An office employee attempts to enjoy his chicken parm hero sandwich.

Recognition

SILVER MEDAL – Society of Illustrators 55th Annual 2012

OFFICIAL SELECTION – Brooklyn Film Festival 2013

OFFICIAL SELECTION – Florida Film Festival 2013 

OFFICIAL SELECTION – Woodstock Film Festival 2013  

 My role: – Everything (except the voices, which are by David Fransen)

Elevate your Holiday

Ah, Don Julio. ​It's an amazing product. Delicious tequilas from authentic, humble roots in Jalisco, Mexico. A perfect gift to give to a friend during the holiday season. Clearly this campaign would write itself, right?

Wrong! I've never beared witness to such a paradoxical strategic straight jacket in all of my modest little ad world career. They wanted Don Julio to be presented as a top shelf, sophisticated luxury product. Meanwhile, they've got Lil' Jon – yes, that Lil' Jon – as a pseudo-official spokesman. He's even got his own special Don Julio bottle. There are pics of him on the internet doing creepy things to women with tequila. He tweets things like this. And yet.

Most of the engaging things we presented were deemed not "luxury" enough. When we lux'd it up, it was not "high energy enough". Seriuosly people, WTF. ​After some initial heady ideas, we returned to our default dance of despair.

We did manage to lord over the (many) other agencies involved and set the campaign tone with our Elevate your Holiday concept. They liked it so much, they decided to use it for their summer program...wait for it...Elevate your Summer.

This is the work we rolled out across our digital channels for Elevate your Holiday.​

My role:​

Art Direction, Design, Creative Direction

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​Smarter Computing

Smarter Computing was a challenge because nobody really knew what it meant. It's not a product, but rather a vague thought leadership umbrella term for the new digital paradigms of Big Data, Optimized Systems and Cloud Computing. All things that IBM was (in theory) totally going to rock. Which would be conceivable if  IBM was not a giant, bureaucratic maze of corporate inception. Endless Russian dolls of corporate speak buried inside itself ad infinitum. What do I know though – perhaps that's their strength.

Anyway, I art directed and designed this puppy. I also got familiar with Agile, which was a surprisingly efficient way to work.

My role – Art Direction, Design, UX Concept

​A cautionary tale of late night internet-ing, set against the backdrop of a hypothetical, dystopian invasion of Des Moines, Iowa by multiple Godzilla-sized David Hasselfhoffs.

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Recognition

​MotionMaker Selection of the Week Daily Motion 

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My role –​ Everything 

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Dynamics CRM

Actually explaining what Micosoft Dynamcis CRM is and/or does would make this here page an eternal scroll. Suffice it to say Microsoft makes a lot of software that organizes and automates all kinds of business stuff (inventory tracking, workers, what-have-yous) across all kinds of different industry silos (financial, professional services, government, etc).  Long story short, they wanted some accessible rich media banners that conveyed how Microsoft Dynamics manages all of your business and/or government needs efficiently.

​So I came up with this Rube-Goldberg idea and decided that we could house this cause-and-effect organizing chain mechanism inside literal houses that represented each industrial silo. Mostly this was an excuse to utilize an amazing production team of illustrators and animators at JWTwo and make something that looked really cool. I was disappointed that we weren't able to get some VO talent into the ole budget, but we made Microsoft Dynamics CRM as cool as we could.

My role – Concept, Art Direction, Design 

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Smarter Commerce

Yet another silo under IBM's Smarter Planet umbrella, Smarter Commerce is supposed to inform businesses about how best to adapt to a rapidly changing, hyper-tech business environment. IBM wanted an iPad app that would serve as a hub for all of their Smarter Commerce content that provided thought leadership on what they saw as an emerging paradigm shift in commerce. 

I came up with two concepts. The first is a more standard iPad  site with a swiping UX for content overlays and page navigation. ​

​The second is a bit more ambitious. Here, a hero HD video would explain the four pillars of Smarter Commerce sequentially, while the user could interact with a color-coded timeline that would serve as navigation, revealing supplemental content below the paused feature. 

​My role – Art Direction, Design, UX Concept​s

Various digital marketing materials

An opportunity arose for a digital designer/art director at Bobbi Brown back in 2008. I thought a client side gig might be an interesting change of pace. I gave it a whirl. I was intrigued since I had never done anything in beauty before and was completely ignorant of that entire universe. 

Things got off to a rocky start. Apparently the designer dude before me was some hack who faked his book and was covertly referred to as "Slash" by the rest of the team. The office had an infamous rodent situation. Slash got fired. Slash then purposefully left uneaten food in all of the drawers in my cube. Yeehaw.

Anyway, I essentially designed 10,000 emails and a ton of other direct digital material. I updated their ancient web site with relentless promotions. I had a minor hand in the implementation of their current web site that was conceived by Zeus Jones. Here are some of my better layouts. 

My role – Interaction Design, Art Direction

ON: Being more Efficient

Microsoft was all about communicating the efficiency of their offerings and how their products were going to streamline your business, your office, etc. On: Being more Efficient was our next big campaign push after Because IT's everybody's Business and Brand Journalism.

The video is intended as an online pre-roll. I also got to do some print ads for a change - a good change of pace as I don't get to do that often these days. 

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My role – Concept, Art Direction, Design

Another Day at the Beach

Back in 2008, Neutrogena wanted to stress the life-saving SPF content in their skin products. I got hired to design a 'real-time' and 'cinematic' microsite. The concept had already been solidified when I showed up.

The idea was to have this wide shot, interactive video beach scene. The user could scroll around and zoom in on a single person/situation. On zoom, a whole bunch of 3D data sets would populate. In 'real' time, you could check out stats of the situation, the person, the impact of a certain level of SPF, etc. To me it was a little scare tactic-y – "Look! This girl in a bathing suit is dying before your eyes! Watch as her skin slowly morphs into your next pair of boots!"

Neutrogena ended up putting the kibosh on this. I'm gonna go with budgetary concerns.​

My role – Art Direction, Design 

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A couple of friends of mine were working at an agency and came up with this zany concept for Ritz Crackerfuls. They wrote a few scripts and, lo and behold, Ritz thought they were too weird. 

My friends still wanted to execute the scripts. So, for a modest fee, I agreed to execute them. The bulk of the creative direction was: "animate it, badly".

"Can do, capitán!" I replied. Well, without the "capitán!" part.  This is what happened. 

The Follicle Chronicles

At my last staff gig, back in 2007 at DraftFCB, we pitched Propecia. We knew that Propecia wanted to stay with this "Save the Hair" campaign that they already had. We also knew that we wanted to make an animated comedy series about hair follicles. The Follicle Chronicles was born. Our genius solution to getting around that inconvenient "Save the Hair" tagline? Call it out at the end of the spot. Problem. Solved.

I animated the pilot episode. We were very excited. We were going to write a comedy web series about hair follicles. We wrote like three new episodes. Our lives were going to change!

Propecia hated it. I still love the concept.

My role – Concept, Art Direction, Design, Animation ​

Celebration of Service​

IBM turned 100 a year or so ago. They made an entire site, IBM100.com, to celebrate it. I was tasked with designing the Celebration of Service page, which was supposed to track and display every IBMers' pledged and completed community service hours for a variety of different causes. 

My role – Art Direction, Design ​

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​Need a Reuben Now Syndrome

BBDO NY hired me to breathe some new life into Arby's reuben sandwich campaign. At first, they wanted a St. Patrick's Day themed 'big idea' to be the cross platform campaign – because reubens are Irish and all. Oh wait, they're not, but you know, corned beef.

Anyway, ​we thought of all kinds of crazy shit. One idea involved a leprechaun posse touring the US mainland on synchronized mopeds, showing up to random Arby's establishments off I-95 to shower real gold on unsuspecting diners. Arby's did not like this.

Finally, after many cognitively dissonant rounds of review and little progress, they decided that no, they didn't want a big St. Patrick's Day idea after all, but that they did want to throw a few thousand bucks at some "viral videos" about "Reuben Mania" which was based off this one-off TV commercial about a fictitious disease called NRNS (Need a Reuben Now Syndrome). Oh, and they also wanted those viral videos done in a week and a half. I promptly wrote these date/breakup themed scripts in a morning blitz. Somehow they got approved internally that afternoon. This is what some little production company in LA coughed up for a pittance. ​

No, they're not great. You could even say they suck. But they're important for me because a) it's rare that that I get to write anything in a professional environment, b) much less get something I wrote actually approved and shot and c) it was fun!

​My role – Concept, Script, Art Direction

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Episode 1 - The Date

Minotaura goes on a dinner date. The first episode in an ongoing series. And by 'ongoing' I mean it's a decent substitute for my procrastination on other projects. 

My role – Everything 

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Facebook App

I got called in to work on various Hershey's accounts at then Euro 4AD (now Havas). I knew Hershey's was large, but I had no idea that Hershey's owns the entire candy aisle. Literally – with few exceptions. When I wasn't making Facebook headers for Reese's, Twizzlers or Jolly Ranchers, I worked on designing this Ice Breakers Duos Facebook page. 

I had never done a candy account, and there was a lot of visual hanky-panky to get used to. Gradients and glows galore. Not to mention the sudden spike in my sugar intake. I had little input on the concept development on this one and served as a hired art director gun to design and refine the various apps on this page and guide it through production.  

My role – Art Direction, Design ​

My role – Everything

I'm obsessed with texture. Over the last few years ​I've honed this layered-collage-paint-hybrid-thing that usually results in some grotesque characters. I've since used a few of these gents in experimental animations.

My role – Everything

While I was client side over at Bobbi Brown – well, really Estee Lauder, who owns Bobbi Brown, sometimes work for other smaller clients trickled through the cracks. This particular project really slipped, and someone was really angry, and in an emergency I designed this entire microsite in less time than I thought imaginable.

My role – Art Direction, Design 

Megadebates​ was supposed to be a live Twitter debate platform. Thought leaders, bloggers, celebrities, anybody, etc. could debate others that stand on opposite sides of issues. They would have a time limit and Twitter's character limit to debate real time. Spectators could watch passively or comment and interact with a debate.

My role – Art Direction, Design 

​IT Feud

While working on Microsoft, there were always some long simmering ideas in the background. This concept had already been sketched by the time I got there. The concept was to recreate Family Feud, but instead of families, we have groups of IT guys competing. There is actually a Family Feud set that you can rent (!). Unfortunately you can't re-animate Richard Dawkin's body (too soon?).

Anyway, we were going to rent the set, take it to Vegas, and film a bunch of episodes that would air live on the internet. Everybody loved this idea. Even Microsoft. I designed the initial site concept. Most everything was signed off. And...wait for it...when it was about to happen, Microsoft pulled the plug. I'll always have this jpeg though. 

My role – Art Direction, Design​

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