Range Life is the combined brain child of two lovely couples escaping San Francisco and Brooklyn respectively to open up a restaurant in the hills of Livermore, California. They struck a balance of the refined and artful food and drink you’d find in the city, but with the relaxed attitude you’d find in the country side. I tried to bring that same feeling to the visual brand - whimsical and fun, but refined at the same time. Illustration inspired by the surrounding Livermore hills references the land their food is sourced from as well as their state of mind and the Range Life they chose to live. The series of illustrations also held utility to help differentiate the menu system and products sold in their market. Working closely with the partners, I designed everything from menus, signage, packaging, and website. This place is absolutely delicious in every way. Please go there.
Freek's Mill is a restaurant in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It's on the site of an actual grist mill of the same name that stood there back in the day. Obviously, the neighborhood has changed a bit since then and they wanted something clean and modern, but warm with a bit of a wink. With this in mind, I created the logo mark, which is a minimalist and geometric representation of the mill and custom type to accompany it. The form and feel of the mark inspired the rest of the brand system including a full set of icons and patterns. These were used throughout the menu system, including a custom leather and brass beverage list book and food and dessert menus that could be easily updated by the staff each day as the menu changes. If you're ever in Gowanus, check it out and tell 'em I sent you.
I worked on the branding and everything else for Tom Colicchio's entry into the sandwich game. I designed everything from in-store signage and menus to advertising and employee uniforms. Keeping it clean and bright, trying to keep a fresh, approachable and witty personality across the board. I worked for sandwiches (and money).
These guys serve up food with gusto and the brand needed to stack up. I kept a clean esthetic with touches of whimsy and fun across the board to give Craftwork a personality that matched its purveyors. Delicious.
I lead the rebranding of Redbubble, a website that prints independent artists' work on anything from a duvet cover to an iPad sleeve. The concept behind the system is "Artist + Designer". It combines the fine detail and layout of a graphic designer with the hand rendered touches of a fine artist – together, creating a brand that merges high design with the character, whimsy and textural elements of the artists it serves. The new branding is now being adopted across everything RB does visually.
When one of your favorite furniture and product designers asks you to help him create his new brand, you do it. I worked with Eric Pfeiffer to develop his newest venture, Corral, which blends utility and esthetics to create purposeful, everyday products. This ethos was brought into the branding which was spare and utilitarian, while being esthetically pleasing at the same time. By creating a purposeful and bold statement with color and shape, it mirrored the simple, yet bold products that Corral creates. Yes, I work for furniture.
A mobile stage carved out of a vintage trailer is BandWagon. This brand needed to embody a mixture of music and mobility – with a rock n' roll kind of attitude. I concepted and designed the entire brand from logo and merch to the giant phonograph sticking out of the top of the BandWagon itself. The brand embodies music on the road using typographic statements over photo illustrations that merge the open road and the musicians it carries.
R&D is a burgeoning furniture and product partnership. I created the brand and all the illustration seen here. Using simple shapes and a distinct color palette to represent products rooted in pure and simple woodworking with a modern slant, the brand’s visual identity matches its products.
Most medical advertising looks and sounds exactly like what you’re picturing in your head right now. It’s a sea of stock photography and pseudo-inspirational copy featuring smiling doctors and healthy people of varying shapes and sizes. The opportunity to differentiate the work for Stanford Children’s Health amongst the rest was low-hanging fruit. We were lucky enough to be working with clients that saw that and we were on our way.
The goal of the campaign was to let people know what Stanford Children’s Health actually is. Answer being: Stanford Children’s Health is a network of Stanford pediatricians and specialists across the Bay Area with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in the middle. This pediatric dream team gives you access to Stanford doctors treating anything from everyday to the extraordinary.
To get the message out there, we used a smart and friendly voice coupled with illustrations by Oakland-based watercolorist, Lindsay Gardner. Our voice tapped into the ups and downs of parenting and the simple fact that through it all, we only want the very best for our kids. Our artwork feels like illustrations you might find in the books you read your kids every night before bedtime. Together, they made for a campaign that was able to talk about our kids’ well-being in surprising and fun ways, while staying true to the expertise and care that goes into keeping them healthy. The fact that we were able to work with an institution like Stanford to create it all makes it that much more special. The doctors, nurses and researchers that work across the Stanford Children’s Health network are doing amazing things for kids every single day and I was honored to play some small part of that.
This was one of those projects that felt bigger than most/all I’ve worked on. Building a children’s hospital to treat and cure some of the sickest kids in the country is powerful stuff. Creating a campaign to announce its opening was an honor and a challenge to make something worthy of its cause. We were tasked with featuring the building, its patient-centered design, technological advances and sustainability as well as the phenomenal care team and the kids that it’s there to serve. All of this together made for a pretty amazing place. An awe-inspiring place. The spirit, drive and people it takes to create such a place led us to “How to build the best children’s hospital in the world”
I lead the rebranding of Chevy’s Fresh Mex from logo to website to posters perched above the urinals. We systematically removed every glossy photo of chimichangas and cheese ball “mexi-inspired type” and replaced it with vintage wood type and illustrations reinterpreting “fresh”. It brought them from typical, corporate chain restaurant to the border cantina they wanted to be.
LinkedIn asked us to create a sales training kit for their Jobs teams located in 23 offices across the world. These are the guys in charge of connecting people that have jobs and the people who need them – all within the LinkedIn community. The piece was meant to inspire, delight and act as a literal sales tool all-in-one place. We forged ahead with the goal of creating something that felt super premium, informative, fun and something you might not expect from LinkedIn all at the same time. We tried to make it interesting from the second it arrived on the sales person’s desk, putting ourselves into the shoes of the sales force and speaking their language. From the way light interacted with the foil-stamped clothbound book, to the “How to Bury the Competition” concept that drove the content, to the tchotchkes (LinkedIn sweatbands and “eye blue”) and the actual sales tools themselves. They all worked together toward the common goal of inspiration, delight and information. The kits were a raging success and were actually used by the sales teams across the globe to not only have a bit of fun, but sell at the same time. Anyone looking for a job? We know some people who can help you find one.
Kevin is an amazing photographer and now an amazing friend. I’ve worked with Kevin for years, starting with his logo and brand (everyone always mispronounced his name, so I tried to fix that with his logo) and then promotional materials, website, etc. It’s fun working on a brand that is built on gorgeous imagery. You also never have to find a good photographer.
I've led the digital work for Oculus since day one. We've helped usher VR into the mainstream and help explain what the hell it is and why you need to experience it.
I’ve lead design/art direction of the brand and advertising for the A’s past 7 seasons. Over that time, we’ve reinvented the look and feel of Green Collar Baseball 3 times. The team’s record and attendance has come a long way in 7 seasons and I think the work I’ve done with them is the sole reason why (2015 season doesn’t count).
This is a really great museum tucked into the cliffs of Bolinas, California that exhibits work you wouldn’t think it would. I assumed it’s walls would be filled with Pacific Ocean inspired landscape paintings, but instead it is an eclectic mix of historic, local pieces and international modern art. We pushed the brand to a cleaner and more modern place. This helped better communicate its true offerings and gave them the freedom to expand the artwork they show and not clash with the museum’s brand around it.
I lead the rebranding and advertising for Lyve, a photo app and hard drive that lets you see all your photos on any of your devices without taking up any space. We took a direction most photo-based brands don’t take by using illustration as our hero visuals. This allowed us to capture the emotion and connection people have with their photos in a more fun and surprising way, as opposed to using a bunch of photos of other people you can’t really relate to. I think it worked.
Worked on a few fun projects for Levi’s, including a campaign where they partnered with Goodwill and asked people to donate their jeans, so we die cut the jeans right out of the campaign to get the ball rolling. Also, some packaging work where I left the photos of the denim there.
AE is an Oakland-based headphone maker that crafts amazing sounding cans draped in real walnut. I was lucky enough to work with this great, local crew to create the identity, brand, collateral and website for their launch. These headphones are a beautiful example of form meeting function and I the brand had to follow that sentiment.
I led the branding and design for this biodegradable trash bag company. The goal here was to stick out in the trash bag aisle by sitting back. We also tried to avoid the “green” design pitfalls and create a brand that feels green, but does it in a surprising way – that’s why the logo has a tree growing out of a guy’s head and not just a tree. To create the design elements, I scoured architectural salvage yards around the Bay Area for materials, loaded up a truck and photographed each piece individually to create a flexible library of assets we used to build the brand.
When you mention "giant healthcare insurer” most creatives run for the hills. I tried, but then got lucky when Blue Shield let us do some really fun work across the board. Awesome example of great clients equaling great work.
I designed this poster invitation for the San Francisco Film Society’s annual award and fundraising event. This particular year, it was held at Bimbo’s in North Beach with a Supper Club theme. We wanted to do something special that wasn’t expected, so we made up a film called "Night at the Supper Club" and its poster doubled as the invite that was sent to all of the guests. In doing so, we merged film society, invitation and supper club into one neatly rolled up and tubed package.
I helped lead the branding and advertising for Slingbox, which was the first piece of tech that let you watch your TV on your mobile device. Explaining this new paradigm to people without their brains exploding took a special touch. I created illustrated guides that lived in every Best Buy, all of the packaging and a bunch of advertising work, some of which is seen here.
Viator helps steer travelers in the right direction by teaming them up with vetted tour operators across the world. To help solidify the idea that Viator helps you travel like an insider, I created a wayfinding system used across the Viator brand and advertising. It functioned as any signage system should by clearly communicating the message. The system was used across their entire brand including their web site and in print, video, flash and even lenticular double decker buses and water taxis in New York City.
Jawbone is a hip brand, not necessarily a funny brand. I had the opportunity to work with them when they were trying to show a bit of their lighter side. Working on a website featuring a bluetoothed Abe Lincoln and a imaginary Jawbone Development Lab filled with hipsters and jet packs to name a few.
Glyde helps you sell your phone and get a nice chunk of change for it. I concepted and illustrated this outdoor campaign that ran in San Francisco to let people know they’d be silly to not check out Glyde. It worked, their web traffic spiked by 60%.
It’s always fun to work on the brand for the place you work. I’ve had the opportunity to completely refresh the brand at Hub and see it integrated into all of our collateral, presentations, website, etc.
I’ve had the pleasure of leading the creative for Nimble Storage since 2013. In that time, we’ve had some fun with data storage (as if data storage alone wasn’t fun enough on its own). We’ve created senior citizen server racks and run locomotives, motorcycles and fork lifts through the data center amongst other things. I have a new found respect for where our data is stored and how.
In rebranding Saint Mary’s College, we set out to modernize the institution while holding onto its roots. Amongst a very crowded group of competitive schools, it was essential that they stood out both visually and through its voice and personality. We embraced what made Saint Mary’s different and reimagined it to create the campaign.
On the design side, we created a series of patterns inspired by the mission-style architecture of the campus and chapel and used transparent red planes that acted as talk bubbles that were derived from the school’s logo. Our headlines were delivered using a two-tiered typography treatment that allowed us to accentuate key messages. Layered together with existing photography of the campus and students, it created a malleable, ownable and modern rebrand for the school. The design system also needed to be flexible and intuitive to execute as we handed it off to the internal team at Saint Mary’s. The personality and voice had to be smart and inspiring with this headline-driven campaign. We embraced the positioning and wrote statements that poked at the elitism of higher education and juxtaposed it with the mission and identity of Saint Mary’s.
Together, the system works together to help introduce Saint Mary’s to a new crop of bright and young students. Introducing ourselves as a modern institution with an open mind and an open heart.
Logos are one of the most challenging and rewarding pieces of design in my estimation. Distilling an entire brand into a single mark is a true test of the idea in its purest form. Here are a selection of the logos I’ve designed over the years.
I’ve worked on a bunch of television and video that didn’t quite fit anywhere else on this site, so it now lives here together.