Matthew Conto
I’m Matthew Conto, a 20 year-old undergraduate student studying Digital Media at NYU: Poly in New York City. I’m studying design, computer science, and game development. One day I'll take over the world.
I’m currently playing Hearthstone, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, and Batman Arkham Asylum.
Starting in September 2010, I’ve been a part of Skyline High School’s FIRST Robotics Team, Eagle Imperium. As a new team, I was able to mold much of the team’s identity and created nearly all of the team's graphics including the...
As a team receiving much of its funding from its host school, our team’s colors needed to be based our those of Skyline High School, columbia blue and white. To match the roman imperial theme, red was included as well.
At first, I used the font Agency, for the lettering 3322, but in my senior year, 2012, I switched to using DOCK 11 Heavy with a quirky overlap. This gave our team a very professional and defined look against many of the other FIRST teams and helped us win a total of three imagery awards during my time.
In 2012, together with John Maguire and Daniel Ignacio, we created the team’s website from scratch and ported it to Wordpress. The website relied heavily on recently adopted CSS3 attributes and, in accordance with then-current trends, used drop shadows and text shadows. Through the course of the 2012 season, we won two website awards and nearly won the Michigan State website award (according to the judges).
In early fall, 2013, I had the opportunity to create imagery for the Poly Gaming Network, a budding gaming club at NYU Poly. They needed graphics to use for tournaments, video streams, social media, and more that would represent them as more than just a college club.
To that end, I looked at many other gaming leagues such as the IPL (IGN Pro League), NACL (North American Challenger League), IEM (Intel Extreme Masters), and many others and eventually decided upon a slightly sci-fi font, AudioWide. Originally, the logo used NYU Poly’s school colors, purple and green, but as suggested by other club members, I eventually went with the classic RGB hues in a slightly lighter, almost playful, saturation. To highlight that we welcomed gamers from both console and PC backgrounds, I added three bubbles with various components, a console button and directional pad, and the ‘W’ key.
Spring 2013, I was given a chance to create marketing material for a short film. Alma & Alex (2013) would be presented at the Cannes Film Festival in two months and still needed a poster.
The film focused around the internal turmoils of Alex and Alma’s life trying to help and support him. To amplify Alex’s turmoils, I used a photograph of Alex slumped on the floor and posterized it leaving him a black outline against the yellow wall. In addition to the poster, I also created and maintained Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages for the film and kept the three in sync.
Though I’m currently studying at NYU Poly, I’m completely open to the idea of freelance or even agency work. Shoot me an email if you like what you see.