Being a jack of all trades is what keeps things fun. There's nothing I love better than having a client (internal or external) ask me: "Can we...?" And answering, "You bet!"
Brainstorming with a team or problem solving for a client, to be referred to as “the go-to guy” is always my personal goal.
Skill sets include:
- Digital/print ad creation
- Book/magazine layout
- Web/UX design HTML/CSS
- Digital/print form design/layout
- Digital/print presentations
- Illustration
- Photo retouch
- Video/voice-over
- Animation
- Copywriting
I'm comfortable in a team environment and have led teams as small as two people to a department of thirty-five creatives. I have also been a one-man band at times. I’m adaptable and work well in a variety of situations across multiple industries.
While not every single application I work with is represented below, these are the big players in my typical workday life.
I started out on a drafting table with a T-square and triangle. I've cut my share of rubylith, drawn with rapidographs, counted characters for type specifications and inhaled more than my share of Spray Mount. Ah, the good old days.
If you've never waxed a galley for paste-up or sliced off the tip of a finger with an X-Acto knife, you just aren't old school. But despite my early artwork appearing on cave walls, these days, I'm an Adobe Creative Cloud guy as well as an occasional user of a few necessary-evil Microsoft apps.
Portfolio
While I can't disclose the client's name, nor any of their proprietary material or business intel, my intention is to illustrate the extensive depth, breadth and sheer complexity of the work provided to them for more than a decade.
This travel client was in dire need of a modernization of the intra- and extranets they use to communicate with both the travel agencies owned by them as well as others that paid to utilize one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
In addition to dissemination of marketing, training and travel-selling-related tools, we also tracked and reported on usage and automated countless processes and forms. However, the pièce de résistance was an idea to help fund the entire effort through allowing travel suppliers to purchase advertising to this elite and exclusive audience of travel professionals ... and we made it turnkey.
My responsibilities included UX design, HTML/CSS development and ad creation—both in-house and client.
Anyone who has worked with a major bank knows how voluminous the regulations are. Anyone who has worked with a Fortune 50 also knows how important brand identity is and how seriously it is taken. This F50 client is a major bank and had a critical need for a secure repository that rivals the warehouse in the final scene of India Jones and the Raider of the Lost Ark.
The merchant-services division of this client faced such a dilemma. With myriad financial partners, they also required dynamic content, so that only the appropriate regulatory documents and other content would display for the relevant audience and, being a global entity, in the appropriate language. Furthermore, we met the challenge of giving the client a way of replacing its paper with online forms, on the fly, with a form-building tool that utilized brand elements.
A repository was developed where the end user can slice and dice available content from the most recently uploaded documents and bookmark documents and then gain easy access to materials they need, displayed in their preferred language.
There is also an administrator's section for the owners of the repository. In addition to usage tracking, document-version control and communications tracking, there is an amazing form-building tool with a drag-and-drop UI and a real-time thumbnail preview pane.
My responsibilities included UX design, HTML/CSS development and photo retouch.
What is cooler than melting metal with intense heat? Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not only is molten metal beautiful as it flows through the chutes on its way to be rolled into gigantic coils, but you can do this with aluminum time and time again. A couple things I learned having JW Aluminum as a client:
- 75% of all the aluminum ever made is still in circulation today.
- A properly recycled aluminum can is able to be back on a store shelf in only 60 days.
- Aluminum may be recycled indefinitely without losing any of its properties.
Chew on those tidbits, plastic. I've learned these facts about aluminum, because my client is fervent about what they do. Passion is a powerful force and very contagious. It makes me a better vendor, because I too, am passionate about what I do.
JW Aluminum's product aside, they are also passionate about safety. Although I wax rhapsodic about the beauty of molten metal, it can be extremely hazardous—read "deadly" here—if mishandled. To that end, I've had the good fortune to do a number of posters, flyers, voice-overs and calendars reminding JW Aluminum teammates that they're valued not just at work, but also by their families at home.
This is slightly older work, but it's too much fun not to include. It's a pretty special thing to be able to say that I created a wide variety of marketing assets for a company that was a division of SEGA Corporation.
GameWorks was originally conceived as a joint creative endeavor by SEGA, Universal Studios and DreamWorks. From day one, GameWorks was intentionally designed to maximize a uniquely fun guest experience, as Steven Spielberg of DreamWorks put it: “GameWorks is about fun, excitement, competition and bringing people together. It is also about escape, adventure and connecting.” He continued, “It gives each person a chance to prove he or she is a star.”
As as subcontractor to the agency handling the SEGA GameWorks account, much of the creative was supplied by the agency. However, my job was building microsites, landing pages, HTML emails, banner ads, online coupons, mailers, flyers, billboards, videos and more, while maintaining the integrity of the brand and creative as well.
Tympani — The Backbeat of Business
It's a gross oversimplification to say that Tympani is a data-driven marketing firm, but it's the easiest way to put it in a nutshell. The company crunches data—lots of it. It's sliced, diced and disseminated in any number of ways. Much of the work has been for an ultra-high-end travel company, major financial-services company, as well as large insurance and communication firms.
As Director of New Media, my responsibilities have included designing POS displays, developing computer-based training (CBT), B2B websites for data collection, in addition to extensive and complex intra- and extranet UXs, traditional print design including newsletters, promotional posters, digital and print sales presentations, video training modules, voice-overs and client meetings.
The Unnamed App—Code Name: Project Euler
This app project has a code name, not due to its secrecy per se, but because in the end, it never came to fruition. That said, I chose to showcase my work on the project because we switched gears so many times—not uncommon in an agency. Being responsive when the client changes direction is important, even if those changes are the name of the product itself.
My responsibilities included creating comprehensives of the User Experience as well as the logo and branding for the app that never was.
Zendulgence Salon, Spa & Mobile Spa Services
A client since 2011, Zendulgence's owner asked me to update her website. I've recently done so, adding a mobile-first, responsive design.
Zendulgence has consistently received the highest accolades from her clientele, as evidenced by multiple Tripadvisor reviews.
