• notes

    • Born in Baltimore Maryland around the time a few fellas decided to have a walk on the moon, while another group of fellas decided to have a music festival in upstate new york, and did their own version of "walking on the moon".

      Moved to NYC in 1992, looking like I just walked on the moon, and now live in Williamsburg Brooklyn since 2000.

      This portfolio contains selected works from the past 20 yrs as a Graphic Designer, Art Director, Interactive Producer, Sound Designer, Composer, Photographer, and Developer.

      All Creative Briefs, Scopes, Schedules, UX/IA documents, etc, within this site, where written / created by me.

      I've coded and designed this site using ExpressionEngine, and bespoke CSS/HTML. It best viewed in an HTML 5 compliant browsers like Google Chrome, Safari and even Mr. Thick Fontypants, Firefox. The Flash player is also needed for the Audio and Video content (html5 A/V updates coming soon).

      Please feel free to contact me for any and all inquires at

      jason.merenda @ gmail.com
      tel +1 646 472 4284

    • influences & inspirations in flux

    • Not an exhaustive list, but a few highlights to better understand my general headspace. I'm influenced by and see sparks and tangents of ideas in everything from film, architecture, mathematics games, science, fashion, food, toys, video games, music, sounds, and the odd happenstance of life... just everything. I like telling stories and conveying moods with subtle minimalism in design, music, art and photography. I enjoy the control of minimilsm, but also have a need for chance and chaos. for I also find technology has often played a significant role in the interplay of these two ideas as well.

      Ideologically speaking i am inspired by people who put forth new ideas that challenge our understanding of things.

      I feel great kinship with people like Alexandr Rodchenko, el lissitzky, Bruno Munari, Nam Jun Paik, Otl Aicher, Richard Feynman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eduard Tufte, Marvin Minsky, Charles and Ray Eames, Al Jarnow, Ferran Adria, Hunter Thompson, Oscar Wilde, Douglas Adams, Raymond Scott, Bob Moog, Julius Von Bismarck, Daido Moriyama, Yohji Yamamoto, and Raoul Vaneigem. All of these characters in the game of life understood what the Japanese call "Mono No Aware" or the essence of things great and small in their work.

      With regards to Graphic Design, I am often inspired by the works of Franco Grignani, Giovanni Pintori, Anton Stankowski, Ladislav Sutnar, Armin Hoffman, Otl Aicher, el lissitzky, AG Fronzoni, Karl Gerstner, Wim Crouwel / Total Design, Yusaku Kamekura, Roger Excoffon, and studio Boggeri, many works of Modern and Brutalist Architecture, the fluid

    •   
    • shape and symmetry of Graffiti tags, Reid Miles who's album covers started my design curiosity as a tyke, and tDR and factory/saville record covers which later inspired me in my twenties, The Zurich and Basil schools, the whimsical work of THA / Yugo Nakamura, Vectorpark / Patrick Smith and so on. On Sound Design, I would need to mention influences such as the work of Alan Splet, Walter Murch, and Ben Burtt. As for Music, there just isn't enough time in the day, but for starters early sixties modal jazz, psychadelic, and exotica, 70's electro funk and brasilian funk, 80's post punk, minimal synth / minimal wave, and most importantly anything with mood over all else.

      Also thrown into this minimalist sensibility melee are Industrial Designers Richard Sapper, Mario Bellini, Dieter Rams, Kurt Naef, Artemy Lebedev, Eero Aarnio, Konstantin Grcic, Naoto Fukasawa ... Typographic Designers Weingart, Frutiger, Wim Crouwel / Total Design, Oded Ezer, Arabic Typography ... the Color Theory of Franco Grignani, Arnaud Mercier, Wim Crouwel / Total Design ... Films and Productions of Georges Méliès, Jeunet et Caro, Guillermo del Toro, Henry Selick, Wes Anderson, Tarkovsky, Gilliam, Wenders, Jarmusch, Kubrick, Gondry, French & Czech New Wave, the beautiful & subtle lighting of Henri Alekan, the childhood grandiosity of the sets of Ken Adam, the lighting exhibits of Olafur Eliasson, and Architectural works of Earo Saarinen, Zaha Hadid, Oscar Neimeyer, Terunobu Fujimori and many, many others...

      Hope that gives you a look inside. Thank you for visiting, and have a curiously wonderful day.

  • Music + Sound Design

  • Video (Requires Flash Player)
  • sound design for 16 dinosaurs + environments 
 

project title

Dig for Dinosaurs

client

Sesame Street

date

2010

categories

Sound Design

primary role(s) for this project

  • Audio Concepts
  • Sound Design

additional team members

uPop Media - Concept, Creative/Art/Design Direction, Developer
Amy Kim - Producer

project links

View this link  Dig for Dinosaurs
View this link  uPop Media (Designer / Developer)


project notes

With this project we were to create sounds for 16 dinosaurs and environments form various periods in time. The challenge was to make them as realistic as possible, as this project was co-sponsored by a science organization, but not to scary for the little ones who would be playing the game. And we even consulted with an expert at the Natural History Museum to verify the likelihood of the sounds, even though we will never really know, as there is no soft tissue left in the fossils of course.

Each dinosaurs voice typically consisted of up to a dozen animals cutup and mixed together, or more in some cases, and there are even a few human voices mixed in. This was definitely one of the most fun sound design projects ever.



  • Audio (Requires Flash Player)
  • Big Beat
  • Tokyo Jack
  • Wired and Tired
  • Beat Box
  • Jimmy's Nickel
  • Bling It
  • Dali Set Alert 01
  • Dali Set Alert 02
  • Video (Requires Flash Player)
  • MTV India TV Commercial with Big Beat theme + my Beat Box + a few rude ringtones 
 

project title

Hijacked by MTV Audio

client

MTV / Motorola

date

2004 - 2005

categories

Music + Sound Design

primary role(s) for this project

  • Music + Sound Design

project notes

We created 25+ bespoke ringtones in a variety of styles for the Motorola "Hijacked by MTV" partnership. Some were musical like those used in this On-Air Promo from MTV India and some sound effects based like the "Dalí Set" below.

The Hijack campaign was the most globally successful part of the relationship and brought fruition hundreds of off-the-wall wallpapers, screensavers, java games, and ringtones for the various Motorola mobile phones, with the tagline — It’s not your parent’s phone. We created several of the more musical ringtones (below), over one hundred alerts, in addition to several gastronomic deformities and “rudities” (which are in the commercial).



  • Audio (Requires Flash Player)
  • Audio track for the popup
 

project title

MTV Exquisite Corpse 03

client

MTV International

date

2003

categories

Art Direction + Sound

primary role(s) for this project

  • Concept + Strategy
  • Art Direction + Design
  • Music + Sound Design

additional team members

Amy Kim - Website Producer
Oleg Troyanovsky - International Campaign Producer
Large Animal - Flash popup implementation

project links

View this link  Site Defunct


project notes

We did the design and the music and sound effects for the MTV Exquisite Corpse 03 campaign website. Exquisite Corpse (aka Exquisite MTV), was the theme of the 2003 MTV Global Image campaign.

The goal of the website was to allow visitors to understand and watch where each part of the 16 different Exquisite Corpse videos came from, and also watch the full videos. Each video started with a color, and had 7, 1 second parts (for a total of 8 seconds). Each 1 second part being created by a different international team, then passed to the next, which were then "sewn" together.



  • Audio (Requires Flash Player)
  • "Not THAT red button..."
 

project title

Shadow MPG

client

Vae Victis Games

date

2003

categories

Game Sound Design

primary role(s) for this project

  • Sound Design

project notes

Vae Victis Games was an independent game development studio that created a multiplayer first person shooter PC game using the Torque game engine. This is a sound narrative using several sounds created for the game. The full game utilized over 500 sounds and was based on a similar idea to the Splinter Cell series that came out around the same time.



  • Audio (Requires Flash Player)
  • 2003 - MTV Holiday Card : A Bit Critter 8-bit Holiday
  • 2004 - MTV Holiday : The Snow Globe
  • 2004 - MTV Hijacked Ringtones - Big Beat
  • 2004 -MTV Hijacked Ringtones - Tokyo Jack
  • 2004 - MTV Hijacked MIDI Ringtones - Mix
  • 1998-2000 - MaMaMedia Mix
  • 1998 - Pygmy Taxi Corp - Mars II
  • 1998 - Pigar (in Cage)
  • 1997 - Pygmy Taxi Corp - Cleopatra Records, Trans Europe Express 2 - Numbers - excerpt 1
  • 1997 - Pygmy Taxi Corp - Cleopatra Records, Trans Europe Express 2 - Numbers - excerpt 2
  • 1995 - Electronium - Para-Para-NonStop Vol.02 - Interzone
  • 1995 - Electronium - Para-Para-NonStop Vol.2 - Pee Wee On Mars
  • 1995 - Electronium - Para-Para-NonStop Vol.04 - 1000 Cycles
  • 1995 - Electronium - Para-Para-NonStop Vol.04 - Sim Ant A-Go-Go
  • 1995 - MSI - Girl From Iwo Jima
 

project title

Various Music + Sound Design

client

Various Clients + Labels

date

1989 - 2010

categories

Music + Sound Design

primary role(s) for this project

  • Music + Sound Design

project notes

A short list of a sound design and music I have created for various projects over the years, with a few audio samples.
 
2010
How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop,  Sound Design
 
2006
Mezco Toys - Family Guy Talking Stewie Doll, Sound Design & Dialog Editing
 
2006
Mezco Toys - Scarface Talking Tony Doll, Sound Design & Dialog Editing
 
2005
American Museum of Natural History - “Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga”, Sound Design
 
2004 - 2005
MTV - Motorola Hijacked by MTV “Ringtones”, Music & Sound Design
 
2004
MTV International - Holiday Card : The Snow Globe, Music & Sound Design
 
2003
MTV International - 2003 Holiday Card : A Bit Critter Holiday, Music & Sound Design
 
2003
MTV International - Exquisite MTV campaign, Music & Sound Design
 
2003
Saucon Films “Black Wine”, ADR & Sound Design
 
2002
Vae Victis Games - Shadow Mulitplayer PC Game, Sound Design
 
1998-2001
MaMaMedia Website, Music & Sound Design
 
1999 - 2000
Time Warner Cable - Road Runner / MaMaMedia Commercial, Music
 
2000 - 2001
Sony Pictures America - Jumanji / MaMaMedia Web Game, Sound Design
 
2000 - 2001
Kellogg’s - Tony the Tiger Web Game & TV Spot, Music, Sound Design & Audio Logo
 
1999
General Mills - Fruit Roll Ups Web Game, Sound Design
 
1997
Cleopatra Records - A Tribute to Kraftwerk: Numbers, Music
 
1995
Meldac (Japan) - Para-Para Vol. 1, 3, 4, Music
 
1994
American Museum of Natural History - “Earth to Space Science” kiosk, Music
 
1989 - 2009
The B2 team as “The Pygmy Taxi Corp”, Music