What do you do when you have a century-old brand whose core product is absolutely misunderstood, yet are tasked with overhauling a patched-together near-decade old site whose only saving grace is an unbelievable catalog of recipes?

Just design something really fun to look at.

Wait, that’s not it. 

First, you look at the data. You realize people do come to your site, but never through the homepage.  They’re also coming in mostly via mobile and tablet. Interesting. So that means your homepage isn’t your homepage—your recipe page is your homepage. 

Viewing the Crisco site experience through that lens enabled the team to figure out the best content and hierarchy so that not only will home cooks get a recipe they’ll love, they will also get a series of relevant recipes along with an idea of what Crisco is and why it is a superior product.

Now combine that with a new tone of voice and a hip, modern aesthetic, and you’re ready to speak to this generation of cooking enthusiasts—hopefully convincing them that the product you’ve seen in grandma’s cupboard really is the key to success in today’s modern kitchen.

INVOLVEMENT:  Concept, Design

Additionally, I want you to know that I had a blast working on this. What initially looked like a simple ask(new site please) became something transformative and fun. Big shout out to my ACD on the project, James Westbrooks, for pushing extra hard on modernizing the brand.

The initial ask was simple:, to redesign the Folgers.ca website, an asset that hadn't had much attention since its inception a decade ago.  Aside from being fresh and clean, it also needed to essentially re-introduce a U.S. brand with a long, proud history into a new market, and taking take great care in making everything feel relatable to Canadians. 

The resulting experience is a fully responsive site that looks and feels the same on desktop, tablet, and mobile—and showcases a webisode series detailing the real-life morning stories of four Canadian coffee drinkers. An easy-to-explore navigation gives quick access to myriad product options, recipes, how-tos, and the 150-year tradition behind Folgers coffee.  There's also a lot of fun technology integrated into the site as well, including but not limited to, mega search, active CSS filtering, and video backgrounds.

View Folgers.ca

INVOLVEMENT:  Design of 4 breakpoint responsive site

This was my first project after I boomeranged back to POSSIBLE, and let me tell you something, after working on primarily medical work for the past year I was nothing short of overjoyed to work on a CPG website. 

No disrespect to the design needs of the medical community, but come on.  Pancakes!

The ask was simple—they needed a modern, responsive site to replace their aging mobile and desktop sites. Make it delicious, and infuse Hungry Jack’s witty and humorous brand tone. 

Anchored by massive, beautiful images shot by the lovely people at K&P Photo Group, Hungry Jack pancakes is now a clean long-scroll site that extols the simple perfection of the big family breakfast, and celebrates all things pancakes.

My favorite part of the site design is the lower-left menu “hamburger” icon placement. There is a lot of UX research behind this, but the short version is that because of thumb reach vs. the newest crop of large-screen smartphones, the upper left/right menu placement is no longer ideal.  Unfortunately, this has since been abandoned due to a switch to a different CMS. 

INVOLVEMENT: Concept, Design, Production

Question for you design-types in the audience. How often do you get a quick turn ask that determines the visual outcome for a large scale project that blissfully falls together like it was meant to be, AND the client chooses it with almost no changes?  

While you might be quick to fire off a resounding “never,” that would be a mistake brought about by haste and a disbelief of the supernatural(or at the very least, improbable celestial alignment).  

Yes, friend, I caught a unicorn. The two pages I’m showing here are in fact shiny new layouts for the revamped Ready Set Eat, ConAgra Foods’ home for all things recipe related. 

For the third year of our raucous internal awards show, the Revvies(a la “Revolutionaries”), we decided to step things up for 2016.  Because the office was undergoing substantial renovations, our small team of dedicated volunteers naturally gravitated towards the theme of “destroying what you like to create what you love.”  Now, a standard brainstorm with a room full of creatives can be a festival of left-field ideas, so you can only imagine what ensued when the usual guardrails were lifted. 

Many of us chose where and when to pitch in based on what needed to get done and what skillets were available. I assisted with numerous concepting phases through execution, delivering moodboards, animated GIFs, Snapchat filters, and something I love dearly but rarely have the opportunity to play with… signage. Now, teams of the past couple years hadn’t puled any punches and have produced an amazing variety of both hanging signs and posters employing spray paint, dimensional paper folding, and even 3D glasses—so doing something new was going to involve some of us getting uncomfortable. Hard materials. Layers. Destruction as part of the process. Active lighting.

It might not outwardly seem so based on the rest of this portfolio, but I vastly prefer getting my hands dirty in my free time over just about anything else. For the larger plywood/drywall corner installation, I combined my love of type and neon with the words “destroy” and “create” with sound-reactive signs made of electroluminescent wire over a metal framework.  Additional Revvies lightning bolts were created in this manner for the smaller, freestanding signs.

The most time and skill intensive piece was the giant 3D Revvies “R” sign.  Embodying the Create/Destroy theme, the nearly 4-foot by 6-inch deep logo hovers above a backing board divided diagonally between a space of pristine white melamine and torn fragments of misprinted or duplicate event posters.  Edge-backlit by two different colors of flexible LEDs, the clean, chrome R seems to have been exposed by peeling away layers of welded scrap metal. 

At least that’s what I was going for, I have no idea what I’m doing.  

On the plus side, people liked it enough that it’s been semi-permanently affixed to one of the walls in the newly-renovated 9th floor space. It has yet to disintegrate or maim anyone.

In the past 7 years or so, I’ve worked both solo and on teams creating everything from highly specific, laser-focused single serve Facebook posts to scheduled monthly content calendars containing dozens of Facebook and Twitter posts simultaaneously for a half-dozen brands.  What you see here is a small sampling of a few successful forays into branded social media posts, specifically because these are the ones I had the most fun creating. While the majority of work for these Smucker’s brands would be shot in our in-house content studio, or re-imagined from brand assets or stock photography, every so often there would be a chance to leap outside of the box and do something truly custom.

The quarterly Pillsbury Baking “Trend Inspired” posts began with research into current baking trends, which would be narrowed down to three our four, and finally, remixed into something ownable via the Smucker’s test kitchen. Once recipes were locked, it was time for a quick early-morning flight to K&P Photo in Cleveland to capture the gorgeous shots seen here. Because myself, our account lead, and clients were able to attend, the art direction, iteration, and approval all happened seamlessly in real time—incredibly productive and cost-efficient but most of all, fun for all involved. 

I’m not saying that just because a ton of people got together and there was cake that it was a party… but it wasn’t not a party.

So what do pancakes, the history of Nascar, and professional illustration have in common?  Well, it used to be absolutely nothing, but now, it’s the Hungry Jack Racing Facebook posts you see here. When I found out there was a Nascar partnership that hadn’t been fully promoted, my first thought was "how cool would these be if done up like vintage posters!?" Because I may or may not personally know an artist who specializes in race illustrations(wink), it was easy to envision a series of custom posts—fifteen total—that would combine racing history and a passion for pancakes. After seeding the first few posts, fans were asked to come up with their own “racing pancakeism” sayings, one of which would then be chosen for the next custom post. It's not often that the initial vision for a project matches up with the end result, but for me, this was one of the very few. Working closely with Ethan of 8380 Laboratories was an absolute blast, and it was a privilege to be able to reformat and lay type over his beautiful illustrations.  

A fun and willing client, Downtown Cincinnati, Inc. resurrected the artificial reindeer "Pogie" and "Patter," of 1920s-1960s department store window fame, to aid in bringing area natives downtown during the holidays.  Materials included a TV commercial, Facebook contest, Downtown Cincinnati, Inc. homepage callout, iMedia, direct mail, print ads, and 12x18 poster.

INVOLVEMENT: Visual concept, Design, Production for all online and print materials.

Utilizing the scavenger hunt app SCVNGR, locals were taken on a walking tour of downtown Cincinnati and asked to complete a number of challenges—which resulted in the user receiving a free cupcake from downtown bakery Abby Girl Sweets.  Driving awareness was the 12x18 poster shown above, placed throughout windows downtown.

INVOLVEMENT: Poster design.

This Cinco de Mayo- themed online campaign featured the seldom-seen YouTube gadget, a rich media experience that lived above the standard Pepto-Bismol YouTube brand page and featured a choose-your-own-adventure style video maker. 

High-profile traffic drivers included a skit on Jimmy Kimmel Live, SpongeCell video iMedia banners, and a YouTube masthead banner, which gathered over 63MM impressions and helped earn Mashable’s label as one of the “5 Branded YouTube Channels That Get It Right”.

Watch the quick video overview of the project

Watch the YouTube homepage takeover

View the Flash Banner Ad

Watch one of the great videos shot by partner agency Publicis

INVOLVEMENT: Design of YouTube masthead banner, YouTube gadget, SpongeCell iMedia banners, Flash iMedia banners, and Facebook tab

AWARDS:  2012 IAC Award, Best Consumer Goods Website; 2012 Silver Effie, "Pepto-Bismol: Form Symptoms to Occasions"; Team P&G Awards 2012, Gold, Best Branded Content

A monster of a Facebook contest, the Vicks NyQuil/DayQuil Most Dedicated Fan Contest was a three-phase journey celebrating those who let nothing stand in the way of supporting their NFL team.  Through a series of challenges the entrants, one per NFL team, were narrowed down until one lucky (and extreme) fan was both crowned with the title and awarded a trip to the Super Bowl. 

INVOLVEMENT: Design of 3 phase contest and contest flow(under the art direction of Chris Kowalak), YouTube skin, iMedia Banner. 

AWARDS:  2012 IAC Award, Best Consumer Goods Website; 2013 Cincinnati Addy Silver Award, Social Media

Ah, display media. The billboards of the internet. I’ve been tasked over the years with creating just about everything you can think of, from a surreal moonscape of gums and teeth, to a sasquatch's favorite bodily places to shave. The following is just a small sample of iMedia I’ve worked on in the past few years, and lucky for you, there isn’t a shorn yeti in the bunch.

Sometimes, a representative visual is the icing on a great concept writeup.  Whether it be for a pitch, an existing client, or internal purposes, I've been called on to create visuals having little prior knowledge and even less time—but I’ve always had fun working to provide a quality graphic against all odds.

Recently, Proctor & Gamble has decided to “step from behind the curtain” as it were, to show consumers how their breadth of products affects them more than they know.  Similar to the "Butterfly Effect," the Everyday Effect of a cleaner shirt, a brighter smile, or a night without a leaky diaper can change the outcome of an entire day.

This campaign includes a centerpiece based off of the functionality of the successful "P&G Thank You Mom"  campaign's Facebook waterfall, but in this case users are able to not only share the reasons P&G products have helped them—they can also upload pictures and videos.  The additional design pieces of this campaign include emails, a YouTube reskin with ThisMoment functionality, and iMedia.
 

INVOLVEMENT:  Visual identity. Design and Production of Facebook contest, iMedia.

Oftentimes, a mere sketch or iPhone snapshot of a vigorous whiteboard discussion will come my way.  Over the past few years, I have learned to interpret passionate left-brained scribbles and convert them into clear, complex, and engaging visuals.