Whether by design or by accident you have reached a website which is an online porfolio of my graphic design work. This work blends elements of lettering, illustration and graphic design into a sort of hybrid form which doesn't really have a name yet - although it's unmistakably oriented towards letterforms. The work falls into the tradition of, and has as it's inspiration such diverse sources as matchbook covers, theater marquees, enamel signs, early and mid-20th century packaging, and various other artifacts of US Pop Culture. Although for the better part of my career I've executed work using traditional media, for the last few years I've worked almost exclusively in a digital format.

WHO I AM:
I'm a graduate of The Cooper Union in New York City, and opened my own design business shortly after graduation. Since then I've continued to run a small design studio - first in New York City, and currently in Hollywood, California. I've never wanted to become an administrator, so I've never expanded the size of my studio, and never had to resort to farming out the actual work to an employee or sub-contractor. What this means is that if you come to me because you like the problem solving abilities you've seen demonstrated in the work on this site, then you can be assured that it will be me who will see your project through to completion.

WHAT I DON'T DO:
I don't usually work with fonts (but I do design them—see Alphabet Soup, below). I don't start out by setting type and then tweaking it. So if you have a logo assignment, I will not set type and then finesse it into twenty or thirty iterations, each slightly different from it's predecessor. I consider this to be a waste of everyone's time, and a way in which some design studios make it seem as if they're producing many solutions, but are only padding their billing. I don't believe that it gives a client the true variety of design solutions they're hoping to see.

WHAT I DO DO:
With few exceptions the letterforms that you see in my work are unique—created by hand. The work and the letterforms that you see here were generated from scratch specifically to solve certain problems, and are one of a kind. If you had a logo assignment you would see a few versions (exact amount would be determined by budget), not dozens, but each completely unique and unlike the one before—all of them viable alternative solutions to the problems at hand. The nature of the assignments I take varies widely - it could be anything from a logo to a CD cover, from signage to a postage stamp, from a single letter to an entire font (see "What's New" below): anything where letterforms and images need to communicate something more than the sum of their parts.

WHO I'VE WORKED WITH:
The NBA, Major League Baseball, Walt Disney Imagineering, Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Nike, Adidas, Time Magazine, TV Guide, United States Postal Service, Graphic Artists Guild, Red Sky Interactive, Playboy, Capitol Records, Columbia Records and all the major US Advertising Agencies.

ALPHABET SOUP:
My comment above about working with fonts notwithstanding, I have recently started my own foundry: "ALPHABET SOUP Type Founders". The fonts I design are sold exclusively through Font Bros. Currently my fonts include Metroscript, an OpenType script face with many unique features, PowerStation, an Industrial, Moderne font family which includes faceted fonts that can be set in two colors, and  my first effort, called Orion (named for the distinctive Winter constellation). In addition to the fonts, Alphabet Soup will be issuing a limited edition silkscreen print for each of the font releases. Check them all out in the ALPHABET SOUP section.
 

©2008 Michael Doret

All RIghts Reserved