Poster series for the 2014-2015 season at the Black Rep Theatre in St. Louis.

Best of Show - AIGA St. Louis Design Show 20

Gold - Graphis Design Annual 2016

Gold - Graphis Poster Annual 2016

For small business week AT&T was looking to promote the concept of agility and wanted to use Chris Gardner to do it. Chris's story was made famous by the movie Pursuit of Happyness featuring Will Smith.

We decided the best way to both define and promote agility was to allow small business owners along with Chris to tell their stories of agility and what the term means to them. #AGILITYIS became a hashtag that business owners could use to share these insights through social media.

We also introduced The AGILITY Challenge, a contest where small business owners could enter for a chance to win $50,000.

The campaign was a huge success garnering some of the most positive responses AT&T has ever experienced on their social channels. We also gained lots of extra, unsolicited exposure due to Chris's notoriety. 

This campaign for AT&T was aimed at college students who knew international students who were looking for a cell phone service provider. For each referral that signed up, the student who referred them would earn $25, up to a total of $575. The campaign utilized fun, eye-catching illustrations that spoke to the kinds of things college students might buy with the extra cash.

Some companies are able to easily differentiate their products based on features, quality and attributes. Water is not one of those products. The average consumer sees little difference between one brand of water and another. What they do notice is the branding, design and advertising. So when H2O Technologies came to us to create their branding from the ground up, we knew it was crucial to get it right.

The client’s original request was for a logo featuring an H2O molecule. However, this more obvious solution felt uninteresting and too scientific. It also merely repeated the name instead of adding to it in a way that would create a strong and memorable visual identity.

After lots of exploration with the letterforms, we landed on a solution that felt both unique and eye-catching. This effect was even more pronounced when viewed within the competitive landscape. Furthermore, by looking beyond obvious solutions we created a mark that shows “water” in a memorable and engaging way that also highlights and reinforce the name of the brand.

The identity and branding have given H2O Technologies a smart, ownable and memorable look that continues to make a great impression on their customers and partners. It has proven to be instrumental in helping them to stand out in a crowded market that is far too easy to get lost in.

These pieces were created to enable sales reps to share Rebel Yell's story, brand and product line with distributors. The app allows them to share the content in-person on a tablet. While the printed kit functioned as an engaging leave behind piece and reference tool for the distributor.

Packaging created for custom phone cases made as gifts for our agency's AT&T clients. Each package featured a special message written for each client.

Graphis Design Annual 2016 - Silver

St Louis Addys 2015

AT&T wanted to get word out about the 20% discount they offer to military members and their families. As we researched the competitive landscape, we discovered that AT&T was one of the only carriers that allowed the family members of soldiers to sign up for a military discount. We also started getting a clearer picture of the hardships and daily burdens encountered by the spouses of deployed soldiers, which helped us to realize how important the ease of signing up for the discount themselves really was.

We turned that insight into an opportunity to acknowledge the role of these “household commanders” and let them know about AT&T’s effort to make their busy lives a little easier. The creative concept was driven by the use of match cuts between scenes of deployed spouses and household commanders, which emphasized the comparable hard work and sacrifice of each.

What was originally a client request for emails and web banners turned into one of the largest video shoots our agency ever shot for our biggest client. It was evidence of the momentum that can quickly build behind a simple, insight driven idea that seeks to touch hearts on its way to changing minds.

This campaign was introduced by AT&T during Small Business Week. Rather than focus on themselves, we encouraged AT&T to shine the spotlight on a unique small business and show the impact that they have on their local community.

This commemorative book showcases a year in photos from the various outreaches of Joyce Meyer Ministries. The book utilizes a clean and simple design with a flexible grid system that allows for interesting pairings, croppings and layouts of photos in order to bring out the full drama of the images and tell the stories of their subjects.

Rebel Yell Bourbon wanted their product to appeal to a younger, modern audience. The old bottle design featured a confederate soldier on the front. While that label design had been discontinued for some time, the association still lingered.

For our Rebels Uncaged campaign, we embraced the rebel spirit, but steered it in a direction that spoke to living free and unfettered. To doing your own thing and living life without restraints.

We chose four motorcycle builders from across the country to build bikes that were then given away in a contest that garnered a ton of attention and enthusiasm from our audience and the biker community. In addition to the giveaway we created content highlighting the builders and the spirit of the campaign with the goal of making Rebels Uncaged less about a contest and more about a culture.

The campaign was so successful that we are now gearing up to do it again in 2017.

Various illustration work

As a result of the economic recession, people looking for car or house loans had a greater concern about finding the right loan to fit their needs. They obviously didn't want a loan that was too small, but also didn't want to be locked into a loan that was too big for their unique life situation. For this campaign for INTRUST Bank we developed the line "Loans to match your life." with images showing people paired with a car or house that visually matched them. The message was that INTRUST Bank would help you to find the loan that was the right fit for you. 

BickHealth provides hospitals with technology solutions that allow patients to access their personal healthcare data and communicate better with their doctors. The current state of a this data can be visualized as trapped inside an impenetrable, black box that patients can’t access. The mark we created for BickHealth represents the data being freed from that box. The hand drawn scribbles and type are in stark contrast to the hard edges of the box and convey the humanity and individuality of each patient who can now access their personal information which was previously trapped inside the healthcare institutions.

Throughout the brand launch we continually looked for ways to communicate the concept behind the new branding. To demonstrate BickHealth’s commitment to acknowledging the humanity and individuality of every person, we produced letterpress business cards with individualized squares and personal signatures for each member of the team. We even challenged ourselves to think beyond the traditional branded coffee mug with mugs featuring heat-activated ink. As coffee is poured into the cup the closed black box transforms into the orange, opened up box representing the freeing of healthcare data.

For BickHealth’s website we avoided anything that felt like fluff or information overload. Instead we opted for a clean, simple, to-the-point approach. We wanted visitors to be able to quickly and easily understand who BickHealth is and what they do. Likewise, we wanted them to see and hear from the real people behind the company in the form of photos, bios and a blog where team members shared articles and insights highlighting their specific areas of expertise.

We dug deep to understand BickHealth’s values, purpose and mission and utilized those insights from the beginning. Doing so allowed us to avoid the visual trends of similar companies in the tech and healthcare space and build a strong brand that is both different and meaningful.

Like many churches, Victory Church had no established branding system or guidelines in place. As a result, their visual approach lacked cohesion and didn’t help to set them apart or distinguish them. Beginning with the existing logo and a single green color they currently used, I built a visual system that complimented the existing branding and reinforced their unique identity. I extended the brand color palette to include a darker shade of green and a bright yellow that, when mixed, created the existing green color currently in use. I also supplied them with a “tool kit” of graphic elements and building blocks that could be utilized to create future branded materials and content. These consisted of patterns, frames, holding shapes and additional elements inspired by the “V” of the existing logo. By creating a visual system inspired by the logo and building a color palette based on the current brand color, I was able to ensure that the new branding gave Victory Church a unique, ownable look that reinforced the brand and distinguished them in the St Louis community.

The Hand of Hope exhibit was on display at the annual Joyce Meyer Women's Conference at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis. The display highlighted various outreaches of Joyce Meyer Ministries. It was created to look like a partially built house inspired by the houses JMM had helped build after a massive earthquake in Haiti left many people there homeless.

Strategically placed messaging outside the arena directed people to the exhibit.

For their 21st Design Show, the St. Louis AIGA invited us to create the branding and materials since we had won Best in Show the year before for our Black Rep Theatre posters. Traditionally, the show's branding draws inspiration from that year's number. The obvious association with 21 as the legal drinking age served as the inspiration for the visual identity.

In addition to the standard needs like printed invitations and a website, we created branded growlers of beer that were hand delivered to each firm and agency in town as a "last call" for entries.

This campaign was created to promote AT&T's mobility solutions and was targeted towards people who are on the go and need the ability to work anywhere. The message is that whether your at home, the office, the park, or anywhere else, AT&T has you covered with solutions to keep you connected and working.

This website was created to educate visitors on the lessons AT&T has learned over the years about recovering communication networks after a natural disaster. The site features full screen video backgrounds for each page highlighting a different lesson learned.

For Rebel Yell's brand revamp we shot original photography aimed at capturing the modern day rebels that we also hoped to appeal to. With a limited budget we used friends and friends of friends as our models for a one day, run and gun shoot. A majority of the images we captured were used on Rebel Yell''s Facebook page where the brand immediately saw a huge increase in likes, shares and comments to posts featuring the updated look and imagery.

Posters for Beyond the Addys, a post-Addy awards event were winners tell the stories behind the winning entries.

Environmental design at the Joyce Meyer Women's Conference at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.

Campaign to promote the convenience of online banking with INTRUST Bank.

Editorial spreads created for Enjoying Everyday Life magazine.

For the article Providing Free Medical and Dental Care in Cambodia I created a type treatment inspired by Khmer type face used in Cambodia.

Overcoming Emotional Wrinkles features and image of an iron on one page and the shape of the iron pressed into the wrinkled fabric on the opposite page, suggesting that the fabric was ironed by the two pages coming together.

Why Did This Happen To Me? is an article about human trafficking victims who have been forced into lives of prostitution. The image and type treatment suggest the way these girls feel, that their beauty and femininity has been shattered and that they are now broken.

Illustrated book covers for a series of "cozy mysteries," a murder mystery genre that aims to be more light-hearted than what might be expected from a typical murder mystery novel.

The client was a delight to work with. Much easier than she was when I was a kid and she forced me to clean up my room.

Annual report created for Joyce Meyer Ministries highlighting their various outreaches along with Joyce's personal story.

I created this self-promotional piece for an ad agency I was interested in working at. I wanted to communicate that I was a problem solver and thinker who believed in great ideas as well as great design. For an extra touch of creepy, I dropped this piece of on Halloween. I received a response and had an interview setup that day, and got the job not long afterwards.

Wichita Homebound Outreach is a non-profit, social service group located in Wichita, Kansas. They reach out to low-income, elderly, homebound individuals and provide them with opportunities for social interaction. For this brochure I wanted to give the reader a glimpse into the unseen world of the people WHO helps. Most of their days are spent alone, longing for some form of human interaction. By truly highlighting the problem in a moving way and then showing the solution WHO provides, the audience was likely to be much more engaged and moved to act in the form of donations and volunteering.

This campaign concept for AT&T targeted apartment owners who need to provide phone, TV and internet services to their tenants. A rich media banner features a short video highlighting the various needs a typical apartment dwelling family has to be connected. The website features a video that plays following the speed of the viewer's scrolling action. At certain points of the video information bubbles pop up highlighting specific technology that the tenant in the video is interacting with, such as checking his phone or watching TV.

This campaign for INTRUST Bank targeted the parents of teens to make them aware of how little their kids may know about managing money and the solutions INTRUST Bank offered. Student accounts came with tools that allowed parents to track their teens account activity as well as educational materials to help parents talk to their kids about finances.

Poster promoting BASF's line of ant control products.

These greeting cards were sent from account managers to their small business clients inviting them to get in touch to discuss the many services AT&T has to offer. The illustrations with hand drawn type convey a more causal and personal touch and helped separate these cards from what could easily be mistaken as bulk mail selling AT&T services.

I designed this poster for my son's first birthday which also happens to land on Christmas. The current plan is to design a new one for him every year, although I'm a little worried about what the collection will look like by the time he's thirty.

NextStep for Life is a wonderful organization that helps developmentally disabled individuals in Jefferson County, Missouri find independence through job training, employment opportunities and independent living.

NextStep needed to reach out to large donors as well as potential volunteer groups for support. They had materials, a website and a social media presence that told about what they did, but they really didn't have anything that got to the heart of their mission and why it mattered so much.

We decided that rather than focus on programs, numbers, etc. we needed to truly tell the stories of the people that they helped. Understanding not just who they are now, but their childhood and the experience of their families would give our audience the human, emotional connection they needed in order to really get behind and support NextStep. The format of a larger, premium brochure was more likely to get noticed by potential donors and provided for a more intimate reading experience. It also provided the real estate to truly spotlight individual stories along with past and present day photos.