Digital Folio

As the Creative Director for Digital Folio, my task is creating a consistent, intuitive, and magical comparison shopping experience for a user across a website, browser sidebar application for IE and Firefox, Windows Phone 7, iPhone, and Android app. Add in the company communications and promotion through traditional, social, and emerging media, and keeping track of goals and deliverables across local and remote teams, and you’ve got an idea of what fills my days. With a great launch at CES and an even better write up in the Wall Street Journal, it looks like we are on target.

UconsiderThis

No, seriously, Animal House is just a movie. Uconsiderthis.org is a binge drinking prevention program for freshman college students. To create the site, I worked with research and creative staff in Denver, UNM, and CSU. I started on the project in November of 2004 concepting and writing spec docs for eventual activities. Soon I was casting actors, managing content creation, writing scripts, and directing video shoots. It is still running and is expanding into commercial release.

Way to Serve

Sometimes good service has to be no service. WayToServe.org is an alcohol server training program for the restaurant and hospitality industry. On this project I managed the workflow between researchers and consultants here in Denver, Albuquerque, NM, Berkeley, CA, and Toronto, Canada. Over 100 videos, multiple levels of user access, and many interactive modules about serving alcohol made this project a load of fun.

With 25 different activities focusing on unique topics, a big challenge was to create user interface elements that were consistent, easy to learn, and specific to the needs of each activity.

Klein Buendel

When KB first started, we were a very unique entity that many of our colleagues couldn’t quite understand, and worse yet, weren’t ready to work with. Were we an ad agency? Were we a research group? Who are these strangers, and what is this craft they drive? Over my 8 years there, I designed many pieces to break down that barrier, showing our strengths and how we could all work together, and opening many doors in an academic market that is very skeptical of collateral pieces.

Learn

This piece focused on connecting a researcher to the importance of a good presentation. All the factual information in the world doesn’t mean a thing if nobody gives it a second glance. I encouraged second, third, and fourth glances with this piece that gave the user something to play with, building and refining messages along the way.

Company Site ’02

The KB corporate site needed to combine a modern graphic style while emphasizing the traditional education environment. We wanted to appeal to a tech savvy audience as well as the academic audience we worked with. I designed, programmed, wrote, and built the site, as well as writing and distributing all press releases from the company. Take a look >>

Bridges

It was always the same question. What does Klein Buendel *do*? It’s not easy to explain the strengths of a health research group working directly with a creative group, so I developed this campaign to clarify things. It is great to see understanding dawn on a person’s face. At KB, we bridged the gaps to a user’s understanding, and we did it very well.

Singles

Some projects are smaller, but no less important than those giant mega-sites. Here are a few highlights from the smaller side of things.

Solar Cell

Solar Cell is a mobile application designed to calculate a user’s time to sunburn and Vitamin D production. By working with the standard user interactions and clear visual cues, I optimized the limited screen space to allow the user to focus on the output, not get hung up learning how to use the application. Technology shouldn’t get in the way of the information you want.

Bullwhackers Poker Invite

With the biggest charity poker tournament in Colorado, the most challenging task is to get local celebrities comfortable enough to play in public. This invitation puts you right in the game, holding all the cards, and having fun in the name of charity. It worked. We were able to expand the tournament and raise even more money than the previous year. I even illustrated the company mascot Lucky as the dealer.

Bullwhackers Bullpen Commercial

For the opening of the Bullpen, the newest addition to the Bullwhackers Casino family, I developed this commercial featuring the mascot Lucky. I came up with concept, made the storyboards, and oversaw the production of the piece with a Boulder animation house. It was great to bring our mascot Lucky to life and let him show his natural athletic talent. Now that he’s in retirement, I’d like to think I was able to give him a youth he can reflect on with fondness.

Oddities

Every creative has a few pieces that they just like to share once Mom’s refrigerator door is full.

Portfolio ’09

Admittedly, I am fascinated by London’s Underground system and the map that describes it. So with a portfolio containing many different intersecting topics, it made the perfect fit. They say there are no new ideas, only rehashes of old ones. I totally disagree, but I’ll use it to rationalize my Underground obsession this time. “They” should really get out more and stop being so lazy. Take a look >>

Energy Balance Intro

Introducing characters, concepts, and content in a simple intro movie takes a lot of planning and leveraging of conceptual clues, without falling into the trap of stereotypes. This project never was produced, but it was so fun to write the script and design the characters, I keep it around. I still hold out hope that maybe one fine day, they will get reborn again. Download the script >>

K151 Twin Fan

Far in the future, there will be a pristine museum filled with found artifacts from the various centuries lost to time. They will not have a clue of what they are looking at, and will either call it a religious object or a household appliance. This one became an appliance. I did all modeling, texturing, and lighting on this one. I even own the real projector. I love this style of industrial design for household objects. I can bring it in if you want.