Talking ‘Bout A Revolution | Law Week Colorado

I’ve been wanting to do a Banksy-inspired cover for a while and the legal-education issue lent itself to the urban-art style. For this cover, I had Law Week designer Amy Vanchina photograph my body holding a soda cup (for lack of a spray-paint can) and then I proceeded to cut off my head and replace it with the head of actor Charles Andrew Callaghan (as actors are prettier than graphic designers). I desaturated the image and upped the contrast until I started losing detail. I then dropped out the white of the image and replaced it with my own spray-painted white background.

For the Law Week banner and title treatment, I basically created a stencil with layer masks and filled in with the white and red spray paint. You can see where the ‘stencil’ stopped and the paint bled over the edge. A few spray-paint drips later, we have the finished cover.

Super Lawyers | Law Week Colorado

For this year’s Super Lawyers cover, Law Week’s Sarah Overbeck shot the photo on the roof at the Denver Athletic Club, and designer Amy Vanchina executed an architectural drawing of the skyline from the image. I then brought the photo and the drawing together, removed the photographic background and replaced the cityscape with an illustrative one. Layering on top of Vanchina’s sharp architectural lines, I loosely sketched the city, added watercolor and scribbled the Law Week banner.

In 2011, seven attorneys joined Law Week photographer Jamie Cotten and myself on the roof of the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse with a beautiful geometric city-scape behind them. Inspired by the first comic books of the 1930s, I then illustrated the image with an art-deco Americana style. Law Week masked the Super Lawyers and Rising Stars revealing their faces with the original photo inside the issue.

Two years ago, Law Week brought three Super Lawyers into the alley behind the Rocky Mountain Diner for an urban comic-book style photo shoot. I layered the photos with a half-tone pattern for my first Law Week cover which featured three images from the shoot in a comic-book-style story board.

Waiting It Out | Law Week Colorado

The editorial focus for the March 12, 2012 issue of Law Week centered around employment and recruitment—including a feature story by editor Meg Satrom about law school graduates who aren’t currently practicing law, voluntarily or not.

Actress Amy Kersten clears tables in this photo taken by Law Week photographer Sarah Overbeck at Denver’s Appaloosa Grill. Acting as art director for the shoot and cover art, I researched images from Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange to capture feelings of hopelessness and underemployment.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? | Law Week Colorado

For the January 23, 2012 issue of Law Week, I collaborated with photographer Sarah Overbeck and actress Chiara Motley to create a cover image based on the street photography of artists such as Markus Hartel, Robert Doisneau and Vivian Maier. The editorial feature of the paper this week was focused on the lateral moves of attorneys in Denver in 2011.

After pulling research—both street photos and occupational-focused realism paintings such as Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère—I discussed with Sarah my concept for the shoot. I wanted the image to feel like a candid snapshot of Chiara deciding whether or not to leave her firm while the world around her kept moving.

The final image is a composite of about seven different photos that Sarah and I set up, shot and stitched together.

The first slide is the cover; click through for an image of the final photograph, and again to see the image in color.

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PEACE Annual Report 2010

Shortly after I started working at Law Week Colorado, the CEO of Circuit Media announced that she was in the planning stages of a company service trip to Mexico. A few months later, we found ourselves on a hot, sweaty bus ride from Puerto Vallarta to the small town of Bucerias.

From Bucerias, we met up with men and women working at a nonprofit called PEACE Mexico. They toured the Circuit Media team around the area of Punta de Mita showing us the tangible results of the work they have been doing for years.

When we returned to Denver in November of last year a few shades darker than when we were when we left, I started thumbing through the hundreds of photos that I took while we were down in Nayarit. I found myself drawn to all of the color and texture that Mexico had to offer. From those images, I based my concept for the 2010 Annual Report—a kind of tactile vibrance that PEACE brings to the area. Independently, I designed the entire 96-page report using supplied copy and my own photographs, as well as additional photos by Jamie Cotten, Elizabeth Lloyd Photography, Nikhol Esteras Roberts and Nova Pennison.

To download the entire pdf report, click here.
© PEACE Mexico, Circuit Media

View more of my Mexico photos here.

The Final Frontier | Law Week Colorado

The Final Frontier, Law Week Colorado, Nov. 28, 2011

By Meg Satrom, Esq.

Illustration by Matthew Meier

© Circuit Media, 2011

State Bill Colorado | Logo Concepts

One-Man Show | Law Week Colorado

One-Man Show, Law Week Colorado, January 9, 2012

Illustration by Matthew Meier

© Circuit Media, 2012

Ryley Carlock & Applewhite

Ryley Carlock & Applewhite is a national law firm that specializes in water, natural resources, energy and environmental law. A firm with a strong Denver presence, RCA advertises in Law Week Colorado and was contracted to be prominently featured on the back page each week. I created this campaign which ran for almost a year.