Desert Alchemy

Desert Alchemy is a design studio and manufacturer. I established Desert Alchemy while living in Salt Lake City and now operate it out of my home in Greeley, CO. I believe that your home is a place that you should truly enjoy being in. It should be a beautiful sanctuary that not only serves the function of shelter but also expresses something about who you are. Until this point in my life my decisions on how I furnished and decorated my home were financially driven. I have put up with furniture and decor that I hated because it was cheap or free. But I realized that living in a space that you don't absolutely love has negative effects on your wellbeing in a subtle but significant way. When I moved with my family into our first home in Colorado my wife and I made a commitment that we would take seriously the design of this space. Putting in just a little more thought and intention into the design of our home has had profound effects on our happiness. It's hard to describe how good it feels to come home to a place that you are proud to call home. 

With Desert Alchemy I want to spread the message that the design of your home is an investment. It is worth it to pay a little more for furnishings that you have an emotional connection to. I am inspired by elements of modernism and draw on that inspiration in an attempt to create a new aesthetic. 

The ancient art of alchemy was aimed at transmuting one substance into another through some magical process. At Desert Alchemy we use the magic of design to transform raw materials into beautiful durable objects. We are committed to the responsible production of sustainable furniture and home goods.

Visit desertalchemy.co for more info.

Compass Range Hood

This range hood was designed for Proline Range Hoods to sell in the Chinese market. Proline manufactures it’s hoods overseas and Proline’s founder Mark Zuro has seen the huge potential in marketing American made products to the growing middle class in China. He tasked me with designing a hood for that market and this is the result of that assignment. The Chinese style of range hoods are different than American hoods, that market values low profile, sleek designs, with black glass being a huge selling point. The Chinese style of cooking in a wok creates a lot of steam and grease, I designed this hood to be low profile but to raise up to capture all of that steam.

Adjustable Range Hood

During my time at Proline Range Hoods we tackled a question that many of our customers had: How high do I install my range hood? For ideal ventilation the hood should be 24 inches from the range, but when it is not needed it would be nice if it raised out of the way. The solution is an adjustable range hood that utilizes an electric motor that is controlled by a wireless remote. Our team was responsible for designing the hood mechanism, the remote hardware and user interface.

Renderings for Proline Range Hoods

These are renderings I did for use on prolinerangehoods.com. The models were created in solidworks and the renderings were done in Keyshot 6.

Proline Range Hoods Re-Branding

While at Proline I collaborated with one other designer and in conjunction with our marketing team we were tasked with re branding the company. The Proline brand lacked consistency across it’s various touch points and the aesthetic of the brand needed updating. The old logo was indicative of steam or wind, we designed a new logo that attempts to elevate the brand while staying true to that original idea. A style guide was developed that included typefaces, a color palette and guidelines for any print or web media that Proline will produce in the future. We also collaborated with our web developers to give prolineragehoods.com a face lift.

Espiritu Design

This is a concept for a wrist light for joggers, the face is aluminum and contains the LED light source while the band is made of a soft, translucent TPU rubber. This light would make joggers more visible to drivers and is also meant to act as a fashion accessory. I produced these concepts for a client while interning at Espiritu Design

This concept was for the same product line. It is a flashlight for joggers to provide visibility when running at night. It has forward facing and back facing lights to provide visibility for the jogger and to make them more visible to drivers. It shares the same aesthetic as the wrist light above.

Föbi

Föbi is a toy consisting of triangular foam panels with embedded magnets. Föbi was inspired by Miguel Sicart's book Play Matters, in it he says "To play is to make a world, through objects, with others, for others, and for us." One form of play that embodies this idea is the pillow and blanket fort. This form of play is fun for children and adults because it disrupts the status quo, it takes objects from everyday life and transforms them into whatever you can imagine.

The manufacturing process for this product is described in an infographic below. A brand was designed around the toy including a logo, aesthetic, and  website. A business model was conceived that relied on Kickstarter to launch the product, the Kickstarter video is below.

Creminelli Fine Meats

I worked as a graphic designer for Creminelli Fine Meats from 2013 - 2014. During that time I learned a great deal about marketing, branding, product photography, social media marketing and web design. I had the opportunity to design facility signage, point of sale materials, web artwork, and photograph lots of food!

Sketches

Adaptive Cycling Wrist Clip

This is a concept for an adaptive cycling wrist clip that would allow tetraplegic cyclists to more easily interface with their bikes. Current solutions to this problem are difficult to clip in and out of, this can be not only inconvenient but dangerous. This system utilizes a spring loaded mechanism that can be adjusted to match a cyclists individual preferences.

Peltier Camp Stove

The Peltier is a wood burning camp stove that uses a peltier device to generate electricity from the heat of the fire. The electricity runs a fan that adds more oxygen to the fire. Any excess power is routed to a USB port which can be used to charge your electronic devices.

Broadside Poster

This is a poster I designed and printed for a letterpress class. I created the form by laser-cutting and gluing pieces of MDF. 

I then printed multiple runs that intersected each other to create a beautiful overlay effect. I printed a run of 25 broadsides.