Throughout my career, I've overseen & directed creative resources, as well as doing some writing & design work myself. Below is a sampling of these projects which range from interactive and video work, to case studies and press releases, to advertising and print collateral.
 | "Eichler Wanted" postcard I've been working on a number of marketing assets for real estate, including simple property websites and solicitation postcards for direct mail. For this effort seeking potential sales leads in an Eichler (Mid-Century Modern)neighborhood, I designed this illustration and postcard layout (click here to view back). In addition to generating a number of calls within a day of deployment, it's also proudly displayed on many fridges & bulletin boards in the neighborhood and will be a lasting marketing piece for this agent. |
"A Really Goode Job" Video Application In Summer 2009, Murphy-Goode Winery recruited a social media "Lifestyle Correspondent" to come work for them for a 6-month stint - but ran the search as a very public promotion, requiring interested candidates to submit a 60-second video application to initiate the process. About 2000 hopefuls applied, and although I did not make the final cut, this video app did garner me one of the handful of phone interviews as they narrowed down their selection. I produced & edited this entire clip myself using Microsoft Movie Maker and Mixcraft 4 for the music bed. |
MediaZone Sizzle Reel 2007 This sizzle reel incorporates the updated look-and-feel for MediaZone which we launched at CES in January 2007 along with our Social TV platform. It was produced to loop on our monitors at trade shows, to provide business development with an exciting video overview of the company and our successes, to support speaking engagements, as well as to be used on the corporate website. We also ended up looping it on the big screen in our reception area at the office. I produced this piece from soup-to-nuts: wrote the script & the creative brief, gathered all materials and pre-produced (e.g. viewed & timed out the selects, pulled together all logo and static graphics), selected the production music, and personally oversaw the editing & motion graphics production which took about a day and a half. My initial vision for the "big opening" hinged upon the drama of the well-known All Blacks haka, and I think the final execution came together very well (especially on a big screen in stereo). |
Following are also some of the other communication pieces in this suite:
- CES Press Kit: This was a beautiful large-format saddle-bound brochure we produced for CES 2007. I mentored my brand new marketing manager through her first time dealing with the process of writing and managing creative, working with a freelance art director/ designer. This was an especially challenging project since a) the product we were launching was still being developed up to the 11th hour, so details kept changing and b) with CES in early January, the print production timeline as well as shipping deadlines for the trade show ran right over the holidays. However, the end result was impressive, especially since we splurged on an extra-heavy cover stock throughout, plus a subtle matte silver for the cover of the brochure, which had a custom pocket inside the back to hold press releases, case studies, a channel guide and other additional material.
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(right-click and "Save Target As") |
- New York City Marathon & Wimbledon LIVE case studies: We inserted these 2 case studies into the press kit as well as re-purposing them on the corporate website and as general press & business development assets. For the NYC Marathon piece, I interviewed the Executive Producer and Project Manager for the event to clarify the technical details and identify the key storylines before I began writing; since the Wimbledon case study was focused primarily on the marketing aspects of the project, I generated my own bullet-points to write from and worked initially with an outside communications consultant to get the piece started, as well as managing the approvals process through IMG, Wimbledon's commercial agency.
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MediaZone Sizzle Reel 2006 One of the first pieces I produced at MediaZone, this was primarily created for display on our monitors at the Sportel Shanghai 2006 tradeshow but ended up being re-edited and re-purposed for NAB 2006, various business development needs and more throughout the year. The look and feel was based on the brochure we produced for Sportel as well, leveraging the excitement of our successful Mavericks Surf Contest live broadcast by licensing an image of the winner that year. I wanted to echo the MediaZone logo shape with the text "bubbles" we use in this piece, as well as in the filmstrip style which ends this piece in order to show the depth of sports content we offered. In addition to scripting this piece, writing the creative brief and gathering the materials, I called in a favor at Universal Music to quickly license this song, "Out Here All Night" by Damone, which had the precise energy I wanted to convey the cutting-edge online sports broadcast vibe. The motion graphics work was executed by our in-house Flash Design wizard, Bins Ely. |
Interactive Promos For most of my years at Angel/ Blue Note, we produced promotional ecards for albums; many were simple graphics with a song or video preview and "send to a friend" link, which evolved into more interactive pieces as technology and our understanding & creativity in the space grew. Frank Davis, after leaving his post long-term as the Astralwerks web guru and community manager, started his own shop called Chaoskitty (now known as Foamy Industries), and I'm proud to have been one of his very first and fairly prolific clients. To be honest, Frank and his wife Cherie, needed little direction to come up with some great things, but I like to feel I contributed by illustrating the parameters of each project in such a way to spark their imaginations. Check out the simple interactive game Frank developed to promote our Tiger Lillies release, "The Gorey End", based on the writings & illustrations of Edward Gorey. |  |
Yes, that's James Lipton from The Actor's Studio you see there - he wrote and produced the long-lost musical "Sherry!" which we released on Angel Records. He is a real crack-up to work with, and Frank's Monty Python-esque execution on this interactive piece is the perfect fit. Check out Lipton interviewing himself under "The Pivot Questions" penguin. |  |
...and the interactive ecard for "Gypsy" starring Bernadette Peters.
To see more from Chaoskitty (now Foamy Industries) or to hire them, visit FoamyIndustries.com. If you ask nicely, Frank may even provide a reference for me and tell you a bit about how I work with vendors and manage projects :) |  |
 | Design - Wine Label Since I had some time on my hands early in 2008, I was browsing VolunteerMatch and found a need for wine labels to be designed on behalf of Milo Foundation, a really wonderful animal welfare group here in Northern California. Milo has around for over a decade and is unique in that they run their own animal sanctuary to provide a home for animals that are not adoptable. With little direction besides the text and a colour snapshot of Hercules the orange tabby, I came up with a few options, including this one which they've chosen to use.
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