My friend Travis wanted an illus­tra­tion of Teddy Roo­sevelt Rid­ing a Uni­corn into Bat­tle against a T-Rex with Lasers on its back and Jesus being cru­ci­fied in the back­ground. This is what I came up with.

Happy Birth­day Travis

3D Model for Rock­star Satellite

Here is a video with an expla­na­tion. http://screencast.com/t/bqmE1lEExuP

DIRECTV ZONE Logo

a mockup of an ad I cre­ated for Salem Health

http://digitalcreative.gannett.com/sandbox/salemhealth/

This is a logo I cre­ated at the begin­ning of 2011. Fla­vors of North­west Iowa is a regional net­work for local food pro­duc­ers and con­sumers. I had many con­cepts and will show them below, but here is the final ver­sion that their com­mit­tee chose.

This was one of the first con­cepts and my favorite. I loved the col­ors and the idea of the table loaded with local food.

I must have wanted the logo to be a table, because here is another con­cept, this time it is a birds-eye view of a pic­nic table. The actual logo wouldn’t have the grass or the polaroid frame, that was just a cool way to use it, I think.

There were a cou­ple more con­cepts, but they are not worthy.

I also gave the client some real world uses for the logo, like a reusable bag that could be sold at farmer’s markets.

Tes­ti­mo­ni­als
I got a cou­ple kudos from the client afterwards.

“You are awesome!”

“Hooray! I am excited to start using it! I showed it off at a statewide local food meet­ing. Also, one of my co-workers was jeal­ous that I have such an awe­some logo, and she was not happy with hers. I said, “Well I guess you should have hired Riley Briggs!”

“I am def­i­nitely happy with your work. Thanks so much!”

hey! It’s @rileyjbriggs ! He made our logo. Sooo good to work with that we some­times try to think of things we might need design work for!

— Fla­vors (@local_flavor) Novem­ber 18, 2011

This is my first attempt at a hol­i­day let­ter. Feel free to skim through, as I am send­ing this to a wide vari­ety of peo­ple, all with vary­ing lev­els of inter­est in my life.

I started my new year’s res­o­lu­tion with an intense 10-week work­out pro­gram. I signed up for KOSAMA. It was pretty tough, but I enjoyed it and would rec­om­mend it. Then, Alyssa (my fiance) won a free 10-weeks at KOSAMA at a bridal show, so I signed up again to do it with her. Over­all, I lost about 6% of my body fat and I looked pretty ripped.

Alyssa moved on from DMACC to Grand View’s edu­ca­tion pro­gram. She wants to be an ele­men­tary teacher.

At my job at Gan­nett I design dig­i­tal ads. This year I learned Adobe Flash and how to ani­mate things. I have got­ten a lot bet­ter at it over the year, and I have been assigned to many spe­cial projects for our big­ger clients.

In Feb­ru­ary, Alyssa and I moved from our apart­ment to a duplex. We have a yard now and I have a man-cave in the base­ment, com­plete with a ping­pong table, foos­ball table, mini-fridge, and couch. We finally have enough room to throw lav­ish grill outs and beer pong tournaments.

In March, I turned 22.

In April, I bought my 1^st new car. My old Buick Park Avenue became unfix­able for me, so I bought a 2011 Ford Focus in white. I really like it, espe­cially the remote start.

In May, My lit­tle cousin Kelly passed away. He had more health prob­lems than any­one I know, but he was always smil­ing and laughing.

The week­end before my wed­ding my best man Andy threw me an awe­some bach­e­lor party. He rented a party bus and we went down­town to all the bars. I threw up at the Hes­sen Haus and at Fong’s Pizza and then later that night at my house. Good times. Oh and my friend Justin made me a Groom shirt that had Tweety Bird and the word “Trou­ble” on it.

On May 28^th I got mar­ried to my love, Alyssa. We have dated since May 11^th, 2007. And since then we have been inseparable.

Our pho­tog­ra­pher, Laura at LifeArt­Photo was awe­some. We love all the pic­tures and the photo booth was a hit. Friend Alyssa on Face­book to see more wed­ding photos.

Our video was taken by Brad at Vir­tual Waters Pro­duc­tions. In exchange I am rebuild­ing his web­site for him. Check it out!

For our hon­ey­moon we went to Walt Dis­ney World for a week. It was my first time and it was a lot of fun. We rode every ride and ate some really good food. We stayed at a resort with a pool, and we went to all the parks for a day and then went back to our favorites for the other days.

This year my free­lance design busi­ness has done very well, thanks to return­ing clients and new.

Chris Bren­nick has been my biggest client and has brought me even more busi­ness with all of his con­nec­tions. His fairly new Directv store, Rock­star Satel­lite has grown a lot this year and busi­ness is boom­ing. I designed a vinyl wrap for his van, truck, desk and a wall inside the store. I made fly­ers, shirts, ads for local magazines, website ani­ma­tions and much more. I also had fun help­ing out with RAGBRAI’s visit to Altoona. Chris was a major player in get­ting the event orga­nized, so he had me mak­ing signs and doing promotions.

A new client, Fla­vors of North­west Iowa, had me design a bunch of logo con­cepts and they were very happy with the end result.

Tipsy Tees is another new client. Amy was look­ing to start an online apparel store and she found my site. We are com­ing up with a bunch of fun designs and she hopes to start print­ing in the spring once we have all the designs finalized.

I also had many small projects through­out the year. I made ads for KOSAMA and Elite Per­for­mance in Altoona. I ani­mated Vir­tual Waters Pro­duc­tions logo. I helped Alyssa’s friend Allie with a shirt design for her Grand View class. And Alyssa and I did a cou­ple paint­ings to fill our new home.

Last year I had some health prob­lems and I ended up being diag­nosed with ulcer­a­tive col­i­tis. The doc­tor had me tak­ing 3 –4 pills a day. I spent a lot of time this year research­ing and try­ing new things, so that I wouldn’t have to take any med­ica­tion the rest of my life. I started with a Paleo diet. It is a nutri­tional plan based on evo­lu­tion­ary research into the pre­sumed diet of wild plants and ani­mals that we used to eat before the agri­cul­tural rev­o­lu­tion. The biggest part that has helped me is the gluten-free diet, and it has got­ten me down to tak­ing only 1 pill a day, just to be safe. I have also lost more fat than when I did Kosama and the only exer­cise I get now is walks with Alyssa and weight train­ing. If inter­ested I sug­gest read­ing robbwolf.com and marksdailyapple.com.

I will be miss­ing Christ­mas with the Briggs’ this year. I am stay­ing home with my wife for our 1^st Christmas.

I will be spend­ing New Years’ Eve at Alyssa’s cousin’s wed­ding in Wisconsin.

2012

Next year I hope to learn more html and app devel­op­ment. I am rebuild­ing my web­site on a new plat­form so it will be free and after that I plan on writ­ing more posts on my blog. I want more clients, so I am going to try to pro­mote my business.

Alyssa and I are also look­ing into get­ting a house next year, which would be nice for when we want to start a family.

Thanks for read­ing and please keep in touch.

I designed the back of this sea­sons Iowa Barn­storm­ers sched­ules.
They have a link to a flash ani­ma­tion I did. CLICK HERE to check it out.

I am almost done set­ting up this blog for the video­g­ra­pher that did my wed­ding. I got all his videos on there and I ani­mated his logo, now I just have to wait for some pho­tos from him. Its look­ing good. Check it out.

http://www.vrwaters.com/

a project in the works

shirt vec­tor by apestar

I am on Google Plus now. I think its even­tu­ally going to be great once more of my friends are on. Join me if you want. I am also slowly mov­ing all of my flickr pho­tos to picasa just so I can have every­thing in one place.

I designed this at work yes­ter­day. I made the back­ground and the ani­mated ad.

http://gannettrtc.com/webteam/crippen/home.html

Video runs kinda crappy sometimes.

High­lights start at 56 min­utes in…
if you don’t care about me haha

Video by Vir­tual Waters Productions

I replaced the real ad info to post on here.

I have been read­ing a bunch of stud­ies about how sit­ting at a desk all day takes years off of your life. So I fig­ured I should at least have a stand­ing desk at home since I can’t have one at work. This was the cheap­est solu­tion I could find for the size I wanted. I checked Ikea­Hack­ers and the clos­est I could find was going to be $230. What I ended up mak­ing is pretty nice so far. Just two wire shelves that were $40 each and then two 2×8′s that were on sale for $7 each. The planks are just lay­ing on the shelves right now, but even­tu­ally I am going to attach them with wire some­how. The planks bent a lit­tle in the mid­dle when they were going edge to edge, so I moved the shelves closer together and have the planks go up against the wall on the right, which ended up look­ing nice.  Right now all I have is the Mac­book Pro, but I built this with an iMac in mind, with the iMac on the top shelf and the key­board on the bot­tom. When I get that I will need to get a bracket attached to the wall for more support.

I just made this ad for ROCKSTAR satel­lite. It’s going to be the back page of the Altoona RAGBRAI Rider’s Guide made by Altoona Liv­ing Mag­a­zine. The owner, Chris, wanted a cir­cus theme, so I worked with him to design exactly what he wanted.

This was a logo/business cards I made a cou­ple years ago for my friend, Adam Woody.