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Causes
Causes is a tech company where people come together to create change in the world through their collective action. Working with Fortune 500 brands (AT&T, Disney, Coca-Cola), innovative nonprofits, and our huge user base (~180 million registered users), the company strives to provide innovative solutions to real-world problems.
I've spent the past three years at Causes, and have designed and art directed a vast range of projects, including the core Causes.com site, Causes Wish, Gift Cards, mobile versions of key pages, and lots more. As an agile startup that subscribes to the "Learn Fast/Fail Quickly" mantra, the design team is tasked to try all sorts of things.
It's a deeply collaborative environment where design solutions are always informed by Product Managers, Engineers, and our passionate users. There's a strong user-first mentality, so everything that's designed goes through various forms of user testing and research.
This page represents a small sampling of projects from the past few years.
2013
Art Direction, Product Design, UI/UX
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Haggis-On-Whey
Officially known as the "World of Unbelievable Brilliance," each book in this McSweeney's series is 64 pages of absurdity, detailing the research of the elusive Dr. & Mr. Haggis-On-Whey. Written by Dave Eggers along with his younger brother Toph, the books are a tribute to the science textbooks of the mid-1950s. The main difference being that these books are filled with lies, inaccurate charts, and bizarre illustrations.
I was the lead designer for the first three books of the H-O-W series, and they've gone on to have a strong cult following. Design highlights include a faux-leather cover, a series of giraffe trading cards, and an elaborate fold-out poster. The books were the recepient of a 2005 AIGA award for outstanding book design.
It was a terrific project to work on, and my garage is still filled with all the thrift store vintage encyclopedias that I used as inspiration.
Cover illustrations by Michael Kupperman;
H-O-W logo by Eric Baldwin
2013
Art Direction, Print Design, Writing
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ffwd
I was a co-founder of ffwd, a VC-funded video discovery startup, that offered users a simple way to discover and watch videos based on their interests. Frequently referred to as a "Pandora for video," the site became smarter as it learned more about your likes and dislikes.
The main challenge for designing a site like ffwd was filtering a tremendous amount of information, and presenting it in a way that didn’t overwhelm users. We centered the design around the main orange button, as we found that people quickly fell into a slot machine-like rhythm. As long as they thought that another great video was potentially coming up soon, they'd keep hitting the button. It often worked; the average video-watching session on ffwd was almost 30% longer than YouTube's published average, with some users staying connected for as long as six hours.
In addition to the web app, ffwd produced several spin-off products. There was a "lean back" version optimized for the Wii, which brought the ffwd experience into the living room, as well as a real-time video search engine, Twitmatic, which was acquired by CastTV. Twitmatic scoured Twitter accounts to see what videos were being shared on any given topic, and gave users a new way to discover interesting videos, and the people who were sharing them.
2013
Art Direction, Product Design, UI/UX
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Causes Wish
Originally conceived as Birthday Wish, this web product from Causes was a fun and easy way to raise money for charity. The premise was simple: users were encouraged to "donate" their birthday in the form of a Birthday Wish, and then ask their friends to not buy them a traditional gift, but instead to make a small donation.
For almost a year, this was the primary focus at Causes, with hundreds of people setting up their own Wish every day. During its heyday, the product was raising about $40,000 daily for various charities, and eventually tallied $12 million in donations.
It also benefitted from celebrities who used the product. Bill Clinton, Ashton Kutcher, and Sean Parker were just a few of the notable people who raised considerable amounts through their Wish.
Eventually, Birthday Wish transformed into Causes Wish as it expanded beyond just birthdays, and grew to include weddings, run/walk events, memorials, and a general Holiday/Christmas theme.
2013
Art Direction, Product Design, UI/UX
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Newsweek
For “The Future of Medicine,” a special edition of Newsweek magazine devoted to upcoming medical advances, I was asked to create a series of editorial illustrations.
Working with Newsweek's Creative Director, we agreed upon a theme of grimy, rough illustrations that complimented the content in each story. The main floral image accompanies a fascinating story about how plant scientists, trying to make purple petunias even more purple, accidentally discovered a way to control certain genes in animals and people.
2013
Editorial Design, Illustration, Print Design
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Causes gift cards
These Causes gift cards were originally produced for the holiday season, and were sold in over 500 Safeway and Vons stores in California. There were several key challenges in creating the card: first, it had to get noticed among the iconic iTunes, Nike, and Best Buy cards on the rack. Second, it was a difficult concept to explain visually—the idea of giving a card that allowed the recipient to donate to a nonprofit was something that had never been attempted in a mainstream marketplace.
To ensure that the cards would stand out on the racks, I actually spent many hours in various supermarkets hanging our mockups alongside the real cards. Eventually, after many iterations, people reacted really well to the cards, with a Safeway focus group giving it one of the highest ratings ever for a gift card product.
Additionally, I designed the entire redemption flow on the Causes site, from the landing page through the screens where people chose where to donate their funds.
2013
Copywriting, Print Design, UI/UX
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TurnHere
TurnHere approached me to produce a series of 25 badges to be used as an internal reward system for their Customer Satisfaction and Sales teams. The goal was to offer a fun incentive for employees, and inspire a friendly competition among their employees.
Designwise, I referenced the Foursquare badges that were already popular within the TurnHere company culture.
2013
Art Direction, Graphic Design, Illustration
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Quannum Projects
Quannum Projects, the groundbreaking record label founded by musicians DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, and Blackalicious was a great partner to work with. After a few initial conversations, we agreed that a vintage boxing theme would work well for their site. They were already big fans of the aesthetic, and it reminded them of the rap battle community they'd emerged from.
The site also featured a sleek audio player that included tracks from each of the label’s 50 releases, as well as tools to easily post news, tour dates, video clips, and more. Overall, it won raves from Quannum and their audience of tech-savvy hip-hop fans.
2013
Art Direction, UI/UX, Web Design
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NolitaSF
Over the years, I worked with marketing agency NolitaSF on a number of design projects, but perhaps the most enjoyable was when they hired me to work on their own site. At the time, the prevailing web trend was to build extremely feature-rich sites that showcased every imaginable Flash and Shockwave trick available.
In order to help NolitaSF stand out, I went as far away from that trend as possible, instead choosing to create a sparse site with stunning nature photography.
Ultimately, the design allowed the agency to pitch (and win!) clients about meaningful ideas, rather than distract them with an onslaught of motion graphics.
2013
Art Direction, Branding, UI/UX
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MSET Robot
It's not often that you get asked to work on a design for a robot.
Truthfully, the robot never spoke to me, but I was still happy to work with the group of bright and talented robotics students who built MSET (Mutant Sinister Extreme Terror) to compete in FIRST, a prestigious robotics tournament in Atlanta.
The design was mostly used on t-shirts and stickers that were sold as fundraisers to pay for the travel expenses of the students and their families. In the end, plenty of merchandise was sold, and they went on to make a strong showing at the tournament.
2013
Art Direction, Graphic Design, Illustration
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REthink REdesign REconstruct
Rethink Redesign Reconstruct is a book that I wrote and curated, where the concept was to give some of the world’s best designers the chance to rework each other’s designs. RRR featured work from some of the design world’s heaviest hitters, including Stefan Sagmeister, Joshua Davis, KinseyVisual, eBoy and over 100 more artists and designers. Each chapter included in-depth interviews with all the original artists alongside the remixers.
The book was well received, and sold out its original print run.
In addition to designing several pieces for the book, I also created a microsite that featured a few sample chapters, giving potential buyers a sneak peek.
2013
Art Direction, Graphic Design, Writing
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Pirate Supply Store
Back in 2002, authors Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida opened up San Francisco's 826 Valencia to offer free tutoring services to the neighborhood's low-income students. In order to actually pay expenses, they also opened a retail shop: The Pirate Supply Store.
I was so enamored of the concept that I gladly volunteered my design services for the Pirate Store's site. The design borrows its handmade, aged feel from the store itself, which is decorated with numerous hidden drawers and curious artifacts. Inside the dozens of vaguely labeled drawers, you might find such pirating essentials as eye patches, peg legs, Jolly Roger flags, and spy glasses.
2013
Graphic Design, Photography, UI/UX