— I Am a Designer —
Some Recent Projects
Below is just a sample of what I have created for clients. Give me your challenge – I’m ready to rise to the occasion.
Challenge: I was the first designer in Southeast Bank’s new marketing department. Design for all of the bank’s print, digital, advertising, and everything in between had been done by numerous vendors and freelancers. I was tasked with creating a cohesive look that maintained the bank’s existing logo and signature green and blue. I also discovered that the bank’s tagline, “good to know” was already registered with the US Copyright Office to another company in an unrelated business.
Solution: After discussing with our legal department, the CMO and I collaborated on an idea that would use three versions of the tagline. Adding “we’re”, “it’s”, and “that’s”, we could still maintain the basic message – choosing the best suited one for the specific context.
After I did some research into the bank’s history, mission and client demographics, more collaboration with our small team occured. Most of the bank’s existing collateral utilized a simple flood of black that gave a heavy, somber feel that did not match the bright atmosphere of the branch lobbies and the cheerful, welcoming customer service that SEB was well known for. I advocated for heading in a lighter, while still simple and sophisticated direction. A design system was chosen by the owners that utilized white and simple elements in blue and green highlighted in print pieces with spot varnishes on high quality stock. I then created a set of branding standards with the new visual style that included a modern web-friendly font, an extended color palette, updated photography and icons.
The updated website design was already underway so I utilized some of the design elements as a segue towards the new look to minimize any customer confusion.
Project Details
Copywriting, Digital & Print Corporate & Marketing Collateral.
Omnichannel awareness advertising of SouthEast’s Bank Business Banking products and services. Examples of META still and animated online ads, magazine ads, and direct mail pieces are shown. The direct mail pieces incorporated both design elements of this specific ongoing campaign, and SEB’s newly relaunched website as a segue to prevent any possible customer confusion.
During my 5+ years at Southeast Bank, many of the projects I worked on involved the branding of their numerous products and services. Education Loan Finance (ELFi) is one of their most well-known, but it was traditionally treated as a separate entity from the bank’s branded commercial offerings.
The bank decided that it wanted to establish a closer relationship with its student loan division while portraying a more active and progressive look to appeal to the college graduate students and parents that are its target audience. The SouthEast Bank logo could not be changed, so I opted to use color and typographic elements to accomplish this.
I was first tasked with an updated rebrand of SouthEast Bank’s and Education Loan Finance’s parent holding company ELFI Inc. Later, a derivation of that same logo was tweaked to identify the customer-facing loan product itself, representing the more progressive look while still keeping it familial to the overall bank brand.
Frames 1-3: Available for free in our lobbies, Life magazine’s purpose was to inform our customers with new banking industry and security information. Different topics of community interest were also covered as well as highlighting local individuals of impact. SouthEast Bank product charts were included for ease of account type comparison and explanation for use by our tellers or for the customer to later refer to at their leisure.
Frames 4-6: Publications for various products or program information and data points were also made available on our website for download as pdfs.
An animated quiz shown on large monitors in SouthEast Bank branches to educate customers on how to maintain the security of their identity, bank accounts, and other online activities.
Some of the logos I created for products and services during my career at SouthEast Bank, and an example of use in a direct mail piece.
Thrive is an account that offers benefits to those customers aged 60+. Pathway was a mortgage program originally developed to assist in a specific type of home loan, and HERO was an account that was to offer special benefits to First Responders.
Frame 1: During my time as a contract designer at Jones Lang Lasalle, I was tasked with creating a logo for their environmental initiatives for the buildings they held. I devised a modular concept that could be used for each facet of this initiative as it was implemented.
Frame 2: Logos I created for some Florida-based businesses on a freelance basis.
Fortiva Financial products consist of credit cards, personal loans, and retail lines of credit. Working together with the VP of Marketing, our team chose to take ownership of both the word and the concept of “Confidence”, and to pivot our consumer-facing campaigns around this core message.
With steadfast adherence to this idea, Fortiva informs both potential and existing customers that it is reliably there when they need it. Using an approachable and convivial tone, attractive and relatable imagery, as well as easily accessed and transparent information, this site invites the user to investigate and interact. What would normally feel like a cold, somewhat impersonal financial transaction or research experience, then becomes a memorable conversation.
Fortiva Retail Credit is a Second-Look Financing product offered by Fortiva. It allows partnered merchants and contractors the ability to offer another form of financing to customers should they not qualify for prime-rate financing.
The existing sales kit lacked brand uniformity, was unwieldy and expensive to produce, and had multiple purpose-overlapping materials in it. I designed a new brand-cohesive kit that proved easily customizable and cost-effective.
Kit folders, buckslips and irregularly sized pieces were fulfilled in bulk through our print vendor. Custom sales information sheets and counter signage were set up to be printed on-demand (and high quality) in-house. This cut the cost of the overall sales package by almost 50% and resulted in a more polished and consistent presentation by the sales staff. The materials are color-coded in such a way as to quickly indicate how they are to be used. Materials that lead with Fortiva Orange are merchant-facing. Those that lead with Fortiva Blue are for the consumer.
In 2015 Fortiva Retail Credit sought to establish itself in the retail and service financing arena. This was an exciting chance for me to collaborate directly with the Marketing VP on an emerging brand.
First shown are examples of carousel ads that ran in digital trade publications and on event websites prior to our staff’s attendance at trade shows and symposiums. These served to pique interest by asking quick, compelling questions with a CTA that promised answers.
Next, print ads expanding upon the Q/A theme were simultaneously run in trade publications for various commercial channels.
Then came all of the trade show graphics that appeared around and within the actual event sites.
This campaign evolved throughout the year to educate merchants about the need for second-look financing and to keep the Fortiva Retail Credit front of mind. Visual clues such as punctuation marks used as design elements, owning the color orange and concise information helped gain attention in otherwise visually bland publications, reinforce brand recognition and build trust in FRC as a thought leader.
Atlanticus is the parent holding company Fortiva Financial. Their 20th Anniversary offered them the opportunity to both celebrate achievements and inform the stockholders of growth. I was tasked with designing a new logo, announcements and gift materials, as well as a new website.
I began with a modification of the existing Atlanticus logotype to highlight its anniversary without the need for a second mark – thereby eliminating any possible brand confusion. The gifts evolved naturally when the recipient profiles were carefully considered.
The old website existed for stockholder documents, notifications, and legal edification. It was visually sterile and offered neither intuitive navigation, nor responsive design. Working with a UX/UI developer, I designed a new site that provided all necessary information to fulfill the legal requirements of a NASDAQ listed corporation, and could also be effectively viewed and intuitively navigated on any device. New visually engaging creative now conveyed the company’s story, character and spirit of service. It encouraged lingering interaction with the site’s material and granted the user seamless access to the third-party provided stock and investor information.
Hand drawn and computer illustrated art and design for Ninja Witch, a Knoxville rock band.
This art is my original concept and no part of it is AI generated or AI assisted. The galaxy arm photo I used was taken by a NASA satellite and enhanced in Photoshop by me.
Hand drawn and computer illustrated art displaying different styles that I am capable of. I created this art for Summoners Circle, a world touring Knoxville metal band.
All of this art consists my original concepts and none of it is either AI generated or AI assisted.
Frames 1 and 2: Shroud of Humanity
Frame 3: Thirst of the Vulture.
The theme of this annual meeting was “Focus on Forward” as dictated by Kimberly-Clark executive management. My goal was to create an immediately recognizable symbolic representation of that theme and extend it into an exciting and motivating set of visuals that would carry through all printed, online, and environmental uses of the graphics throughout the entire week of the event.
I was informed by the marketing department directors of the enthusiastic response from the sales force to the graphics. This resulted in additional premium giveaways featuring these graphics being requested and ordered well after the event was over.
Kimberly-Clark creates a large variety of non-woven fabrics used for everything from HAZMAT suits to air filters. New products are introduced frequently and I was charged with the creative vision behind these three releases.
Slide 1: Block-It TM, is the brand name of the commercial variant of this fabric for use to manufacture custom car covers. I was tasked with the complete overhaul and design update of an older and expensive-to-produce brochure and sample book kit. The new piece also needed to appeal to the wide demographic of the custom automotive industry. I created an innovative layout with custom paper foil stamping and a grommeted binding while incorporating the fabric swatches directly into the brochure. The result was a resounding success that cost less than half of the older piece to produce and was still in use over seven years later.
Slide 2: KIMTECH PURE® is the brand behind the Scientific/Cleanroom products. The dispenser advertised here was a unique innovation; it allowed a wipe to be dispensed using only one hand in a single step while maintaining zero contamination. The “One Small Step” campaign was co-created by myself and a copywriter. The ad and audio card featured graphics from the first moon landing and the card had a modified recording stating: “That’s one small step for you, one giant leap in the cleanroom…” along with an offer for a sample. The ads were featured in Scientific and Cleanroom industry magazines and 5000 cards were mailed to specific professionals around the country.
Slide 3: Another cleanroom product, this package of KIMTECH® lens wipes and a new high-density microfiber duster was sent to scientific facilities to introduce the products. I custom-created the packaging to give maximum impact to the duster head reveal as this was an extremely new use of microfiber filaments in a sterile environment. I also introduced the branding of “Pure Genius” specifically for this campaign.
This campaign consisted of animated ads featured during peak flu season on various websites (such as that of the NBC television show “The Office”). They were created for the Kleenex® online presence during Flu Awareness Month.
My concept was to show flu germs as aliens in a dynamic scientific context. The animated germs rolled and rotated around the background of the ads and proved eye-catching within the context of the web pages as a whole. The ads were very well-received – the click-through traffic and contest entry numbers far exceeded client expectations.
Give me a buzz
