Portfolio of Elliot J Pence

Meaty is the outcome of a collaboration between myself, photographer Nick Murway, and butcher McCullough Kelly-Willis. The five recipes included are some of McCullough’s favorite to make and eat. Chosen with an eye on using the whole animal, so you will see offal, bones, and fat in abundance. Meaty is also a visual experience, because cooking involves all the senses, and charcuterie is a particularly aesthetic form of meat cookery. Nick Murway’s photography stylizes the raw materials while letting their textures come through. The final product is a perfect bound book with clean and minimalist typography to balance and compliment the vibrant photography, while allowing the reader to easily move through the steps of each recipe.

Pick up a copy here!

Created as a prototype, I set out to explore how to make promotional and program information functional as well as making something that could serve as a time capsule of an event that attendees would want to hold on to.

This art book is an exploration of a memory from childhood of having an EEG performed while getting diagnosed as an epileptic.

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who headed west to California by wagon from Missouri. Their journey was delayed because of accidents and bad luck, they ended up spending the winter of 1846–47 stuck in the snow covered Sierra Nevadas. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating those who had died because of  starvation and sickness.

This infographic sets out to describe and explore The Donner Party in more detail. Each line represents a group or family that was part of The Donner Party. The line follows the actual route that the party traveled from Independence, MO to Sacramento, CA. Solid dots on the timelines represent a date of death and are labeled with the name of the deceased. Dots that have a circle around them are deaths where the body was cannibalized after.  There is also a set of graphics at the top of the graphic that tallies up the causes of death. The most common cause was starvation but there was a single person who died of overeating (presumably of human flesh).

This piece was selected to be part of DePaul University’s Annual Juried Show in Spring of 2010. 

New Encyclopedia is a study of the representative distortion a physical objects goes through in language and other communication forms like illustration, icons, and photography.

Identity and exhibition graphics for The City as Image: The 1909 Plan of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago
November 2015 

Animated billboards to promote The Art Institute of Chicago over the holiday season. Located on 4 giant screens inside of Block Thirty Seven, a large shopping and retail center in downtown Chicago. 

To show the Art Institute of Chicago's hometown pride, we did a campaign of "Adjusted" masterpieces to include hockey paraphernalia  and shared them through social media over the course of the 2015 NHL playoffs. 

The campaign was a huge hit with our fans as well as the city as a whole. The tweets were picked up and included in a article in The Washington Post

The Dalys 1895 lookbook showcases the new styles, designers, and products featured on dalys1895.com for the 2014 fall/winter season. I was in charge of the art direction for the photo shoot of the lifestyle images as well as the layout and design of the book. Working with the photographer Nick Murway my goal was to create visually engaging images that showed off not only the products we were promoting but also create a narrative that connects the pages of the lookbook as you flip through it. 

My role for this project was art direction for both the photography and layout design. I was also in charge of doing the production design for both the printed lookbook as well as the interactive pdf version.

View the Complete 2014 Dalys 1895 Lookbook Here

In the beginning of a new company especially an online retailer, exposure is obviously important and something that can take time. At Dalys 1895 one of the ways we accomplished this was to send out a series of mailers to specific zip codes where our consumer base lived to promote both our website and a handful of the designers we carry.

My role in the project:
I was the art director for this project in charge of working with a photographer to create the images as well as come up with the layout design. I also worked closely with the printer so that the final product reflected my design. 
 

Dalys was originally a department store in northern California who's doors were open for 100 years. When they decided to re-launch the business as an online retailer they wanted to keep the name and have a nod to when the original store was founded in 1895, so Dalys 1895 was born. I wanted the logo to reflect that heritage so looking through photographs of original stores I found a font similar to one used on one of the store signs. Stacking the logo and including est. within it was my iway of connecting it to the brick and mortar stores that it originated from by emulating the cornerstone engraving of a building.

My roll in this project was both art direction and execution.

A selection of sale and promotion emails created for Cufflinks.com customers.

My roll in this project was both layout and production design.

This selection of maps and floor plans were created for the book The Vincentians: A general History of the Congregation of the Mission by L. Mezzadri & J.M. Roman

My roll in this project was illustration and typographic layout.

A selection of the illustrated maps for the book Art and Palace Politics in Early Modern Japan 1580s-1680s By Elizabeth Lillehoj

My roll in this project was illustration and typographic layout.

A selection of sale and promotion emails created for dalys1895.com customers.

My roll in this project was both art direction and execution.