween I was able to create yet another Celebrity Miker Mash-up. This one a salute to the great Jack White who recently recently received an induction for his former band White Stripes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and even more recently performed for the NFL Thanksgiving halftime show. I'm so happy to be able to continue to use my graphic design /illustrator skills even if it is only for personal amusement. This one was a challenge due to the wispy hair and the patterned suit. For the tie I did find a specific patterned graphic that I was able to place within the tie outline. The background is a collection of Jack white searched images that were turned to outlines and inspired me to alter the coloring of his face and hair to reflect the blue.

04/19/2025

Back in 2022 an an old friend and one of my very first clients contacted me for a logo project. I had to explain I wasn't actively running my graphic design business at the time but couldn't say no to a side project. As usual I overcomplicated the project and fully illustrated a stellar jay feather for the logo. It took forever and was a true challenge that called for a lot of detail. What she originally wanted was the photo-version feather she had supplied used as a logo. She loved what I did with it; incorporating a semi-circle and accompanying font choice, along with a gradient-circle alternate version. I had to put the illustrated version aside into a drafts folder. Two years later and she got back to me needing a version for signage which requires vector art not pixels. To my delight I was able to retrieve the original illustrated version I had saved and with some tweaks was able to incorporate it into the logo.

10/29/2024

After a 6-year hiatus I finally got around to doing my annual Halloween where I use Adobe Illustrator to create a mashup of my face, and a celebrity, or person of interest. This character reference may be a bit outdated; Sirius Black played by Gary Oldman but is one I had been wanting to do. It was something I had actually been needing to do, having all but stopped my former career as a designer. I’ve been sitting down to this monstrosity of a project, as they always are, for two years and talking myself out of it every time. Every Halloween I would open the project in its early phase and sadly not get inspired enough to dig in.

This year I had to force myself to just get started. It wasn’t easy at first but one of the things that helped inspire me was my boys walking in and seeing the likeness of their dad in yet another creepy rendition of a continuing theme of Halloween style mashups. They always recognize that I’m working on it even in its early stages where eyeballs and facial hair might be in odd placement. They give me encouragement and get me excited with their approval. If you’ve been following me for a while on various platforms, you’ll know I’ve been doing one a year since 2010!

I stopped in 2018 and the following two years introduced the set into two talks I gave at Phoenix Design Week. Last year I created a TikTok style video of them all together. It’s been my own way of celebrating the Halloween Holiday and has given me my own sense of art expression apart from client and career focused design work. Now that I’m not currently working in design my Mac and my Adobe products sit sadly in a cold office beckoning me to come back and do one more. This was a particularly fun one with the textures of his suit jacket and patterns I had to create in Illustrator. Go to the hashtag to see more.

07/27/2022

07/10/2020

Not that I want to make a regular thing of it but this is a website I put together in 2017 for an old friend and art teacher who originally inspired me to get into art. https://www.sdnelson.net/ Wordpress Website Design

05/25/2020

An article I wrote on working with local clients in town in 2016.

Last year was a busy year to say the least. In the midst of doing a lot of various new things, including building a photo business, running a marketing organization, giving various social media talks in addition to my full time job, I also completed two new logos and a book cover for my side busin

05/03/2020

Late July of last year I was accepted to give a conference level talk as a breakout speaker for Phoenix Design Week. It was a great experience and I’m proud to say I’ve spoke up as a designer to my colleagues and fellow designers in Arizona.

02/09/2020

How Joker’s gritty logo was created with wood type letterpress.

Behind the scenes of the making of an iconic logo.