Olive Garden built its brand on infusing the Italian dining experience with unlimited passion, personality, and generosity. In the current economic climate, restaurateurs realize that customers are trading down from fine dining while insisting still on quality ingredients and taste. Olive Garden had to do more to connect with its audiences on a simple, human level as the value of casual dining environments becomes increasingly apparent.
We determined that Olive Garden needed to let its meals speak for themselves through a sleek, modern approach to its visual identity and menu design. A branding system with manifold applications, from magazines to table tents, to highlighting key trends such as simplicity, smaller portions for smaller prices, and house-made artisan ingredients were developed. In catering to local wants, nationwide, the refreshed identity made over Olive Garden into a culinary destination.
The camera market has become increasingly competitive as technology advancements have made it easier for manufacturers to sell based on new product features, rather than overall quality. With only consumer-facing materials to work with, Nikon dealers lacked the fundamental product knowledge needed to successfully distinguish between potential customers and complete the sale. Recognizing that this issue was creating inconsistent sales tactics, we recommended that Nikon dial up the dealer focus.
We conceptualized a "toolkit" designed to help educate dealers about identifying, selling, and upselling customers, as well as turn them into brand ambassadors. The toolkit included a pocket guide, swatch book, customer guide, product cheat sheets, a Wi-Fi guide, and "fun facts" card. We empowered dealers with the knowledge and brand pride to speak proficiently about Nikon's products, in order to provide customers with the best solution for their photography needs.
The Adolescent Health Center is a facility in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that provides free healthcare to everyone ages 12-22. Only one problem: no one knows it exists.
To help spread the word and attract the adolescent audience, I expanded upon the Mount Sinai branding with teen-friendly colors, fonts and graphics. Since launching, the website has helped raise awareness and put the Adolescent Health Center on the map.
The lovely and bold Cynthia Rowley was looking to extend her Cynthia Rowley brand into the eyewear space. With that, we took off sprinting. We created a stand alone brand extension named Rowley Eyewear, and developed the brand identity, website design and development, plus the digital marketing platform with a full back end lab integration.
We pitched to Harbor Entertainment, a theatrical production company, who wanted to bring the French phenomenon "Amelie" to Broadway. The creative direction revolves around "Amelie Makes it in New York" as the big idea. Complementing a fully integrated marketing plan, the creative would be scalable for an Off Broadway launch, a multi-city tour, and for continued engagement following the show's official opening. From creating wild postings around Amelie's arrival, to seeding her NYC guerilla blitz, the campaign strives to have Amelie Poulain conquer New York and its audiences.
The LGBT Center celebrates everyone for who they are. So when they came to us for a website redesign, we knew their site had to be just as welcoming. Alongside strategic IA and UX planning, we elevated the look and feel of gaycenter.org with crisp, modern design, and our technical team mastered the challenging Blackbaud software, which many nonprofits utilize.
From top to bottom, we rebuilt the ambitious Center into a cohesive, user-focused site that makes it easy to give back, get involved, and stay informed.
As a Telco, Verizon has been in delivery service since its inception. The conglomerate has now launched a Digital Media Services (DMS) company to offer end-to-end solutions for content providers. Our strategy and content teams created a messaging framework that allowed DMS to clearly communicate its value and differentiators to multiple audience segments.
From the Verizon check, I created a basic equilateral triangle. This polygon
acts as the building block for developing more complex modular systems. The
result is this digital technology terraform, infinitely adaptable and versatile in its
applications. A retake on Verizon’s original nodes and glow system, this updated formulation creates a landscape with multiple nodes to highlight increasing confluence in the evolving digital media world. Other than a visual graphic, is can be repurposed into a network digram to illustrate interactions between people and their digital environment.
I then turned this equilateral triangle, also universally recognized as a play
button, into the basis for the VDMS icon system. The shape is an integrated
component within each feature icon. I feel that the play button exemplifies
the promise, “We deliver everything needed to power the next generation of
digital media.” As a main graphic element, it represents instantaneous
capabilities, efficient media processing, and quality user experience.
Author John Joseph, famous for being the leader of the seminal punk rock band the Cro-Mags, teamed up with us to work on the design of his latest book, Meat Is For Pussies which breaks down the notion that vegetarian men are wimps. John, a vegan triathlete, is on a mission to save the world from obesity and disease through diet and training.
Redglass produces a wide range of short films, including documentaries and nonprofit videos. However, their website had grown out outdated and was no longer doing justice to their work.
Using their new logo and brand guidelines, I designed a elegant, straightforward site that infused personality into every page and gave Redglass the spotlight it deserved.
In need of a brand transformation, Jeff Cooper was poised to bring a creative agency into the fold. Having produced their previous campaigns in-house, and without a true design team, their creative goals were lofty. Our agency was excited to reach them.
We began the complete re-brand with a new logo and visual system that captures the essence of Jeff Cooper. The result was a fresh and beautiful establishment of the company’s presence. We transformed their website from a digital catalog, into an elegant and controlled space that creates a genuine brand narrative. The new identity and our ‘Say Yes’ messaging was carried into collateral, and brought to life through stunning environmental design. A once cloudy brand image was cleared, allowing a newly refined identity to emerge.
In order to tap into (or rather, to create a demand for) the girls' jewelry market, Lina & Haan wanted to make a statement in their new brand identity.
Turning away from overly cutesy identities, I created something simple and pure to incite tasteful self expression among their target demographic. Landing on the rabbit silhouette as an ownable icon, I wanted to communicate the brand's vibrant creative personality and put forth a vibe that is curious and fun. This exploration perfectly captured and expressed the Lina & Haan story in a concise narrative. At the same time, this was a creative strategy that aimed to appeal to the brand's audiences-- both the child and the parent who makes the purchasing decisions-- in a curated and balanced manner.
Rather than falling back on conventions, this brand exploration created a new niche for a trend-setting jewelry line.
Never Have I Ever, a remake of the classic game into card format, needed a revamped look and feel. The client was looking to create a game that is both fun and intuitive for players to handle. A visual brand identity that is vibrant, surprising, and attractive became our direction. We created a clear visual hierarchy across all deliverables to facilitate boundless gameplay and entertainment from a player’s perspective. This was applied to every Never Have I Ever component, including the box design, rule sheets, and question and answer cards. Ultimately, we created a product that really jumps off the shelves.
Los Dudes is a basement rock band from Brooklyn. They’ve been touring NYC’s divey bar scene for 20+ years. We’ve since worked on a series of Los Dudes posters and artwork, which culminated into a digi-pack for the 2014 release of their second album, Hipster Retirement Home.
We worked on the CD design (does anyone even listen to CDs anymore?), and supplied the album artwork. We aimed for a gritty look and feel to reflect the band’s personality and to stay true to the essence of their garage rock sound. The photography on the cover spreads, for instance, was shot in front of a nondescript storefront and in a dilapidated alleyway. Conveying a grungy old school attitude was key in realizing the Los Dudes aesthetic. Running through all this—and particular to this project—is a humorous self-deprecating visual take on their single, “Hipster Retirement Home.” Feel like a listen? You can find their music here: losdudes.bandcamp.com
I’ve worked for Nikon's PPE and CES Trade Shows for the past 4 years. My tasks involved creating large-format graphics, finding innovative ways to showcase their camera displays, invent special activation areas, and much more.
With all the trade show elements working in unison, my team have created an incredibly immersive experience that turns potential customers into proud camera owners.
Adventure Cats was conceptualized as a literal pet project of ours. It was developed as a result of doodling and our love of great puns. The idea is simple: Reinterpreting cultural icons as our own through feline-fying them. And why not? Cats are ruling the world, or at least the Internet. And we wanted our own piece of the litter box pie.
