Last updated on September 8th, 2017 at 05:40 pm

“I love to make pictures.”

That’s how Ed Adams summarizes himself and it’s a fitting description for someone in the art and design field. Ed Adams is, after all, the owner and art director of Flicker to Flame (flickertoflame.com), an NJ/NYC Metro Area-based one-man design studio.

His choice of vocation probably came as no surprise to those who know Ed best. When everyone else was button-mashing trying to beat the high score on their NES or Sega systems, Ed was the little kid who was always busy making good use of his crayons to draw on scraps of paper.

From crayon doodles, Ed eventually had a chance to graduate into “drawing” with a computer while taking up his BFA in Fine Arts at the College of New Jersey. Ed’s stint in art college helped him develop as a designer who can create a final product out of a series of components; and as a graphic artist who can fulfill the designer’s task as well as “handle every aspect of a job from the initial design exploration, through illustration, photography, retouching, and flash development”.

Armed with these skills, Ed started the design studio which he christened Flicker to Flame. He chose a quirky name because his own, Edward J. Adams “sounds like it belongs to a dead president or historical figure”. The more serious explanation, however, is that it represents his creative process and “how a simple spark of an idea can, with a little time and energy, eventually grow to be a fully functioning concept”.

-And Ed would know a thing or two about creating concepts, having garnered experience when he worked as an art director for DVC Worldwide and as an Associate Creative Director for DataPositive, leading projects for clients like JVC and Castrol.

Backed by his artistic talent and familiarity with designing for big budgeted projects for Fortune 500 Corporations, as well as for smaller jobs for bands and record labels, Ed Adams has the confidence to see a project through from concept to completion. He is able to combine all elements of a project starting from the illustration, photography, and typography up until the insertion of the interactive aspect (Flash) to give life to his concept.

As a business, Ed sets Flicker to Flame apart from other design studios through his determination to know more about his industry than one may think necessary. He’s found that it is integral to keep learning about every single aspect that goes into a project. Ed is primarily a designer and artist and although he may not be required to develop intense database-driven sites, he feels that knowing how these work can help him work around limitations, and communicate effectively with the developers themselves. Aside from making pictures, one can say that Ed also makes sure that he is able to properly relay the project’s message to its intended audience.

As an artist, on the other hand, Ed’s philosophies are influenced by the surf and skate worlds; as well as by underground punk rock and hardcore record designs. In fact, despite coming from a fine arts background, Ed Adams finds more in common with his heroes like David Carson and the Ames Bros. than with the classical masters.

Ed Adams’ illustrations boast high contrast line work, not unlike traditional comic inking; and a preference for strong, bold colors. It can even be said that Ed Adams’ work lends itself more to rock and roll than to fashion and cosmetics. This explains his affinity for designing music promotion materials like album artwork and poster designs which he’s done for bands like De La Hoya and Between the Wars. In some ways this can also be attributed to Ed’s passion for music, which he also cultivates by playing bass guitar.

Being an artist and musician, Ed Adams knows that getting one’s name out there is important in order to book design projects or gigs. This is why Ed put particular focus on creating business cards that best exemplify Flicker to Flame’s design principles. Luckily, despite having a small budget for marketing himself, he says, “UPrinting allowed me to produce my cards at a very high quality for an extremely reasonable price in no time at all.”

He adds, “I’m extremely happy with UPrinting’s ability to keep prices down in gang-run jobs without sacrificing quality” and with UPrinting’s affordable prices, having a simple budget no longer has to be an impediment to having well-produced brochures and postcards. UPrinting’s prices and great customer service allow Ed Adams to concentrate instead on using a little flicker of an idea to come up up with the bigger, high concept picture.

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