Projects | Jeff Grant Innovation | Jeffrey Addison Grant

Audition Video: HGTV's Design Star season 4 (2009)

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:11:24 -0400

Since the beginning of HGTV’s first season of “Design Star” my wife and her mother kept prodding me to audition for the next season of the show. Each season I was able to successfully brush off their requests. But in January of 2009 I finally gave in when my wife suspiciously started videotaping me while I was working on our house in an attempt to create a secret audition tape. If we were going to do a video, I wanted to be in control of it! Ultimately I didn’t make it onto the show, but to my surprise I got fairly far along in the audition process. The whole experience of making the video with my wife and son Spencer was a lot of fun and I’m glad we now have a 6 minute video that documents the majority of one of our family’s biggest projects to date.

Stanford Wrestling Promo 2003: Pro bono video commercial

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:26:21 -0400

As a part-time volunteer coach for the Stanford Wrestling team I would occasionally record video shots during practice and competition so I could later edit together a promo commercial to generate buzz on campus. Here is a promo piece I created for the 2003 season.

Meet Joe Brown: In-classroom digital video production demo

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:20:00 -0400

In 2004, I co-taught a class at Stanford University titled, “ME216b: Advanced Product Design.” As part of one of the lectures I created a presentation titled, “Video for Product Designers.” Each time I have given this lecture (previous years as a guest speaker), I finish the last 30 minutes by performing a live demonstration of filming, capturing and editing a complete video production using iMovie on my laptop. The demo shows just how easy it is to use consumer digital video production gear to bring stories to life. The lecture has been a student-favorite and has been a major influence in the proliferation of the use of video in design at Stanford and IDEO.

California Bungalow Renovation: 2 year long DIY Makeover

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:02:57 -0400

In 2004, we embarked on a massive live-in remodeling journey. The house was 920 square feet with two bedrooms, one bath and a detached one car garage. We completed about 95% of the remodeling work ourselves. Tasks included, removing load-bearing walls, framing, drywalling, installing new electrical circuits, installing new plumbing lines, tiling, painting and many other tasks. I designed and built the kitchen island and “Communication Center” out of furniture-grade birch plywood to match the IKEA cabinets. Pretty much every surface inside and outside of the house was renovated. Here are some before and after photos: