gregwong

Hope For New York asked me to help out with their upcoming Spring Benefit as an event art director. I enjoy doing event art for nonprofit organizations doing good in the world. Events allow me to change up my graphic style to be more experimental, more celebratory and a lot more lively than a lot of the normal client work.

Marian Bantjes and Ryan McGuiness-like sensabilities were inspirations for this particular illustrative vision of fresh spring celebratory growth. I love their strong graphic sensibilities. Originally I wanted to try to execute this all by hand on the ipad and collage it together, but I realized that I didn't have weeks to spend on perfecting a new approach. But I was happy with what I was able to do in a couple of nights in illustrator.

Come to the Spring Benefit May 9th if you're in New York!

I'm producing and directing the 5th annual New Year's Eve benefit for Restore NYC. It will be an amazing party at the Fulton in the Financial District.

Below is the promotional event artwork I created. The event theme is "elegant noir" which I define to be classy and classic.

And as a warm-up to the main event, I'm pulling friends together the day before for New Year's Eve Eve...

I recently designed a short information book for Restore NYC to communicate in a fresh way the mission and work of the organization. Take a look. This was made possible by my $15,000 Ideas That Matter grant from Sappi Paper.

Read the publication online above.

The Pixelator

The Pixelator is an awesome way to play around with Canvas, a fun new(ish) HTML5 technology for creating images on the fly with javascript.

We're seeking to form a dedicated team of visual creatives and designers that can help us create pieces to tell the real stories of our clients, the issue of international sex-trafficking in NYC, and the vision of hope and freedom that Restore is offering. Our first goal is to create and curate installation, art and video pieces to be displayed for our March 24 freedom gala.

The work of this team would shape the experience for the attendees. We were inspired by some art pieces on display at the MoMA and New Museum and want to create similar narrative pieces for the gala. The gala is our high-end event fundraiser with a full program. We are immediately looking to form a dedicated team with strong skillsets and complementary skillsets to create pieces in the next two months. This would be a minimum commitment of 3 hours a week, the bulk of which you would be working independently following creative direction. You should have some availability select Sunday, Monday or Tuesday evenings for a few tbd meetings. Our first creative briefing meeting is Tues, Jan 18th. The team will be led by creative director Greg Wong.

We are looking a mix of the following:

• graphic designers, mixed media illustrators
• print newspaper research help (to search for newspaper clippings on NYC trafficking)
• strong hand typographers
• motion graphics designers to create short video pieces
• experience designers
• gallery production and execution help

We are particularly looking to craft and interpret clippings that can be found in printed newspapers and visual interpretations of our clients life stories.

To apply, please provide the following:

• your portfolio urls or the best visual and conceptual examples of your work
• resume highlighting your relevant experience and education
• any information about what you can uniquely offer
• your available time you can devote to the Restore project on a weekly basis through March 24 (let us know your weekly capacity for time and what nights you could be available for meetings) We will be selecting up to 6 volunteers on a rolling basis through the week based on the fit of portfolio strength and a complementary mix for the team.

If you are not a fit for the short term work, we will consider you for future creative assignments. Please email greg@restorenyc.org to apply.

...

UPDATE: here's the Restore Freedom Gala creative brief with content references.

Once again, I'm attending Swagaplooza in NYC.

Swagapalooza is an experiment in viral media. On September 9th, the world’s most-followed bloggers, twitters, and digital influencers will gather in New York to judge five-minute auditions from the creators of the latest, greatest, and most unexpected new products... And to connect with each other.

It was a fantastic event last year with some free cool (and not as cool) swag from different companies looking to get in front of different super socially wired people. The crowd gets really snarky with a live twitter feed shown on stage. I'm attending in the audience. My partner Jess will be presenting Hello Rewind to the crowd. (Thanks for the opportunity, Alex!)

I just received word from Sappi Papper that my grant entry for the Ideas That Matter contest was selected. the Longitude will be receiving $15,000 for an underwritten design budget to create new retailer and awareness materials for Hello Rewind.This is our partnership with Restore NYC to create laptop sleeves which create economic opportunity for sex-trafficking survivors in NYC.