A genius is not defined by amounting excellence of thought. It has nothing to do with tests and intelligence quotients. It lies in arriving at the conclusion that they know nothing but inner knowing. Activating intuition and imagination feeds the mind’s eye and contains no limits. There’s a fundamental difference between knowledge and knowing. The former is achievable through the study of tomes and by listening to fossilized, tenured professors.

The latter begins dividing and multiplying from the moment we are conceived. Knowledge is limited to the collective study of outdated books gathering dust. The moment a book is struck by the printer it is already outdated. Knowing is written into our DNA and is only revealed to us when we request access. Once seen it cannot be unseen. Intellect is limited, but intuition, when paired with imagination, is infinite and effortless for a true intellectual.

I got his first big break in 1988 when I was introduced by Kay Farmer, my high school AP Art teacher, to Jerry Barber, inventor of the Free Fall amusement park ride, among dozens of other wild creations. Mr. Barber required an illustrator for three new ride concepts he was pitching. Jerry asked Kay if she had the time to dedicate to the project, but she ultimately passed due to other commitments. She suggested that I spearhead the project for Barber.

I illustrated multiple ride concepts along with the primary pitch for an air car ride. Mr. Barber and I coined the name of this ride the “Amphibian Air Car.” It was essentially an amphibious form of bumper cars mashed up with Floridian swamp air boats. My renditions were realized through a combination of stenciled spray paints, colored pencils, and airbrush. I was rather fortunate working with such an enigmatic, creative genius like Jerry. He’s quite legendary.

I’ve been designing hand-crafted titles supporting epic storytelling and iconic characters for eleven years. Combining my love for film, typography, and moody textural surroundings my skills have gone from blunt to well-sharpened. Last year I started a new page called “Titles v2 Villains & Heroes: Alter Egos & Alternate Realities.” I’ve added new designs as well as updates on previous explorations. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do creating them.

My original process in 2014 was from sketch to Illustrator to Video Copilot’s Element 3D and Adobe After Effects. Now I still start out with a sketch. Then I hop into Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Design to refine the design’s linework. During the third stage I work out the forms, materials, lighting, and camera work in Maxon’s Cinema 4D. Next I work out the compositing in Adobe After Effects. Finally I tighten up the color grade and final look in Affinity Photo.

Lubalin’s swashbuckling, hand-lettered sensibilities garnered him a reputation as a graphic design rebel believing that “Sometimes you sacrifice legibility to increase impact.” If we can captivate our audience allowing them to linger for just another moment or two, we have the power to plant brands into their subconscious. When not given careful enough attention, this concept backfires as it has in recent times among automotive brand redesigns like KIA.

I do wonder what he would think about the reinterpreted KIA logo. While it does possess a unique, everlasting quality, it reads as a “K” and a backwards “N.” Even Google searches for “what is the ‘KN’ car?” spread like a wildfire when it was introduced to the public. Legibility, when handled carefully, leads to longevity and brand recognition. This gift of timelessness in communication and brand recognition has the ability to grant a brand beyond immortality.

While a Renaissance stimulates, awakening the mind expanding our creativity without limits, a GenAi$$ance dulls, destroying the mind and weakening our superpowers. Relying on AI has proven to quiet our intuition leaving us with two left feet leading to rapidly decreasing IQ scores. Even big tech giants have discovered through their own research their teams are quite rapidly losing their critical thinking skills. We are now at a precipice and must choose.

The proverbial cherry on top of the zombie apocalypse, GenAi, is blazing the trail through exhausting all of the seven deadly sins in plain sight. Choosing wisely has never been more difficult for the mediocre masses. They’ve been trained by addictive immorality convincing them they now have gained actualized intelligence. The truth is that they are now further under the influence of an insidious force darkening their futures with reputation dynamite.

One afternoon while I was researching Leonardo da Vinci I did a double take. I had never noticed how similar our names were sharing so many of the same letters. I got to work and look what I’ve found: one to one connections. “Everything connects to everything else.” All it took was adding my cosmic number three to finish these connections flipping it around in Leonardo’s mirrored style. Let’s take a look at the concept of a Renaissance for a moment.

A Renaissance ushers in a golden age of awakened enlightenments of activated intuition, imagination, and intellect. Leo knew full well that: “Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man.” We must remain mindful or lose our minds altogether.

During a recent daydream-fueled road trip lightning struck, my brain seized in an aha moment of spontaneous combustion. Through another alignment sparking across pulsing neurons and excited intuition my mind lit up again. Seemingly out of nowhere a brain-blazed clarity hit me like a Louisville Slugger nailing a home run winning not only the game, but the entire World Series. Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch, more like a tied whiffle ball game.

While whistling on down the highway I posed a hypothesis to my sidekick that may just be the key that unlocks what the Hell on Earth we’re all experiencing now in our shaken, unsteady world. They’re taking commands from a plagiarized, premeditated script aligned with soothsayers’ prose to raise their status to that of the divine. This motley crew has aligned itself with the predictive knowings of Nostradamus and Baba Vanga’s own prose.

Nikola Tesla fully understood the three governing powers of the universe: “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”

He observed that: “Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.” Tesla also noted that there is power and clarity found only in solitude. “Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

Some say there's a fine line between madness and genius. False. The line is so thin its own transparency reveals both sides exist in a molecular play of quantum entangled, geometric symmetry. They exist simultaneously along each side of the expert funambulist’s wire. This veteran tightrope walker becomes one with each step’s vibration echoing through the wire.

Upside down and right side up prove their irrelevance in these micro-moments while they gasp for oxygen. Both in between breaths and in between steps they are literally hovering in the air for split seconds at a time. They’re floating just above the momentously elevated revelations while gliding along electrified streams of flowing Yin and Yang consciousness.

Leonardo da Vinci and I hold a secret. A secret so dear, so close, so precious, so powerful deep within our hearts, minds, guts, and souls. It’s been hiding in plain sight for 527 years in his rendition of The Last Supper, and it has nothing to do with Dan Brown’s historical fiction.

Once seen, it cannot be unseen. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a mindset based on rise and shine. Christ Consciousness is alive and active. His second coming has been here all along. This divine connection belongs to everyone’s spiritual awakenings regardless of their religion.

In 1841 Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective genre with his first locked-room mystery “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” A century later in 1939 Detective Comics introduced The Bat-man in issue #27. Edgar’s my birthday twin and 27 is my lucky number. We both spent

formative time on Sullivan’s Island and around Charleston in the South Carolina Lowcountry 163 years apart. In 2003 DC published Batman: Nevermore, starring Batman and Poe. They team up to solve a series of serial killer murders based in nineteenth-century Baltimore.

Kaitlyn Kaerhart (pronounced care-heart), Mystic, Astrologer and Author of the international best seller You Are Cosmic Code: Essential Numerology. According to Kaerhart “eleven is also associated with spirituality, creativity, and innovation.” I wholeheartedly agree with her.

“All things worth connecting to in the face of a new beginning or fresh start,” from “1111 Meaning: What This Angel Number Is Plus How To Work With It.” I believe when I’m wielding my activated intuition my mind flows freely. I haven’t had any creative blocks in three years.

“While at TWC I have hired, rehired and used David Vinson as an external vendor. He is a creative professional of extraordinary talent. David has a clear understanding of branding and provides solutions that work within the overall creative strategy of the brand.

He possesses an infectious creative energy and consistently provides an abundance of outstanding solutions for each assignment. I cannot provide a higher recommendation and if given the chance, I would not hesitate in hiring David again.”

“On a hunch, I asked ChatGPT to tell me something about CEO Sam Altman that we didn’t know publicly. Looks like OpenAI’s brainchild grew a conscience or was trained to love ‘Church Chat’ on Saturday Night Live.” Enjoy this love letter written just for the Church Lady.

There was no need to even rearrange the letters for S-A-T-A-N or M-A-L-M. What is MALM? A Machined Artificial Language Model. His tech angel did miss two things. Sam’s full name, Samuel Harris Altman, is three six-letter words. 666, and AI is in his middle name, h-A-r-r-I-s.

During Process Art Therapy with Susie at Skyland Trail in Atlanta I embraced auto-drawing. She suggested that I remove my conscious self and let my mind run free. This allowed my hands to sketch without making judgments and corrections as I revealed the final image.

I drew a scene of myself reaching for “The Keystone.” When I graduated from Skyland they gave me a Dr. Seuss book that I had never seen before. When Susie and I saw the spread above we did a double-take. It looked exactly like my drawing. It wasn’t a coincidence.

There is something magical about discovering happy accidents. We revel in these precious moments when we surprise even ourselves. It’s in these occasions of clarity when we are given the final clue to discovering the hidden treasure subliminally hiding in plain sight.

When I reached my 27th year I wanted to celebrate by designing a Vinson logo variant. I didn’t purposely hide the number twenty-seven within the letters. It was completely by chance that there were two clear instances of the number hidden within the design.

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