Design & Publishing
The best idea doesn’t win.
The idea best communicated does.
I offer versatile design capabilities that can help you develop just the right look and feel for your project, regardless of format.
Whether your idea is presented in print, online, in front of an audience, in a mobile app, on a tablet device or elsewhere – and whether you’re looking to develop an entirely new visual identity for your business or simply make a report look its best – I can help you develop a look and feel sure to impress.
I’ll work with you to identify your priorities, create a plan to communicate them effectively tailored to the desired format and coach you through how to present it with the panache your message deserves.
I’ve designed presentations, publications, mobile apps, card games and much more. A few examples follow below; you can see even more here.
PointsAway
At PointsAway, I help readers learn how to use miles and points programs to turn their travel dreams into reality.
The PointsAway Book and PointsAway.com both place a high value on design and layout. I carefully evaluated existing commercial themes to find the best starting point for the PointsAway website, then worked from there to highly customize it to perfectly fit my vision for the site’s aesthetic.
I take care to use a variety of visual elements in features on the site, including pullquotes, photos, maps, image galleries, video embeds, tables, charts and more in order to make each PointsAway piece as visually compelling as possible. No piece is nearly complete until these pre-publishing steps are completed, making PointsAway one of the most visually pleasing points and miles resource sites on the web.
The book goes well beyond what’s possible on the web, taking advantage of features like interactive toolkits, quizzes, slideshows, embedded videos and highly stylized tables and graphics. It’s designed to stretch the dynamic presentation capabilities of the iBooks platform on iPad and Mac and provide a fantastic static reading experience on all other platforms. The book’s friendly design and professional presentation are key reasons it vaulted to #2 Travel Book on iTunes within a day of its release.
The PointsAway Book and PointsAway.com were designed with a unified visual identity in mind from the start.
The straightforward layout of PointsAway.com’s trip submission function allows readers to easily propose ideas for future articles.
The iPad & Mac version of the PointsAway book is loaded with slideshows like this one, showcasing some of the best hotel and airline redemptions available.
Charts like the one on this page help to simplify complicated concepts that keep most travelers from maximizing the value of their award redemptions.
These interactive toolkits, exclusive to the iPad & Mac version of the PointsAway Book, could be released as standalone apps in the future. They place comprehensive information about American, Delta and United’s frequent flyer programs at the reader’s fingertips, with award charts for free flights and upgrades, earning rates, alliance information and elite status privileges no more than one tap away at any time.
Berkshire Hathaway Home Services
As part of a new branding campaign in early 2014, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services wanted to update the marketing materials its real estate agents use in helping convey the benefits of listing a property with the company to potential home sellers. Rather than simply refresh its old paperbound brochure, the company decided this was a good opportunity to explore more dynamic options that could wow customers and allow for revisions to be made more quickly in the future.
Working with material provided by the company, I created a new, iPad-based interactive brochure that better highlights Berkshire Hathaway Home Services than any paper brochure could do. Tabbed pages allow agents to walk prospective clients through the selling process step by step. Embedded videos help them see how their property will be marketed. Slideshows allow the agent to showcase the type of corporate partners that rely on BHHS for employee relocation services and to show the ways that BHHS gives back to the local community.
Despite weighing in at less than 20 pages, the interactive brochure is chalk-full of dynamic features. Best of all, it was designed in a thoughtful and open fashion that will allow BHHS’s own IT personnel to make most necessary changes in the future, and opens the door to agent-by-agent customization of the presentation, something that would have been financially impractical in paper format.
Below, you can find samples of several pages from within the interactive brochure:
The introductory screen features four photo panels that seamlessly dissolve to other picture, adding a subtle touch of dynamism that helps capture the attention of the reader.
This page highlight’s Berkshire’s involvement in the community. Tabs at the bottom allow the presenter to easily navigate between interconnected topics, while a slideshow at the left allows the presenter to swipe back and forth through photos or pinch to zoom up to a full-screen view.
This is one of several beautiful section covers that also serve as handy navigational waypoints for presenters, allowing them to flip from one section of the document to another just as easily as they might a paperbound version.
Pharm-EZ
At Pharm-EZ, the assets I have designed have set the visual tone for the company. Building off the company’s logo design, the associated EZ-Kit and EZ-Pal marks maintain visual consistency.
The use of simple, shape-based illustrations and use of large typography and easy to understand language help the company effectively address its audience of older, vision-impaired consumers preparing for and recovering from various eye procedures.
This design sensibility extends to the company’s internal documents and presentations thanks to a set of design guidelines I developed to assure consistency across the company’s marketing efforts, whether they be directed at patients, physicians, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders. Here are a few examples of my work for Pharm-EZ:
Company business cards share design assets with EZ-Kit, Pharm-EZ’s flagship product.
This label appears on the back of each EZ-Kit and is personalized by physician and patient based on contents, instructions and more.
This is an illustrated rendering of EZ-Kit, which conforms better with the company’s marketing documents that a simple photograph.
This illustrated composite provides a visual for practices interested in participating in the Pharm-EZ program.
These images are the designs for the side panels of a cardboard EZ-Kit, once again showcasing the brand’s palette and easy to recognize set curved gradients.
This checklist helps practices communicate Pharm-EZ’s value to patients while ensuring that Pharm-EZ receives the necessary information from practices to fill patient orders.
The EZ-Pal and EZ-Kit logos are trademarked derivatives of the original Pharm-EZ logo. I typeset each of these based on the original logo’s design.
The left side is a typical dosage instruction sheet prepared by Pharm-EZ based on a physician’s instructions and distributed to patients at that physician’s office. The right-hand side is an example of a glossier handout provided to practices interested in learning more about Pharm-EZ.
The rack cards to the left and middle provide patients with vital instructions and are distributed to patients at participating physician offices. The rack card on the right introduces patients to the company’s EZ-Pal program and features a more whimsical design meant to evoke a friendly nature.
This slide from a presentation from physicians shows another example of the company’s unified design philosophy.
PowerUp Poker
PowerUp Poker puts a new twist on the world’s most popular card game in the form of two dozen different PowerUps that can turn tables and change fortunes. The game adds a new layer of fun and intrigue to a game that pretty much everyone understands, bridging the gap between tabletop and new era card game enthusiasts and players that stand by the ol’ 52-card deck.
I initially developed PowerUp originally to play with friends, but they enjoyed it so much that I moved forward with the design work and production research necessary to produce the game in quantity for sale. After settling on an 8-bit art style as an homage to the classic video games that inspired the “PowerUp” concept in the first place, I set to work creating unique art for all 24 PowerUps as well as for all 52 playing cards and a variety of associated material as part of one of the most challenging design projects I’ve undertaken to date. Below you’ll find a sample of various portions of the game’s art as shown in the game’s Kickstarter campaign video.
The Industry
The Industry was a semi-monthly gaming magazine, offering insightful reporting with a print-quality presentation free from the distractions of advertising.
Each issue included four feature-length articles by some of game journalism’s greatest authors. The Industry was available exclusively on leading digital reading platforms, including iPad and Kindle tablets, with support for both high-resolution Retina and standard displays in both portrait and landscape orientations, as well as Kindle eReaders.
I served as Managing Editor for The Industry. In this role, I not only coordinated and edited content but also handled the design for the magazine. Each article featured a unique style of presentation, incorporating interactive elements like slideshows, videos and more into a layout that effectively combined the best traits of print and tablet reading by way of scrolling articles that featured formatting not widely achievable on the web.
The below video showcases all three issues of The Industry.
MegatonApps
I served as director of design at MegatonApps on several completed iOS apps and several more major concept pieces and case studies.
Much of the design for Multitaskers, our first app for iPad, was first done with pen and paper as the majority of development took place months before the iPad was released. This allowed us to ensure that UI elements would be properly sized for reading and touch interaction despite lacking a prototype unit for testing.
Similarly, much of EasyMinder‘s menu structure and flow was designed by printing out mockup cards of various screens throughout the app, allowing us to ensure a logical and smooth process for the user early on and avoiding causing our programmers hassle in overhauling the app’s workflow multiple times.
Among MegatonApps’ best case studies was an iPhone companion app for Walt Disney World. We put this together in 2009 and shared our vision with Disney senior staff. Today’s multi-billion dollar next-gen initiative at Walt Disney World embodies many of the same improvements to Guest experience that we envisioned just a year into the App Store’s existence.
This screenshot displays many of the functions available inside Multitaskers, a Dashboard-style application for iPad bringing many simple functions to one user-customizable view.
This is a mockup of our interface for urban guide applications. In this case, iPads secured inside kiosks could be used to help navigate downtown Jacksonville, Fla.
EasyMinder alerted users about lists of items or actions when they traveled within a certain proximity of a set location. For example, the app could remind you to pick up milk at the grocery when you drive by on the way home.
Icon design was critical in the development of both Multitaskers and EasyMinder, and helped give each app the distinctive feel that led to their being featured as New & Noteworthy by Apple.
Learn More Here
These are just a few examples of work I’ve done in the recent past. Interested in learning more?
