During my time at GSD&M, I lead a complete redesign of the entire family of Southwest Rapid Rewards Visa credit cards, with expanded tiers for business and consumer.
Southwest Rapid Rewards wanted to not only update the existing rewards card, but also elevate the brand, and gain more cardholders.
We purposefully expanded the collection of tiers on the business and consumer sides and color coded them in light to dark shades of grays and blues for business and consumer respectively. Light colors denotes entry level tiers while dark colors indicate higher tiers.
We further elevated the brand by simplifying the design drastically for a more premium look and feel overall.
I was honored to work with my friend, writer partner and esteemed mouth painter, Jared Dunten on this product launch for a cause.
71 Painted Wines is a celebration of delicious wines, paintings, and a cause to cure paralysis some day. Jared and I closely collaborated on every detail of the design of this project, and I could not be more proud of the result.
Over 23 years ago, not long after I met Jared at GSD&M, he had a terrible accident. He broke his neck diving into the Rio Grande River. Jared and I worked together off and on as a writer/art director partners in advertising. In that time he followed his passion for painting and became formally trained to paint with his mouth. Each label has been painted by Jared. If you’re interested in seeing more of his work, log on to jdunten.com or 71 Painted Wines to explore and purchase the delicious wines.
As Design lead during my tenor at Moffatt/Rosenthal—when the internet was still in its infancy, a Portland client set up a business selling fresh cut flowers online.
I worked closely with a designer to develop a concept strategically set to convince people that flowers can be delivered fresh from the interwebs.
We started with the foundation to communicate that this product is coming from a company who is passionate and cares about what they do. It inspired the idea that every single detail of the brand had to have great reverence for fresh cut flowers.
We designed everything to look like it all came from a Botanist who was passionate about flowers. We had an illustrator draw studies of different flowers like one would record in a field journal. The labels and hangtags also had to have a hand made quality. Every box was carefully hand assembled and packaged. The final touch was the logo label, scribed with a fine quill, sealed the box itself.
The theme was carried through every conceivable piece of communication: packaging, letterhead and business cards, etc. All the design elements were then incorporated into the website.
This was an interesting project I had the privilege to work on as design lead at GSD&M.
The exclusive restaurant Nobu, owned by Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro and Meir Teper expanded into a boutique hotel located within Caesars Palace. We helped launch the boutique in 2013, becoming the very first Nobu Hotel of many internationally.
In addition to reinventing the existing Nobu logo, we designed explorations of touch points from a magazine ad through the design experience at the hotel itself. This endeavor challenged my skills into the fine art of Sumi-painting.
As part of the process of exploring, I tried my hand at the fine art of Sumi painting. Not easy, but I thought I’d include them anyway.
While at GSD&M, I worked on AARP as a Creative Director/Lead Designer on a few projects. This booklet is one that I’m especially proud of because of the story telling aspect.
AARP Foundation is a little known entity working hard behind the scenes as an advocate to help Seniors.
This was a very special assignment as It was rooted in an emotional story about a woman who struggled to raise a family on her own after her husband passed. The story is very real and an unfortunate reality to many impoverished seniors. This tiny brochure explains how the foundation can help.
The headlines were set in a boxing style typeface to get at the fight and a sense of struggle these seniors face every day.
This booklet came out of one of many great collaborations with Creative Director Eric Knittle while I freelancing for Timely MD directly.
TimelyMD is a fairly new brand to the healthcare marketplace. I spent several months working with their marketing/creative department to design, explore and promote their sub-brand, TimelyCare. Telehealth for Students: a 24/7 interactive portal for students to get real time health care or mental health support from real live medical professionals. During the launch of the brand, part of my assignment was to develop a partnership structure within their established logo system with Universities around the country and help promote it.
This guide was implemented before the Fall Semester, and before enrollment to get University Deans and Administrators familiar with how to promote TimelyCare on Campus. This interactive guide was a physical booklet where leaders are offered spaces for note taking, and ideating with thought provoking questions. Each scenario presented a place on campus or situation where promoting TimelyCare was an opportunity.
Maika Daughters is an online retail store focused specifically for crafters. This assignment in particular was to take an already established and known brand within the marketplace, and give it a refresh. The only given was to use an already beautiful photograph of roses that had been used throughout digital storefronts as the connective tissue for the brand.
Given the guidelines, I set off to digitally enhance the roses very subtly, but raise the bar with a little more power and drama.
Once that was set, I explored color and type for their new standard in branding everything from a distinctive word mark to storefront banners, advertising web banners and even packaging. This was such a fun project, even though it meant moving the needle slightly.
I was able to cut out the roses and shadows independent from the background so that we could use the roses in multiple proportions. 1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and more extreme for both horizontal and vertical applications. This was critical considering the need to be super flexible in all digital applications.
The colors were sampled directly from the roses and converted to Pantone Matching System colors and precise digital coding. The client and I even collaborated on branding the color names! So fun.
The fonts were important for readability, flexibility and distinction. We wanted to evoke an accessible, but premium look and feel for the brand while still having fun!
As part of the Maika Daughters brand refresh, I took a wholesale look at all of the online storefronts and designed banners and avatars of various sizes for everything, including social media.
These badges were designed to be used in social media, retail shelves and also along side of digital photography of actual products to be sold.
Maika Daughters needed a turn-key packaging solution for certain retail items that did not have any branding. Most of these items were sold from bundles and repackaged. Here I created a card that slips into the clear cellophane with reorder information. This idea worked well as simple decals, too.
This is an ongoing passion project of mine which represents, accountability, strength, hope and service to a community dear to my heart: Recovery. You see, I am in recovery. And I started this endeavor to benefit myself and others during the height of the pandemic.
August, 2020 I launched my Instagram with one singular post and have posted almost daily, 1-6 posts, to inspire, enlighten, or just lend a little humanity to an otherwise, strong and fast growing recovery community online. A community, I am grateful to have found.
On October 12, 2020, I launched SoberPress.org as a way to pay it forward with gratitude to the recovery community.
SoberPress.org is a place where anyone can go at whatever stage of their addiction to get a ray of hope; through stories of people in recovery from around the world. My purpose is to inspire, connect and allow others know that they are not alone and that it is possible to recover from drug and alcohol addiction.
The logo is inspired by a mash up of street culture, tattoo art, with a nod to a credible source for news source such as The New York Times.
The website is designed specifically to highlight the stories first and foremost. I have curated stories from around the world reaching as far as South Africa, New Zealand and India. Our community is worldwide.
My Instagram is intended to be a daily source of inspiration, wisdom and entertainment with regard to mental health and recovery. I often scour the internet for meaningful quotes and also write my own. I have also been known to toss in some irreverent wit for fun, too. I faithfully try to post 2-6 times daily. Please feel free to log onto my IG page and explore.
I try my hardest to be inclusive in every way. I celebrate Black History Month, Women’s History Month, LBGTQ+ Month, Holidays, etc. It is very important to me that everyone feels included. Addiction is not an exclusive disease.
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