Author: Brandon Moeller

Communication students work to raise HIV awareness among Houston teens

Today, I published a story I wrote about a group of communication students and alumni who are working on a special film project to educate local youth about HIV and AIDS.

HIV awareness story
I wrote this story about UH communication students, took all of the photos and designed the page for the web.

Here is the story’s first four graphs:

A scene opens with the dialogue: “And, where are you supposed to be going — I thought you were hanging with me today?”

The questions come from a concerned aunt, standing between her niece and the door, arms crossed and defiant. It’s a scene from a new series of videos called Caught Off Guard that 17 students from the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication are working on to promote HIV education and STD awareness to high school students in Houston.

In the scene, the niece explains it’s the two-month anniversary of her relationship with her boyfriend — and they’re going to celebrate. Alone. The aunt moves closer, her defiance transforms into concern, and she embraces her niece. “Ashley, and are you OK with that?”

The “Aunt Tamika” character is played by Ameka Jackson, a UH-Downtown psychology student. The character’s name is a play off of the name of Caught Off Guard writer and director Tamecia Henderson, a media production major and business management minor who is gaining real-world experience in the film industry between classes and coursework.

MarriageDoctors.com launches

Today, I launched the website MarriageDoctors.com, a site for two clinical psychologists who specialize in marriage and family counseling.

MarriageDoctors
The website MarriageDoctors.com launched today.

What I like most about this website project was that we were able to keep its message simple.

Marriage Doctors
We kept the content simple on MarriageDoctors.com
Marriage Doctors
MarriageDoctors.com

I worked with clients John Vincent and Kelton Ro-Trock to create a unique logotype for their website, and a photo illustration of a local landmark that has a subtle message between its trunk and its branches. Look for the negative space.

I took a photo of a tree on S. Post Oak, and designed the photo illustration with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

The logotype for MarriageDoctors.com was designed with Adobe Illustrator and I think it’s a neat and clean marketing approach for a group of independent practitioners.

The navigation menu utilizes an open source accordion-style jQuery javascript, initially created by Marco van Hylckama Vlieg which I customized for the Marriage Doctors.

Adobe Ideas for iPad

Adobe Ideas allows for quick and simple iPad sketching.

This is one of my first sketches:

Record

This is a sketch of a record, inspired by the latest issue of the Oxford American. This post was published via the WordPress app for iPad. (Update: Yeah, well, that doesn’t work too well, so I reposted it normally on a machine designed for work).

Here is another one:

stars

Here’s a wild cat:

wildcat

Happy New Year, everybody

Happy New Year, everybody.

It’s a new year, which means that it’s January and you are now the farthest away from next (insert seasonal holiday that you may or may not celebrate here) that you’ll ever be. I say this, thankfully, with all of the decorations and lights neatly stowed away in the attic.

On another note, this new Oprah network is pretty interesting. Didn’t grow up watching Oprah. A lot of behind the scenes stuff, revelations of her foul mouth and inability to operate her own blender, but I think what I find most interesting is the jay-z master class interview show preview.

The issue of chasing what’s popular at the moment, versus what is real. The concept of hip-hop evolving past the niche, and sustaining it as the artists mature as a cultural force that jay-z suggested may have done more for race relations than ….

Well, at least, he mentioned Martin Luther King, Jr. I’m not quite sure what he meant, and I hate to put words in the master rapper’s mouth, but … I found that feeling interesting.

There was a soundbite or two from Oprah about why Jay-z was picked as a subject for this master class episode or whatever it was, I wasn’t paying it my full attention as i was busy with this sim city deluxe game I’m hooked on.

Anyway, maybe I know way too much about Oprah now, but it’s as if she was attempting to justify the selection of jay-z as one being at the top of their game, with a unique experience that epitomizes American life (the stated theme of the guests of the master class series program). She said something to the effect of: He speaks to a large audience and even if you don’t listen to hip hop, you have to appreciate that his popularity is based on the fact that his message is received by so many who feel the same way.

Did anybody else see this? Thoughts? Resolutions? Answer below in the comments.

I was surprised when later, a commercial advertised that Diane Sawyer would be the first subject of the masterclass series premiere. What? Has she ever been on the cover of Rolling Stone?

Perhaps Jack Pendarvis said it best in the latest issue of the Oxford American (12th Annual Southern Music Issue) …

“Everyone knows that music is better than writing. … Even ‘bad music’ is better than ‘good’ writing. … There are no facts in music. Music is like this: ‘Dee doodle doodle dee dee dee.’ Writing is like this: ‘Blah blah blah, there is this amount of oats in a typical bin of oats.'”