Hel­lo.

I’m Chaz DeS­i­mone & it’s a plea­sure meet­ing you. But why are you sit­ting sideways?

If you were expect­ing to read about Nation­al Amper­sand Day, you’ll have to go here. Being the ego­man­ic that I am, this page is all about me & me & me.

Good enough isn’t

I don’t recall which major brand used that slo­gan sev­er­al decades ago, but I live by it. Pas­sion­ate about design & excel­lence, I do not not sub­scribe to the state­ment “per­fec­tion does not exist.” It does. Great design­ers prove it all the time.

Scrib­bling “logos” since I was a tantrum-​throwing tod­dler & adding ser­ifs to let­ters since I could hold a Cray­ola* I’ve been for­tu­nate to enjoy a career of cre­ativ­i­ty. I’ve always been a pro­gres­sive thinker (in grade school I was con­sid­ered retard­ed), which led to pio­neer­ing styles & con­cepts in many areas of adver­tis­ing & graph­ic design. My first loves will always be let­ter­ing, typog­ra­phy, lay­out & logos. I get deliri­ous­ly hap­py when a client asks me to design a logo with an amper­sand in it.

How AmperArt got started

In 2011, as a mar­ket­ing cam­paign for my graph­ic design busi­ness, I cre­at­ed a series of “amper­sand art” posters. After pos­i­tive feed­back, I turned it into an ongo­ing series & named it Amper­Art, plan­ning to release one piece per month as long as I can push a pen­cil & a pix­el. So far I’ve cre­at­ed over 100. Those first sev­er­al cam­paign pieces & all the oth­ers are in the Amper­Art gallery.

My “real” work

I design brand iden­ti­ty, from a sin­gu­lar logo to a com­pre­hen­sive brand­ing sys­tem; book cov­er art & inte­ri­or typog­ra­phy; posters, collateral,+99999999999999****- (the cat did that), pack­ag­ing & all that sort of stuff.

With­in the scope of brand iden­ti­ty (also called cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty or visu­al brand­ing — what­ev­er it’s called, that and expert typog­ra­phy are my favorite design prac­tices), I cre­ate the nucle­us which is the logo, cus­tomize the fonts for the iden­ti­ty pro­gram & assem­ble palettes of col­or & visu­al ele­ments to visu­al­ly sup­port the brand in every aspect: sta­tionery, sig­nage, col­lat­er­al & beyond…way beyond. I stop at noth­ing to refine an image that will best serve my client.

You may admire — I mean inspect — my work at des​i​monedesign​.com.

 

More about me & me & me

On the per­son­al side, I paint vibrant abstracts, cre­ate cus­tom greet­ing cards (fea­tur­ing the amper­sand of course), lis­ten to straight-​ahead jazz, attempt to dance swing & ball­room & prac­ti­cal­ly live at Dis­ney­land. Unless it’s hot & sun­ny — then I’m at the beach with a bot­tle of sun­tan oil & noth­ing else. After all, as my favorite bumper stick­er goes, “If we were meant to go naked we would have been born that way.”

*My favorite Cray­ola has always been blue-​green, but I’ll admit I can’t draw much more than a stick figure.

Okay, enough about me. Let’s hear about you. Leave a com­ment below, or con­tact me direct. Or go ahead and read why I cre­at­ed Nation­al Amper­sand Day.