Art Direction

I make boring
things exciting.

I develop brands a lot. I do the "words" and "pictures."

What that actually means is I gather relevant market data, then infuse that knowledge into a brand new visual language. I get joy from using design thinking. I love making things easier and more interesting.

Matching talent to a project is one of my specialities. I've personally scouted and directed world-renowned illustrators, designers, videographers, and more. We've made tons of fun things together: vanity websites, conversion-minded homepages, logos & style guides, print collateral, tv commercials, and my personal favorite… a triple-digit amount of editorial illustrations.

(Lately, I Art Direct for Omni Common, a marketing growth agency. I direct the marketing departments for several national and local-sized companies.)

I develop brands a lot. I do the "words" and "pictures."

(Lately, I Art Direct for Omni Common, a marketing growth agency. I direct the marketing departments for several national and local-sized companies.)

Some Editorial Illustration I’ve Art Directed

How I AD editorial illustration

A word on illustration: simply making the decision to do editorial illustration is important.

Stock photos and generative AI do not communicate themes strongly on their own. Despite this, illustration has been economically devalued in recent times. And yet, no prompt would have easily arrived at anything these artists drew below. The medium is the message, and companies foster an image with every customer-facing decision they make. Because illustration is an extremely clear way to communicate, and because it stakes an original identity, I choose to use original illustration in my art direction frequently.

For these illustration projects, I personally scouted who in the whole-wide-world I wanted to make my ideas come to life. I learned from being young and stupid that you can literally ask anyone, anywhere. More often than not, they’ve told me, “Yes!”. (It helps to bring mood boards, or a blueprint designed from ultra-specific elements of their work.)

While I can sketch on my own, I always tell my artists that I’m as hands-on or hands-off as they want me to be as their AD… but my secret is I’ve already done a huge portion of the work just by matching the perfect artist to an extremely specific idea. (Also, to AD, you must have wild ideas.)

Illustrated photo of a couple outside their new home

Sample of the sketch phase of editorial illustration

Maddy Vian | "Study: Half As Many Millennials Are Moving As a Decade Ago"

Chelsea Beck

"How To Move With Weed"

A couple arriving at a house surrounded by plants

"Study: The Best Towns For Working Remotely"

A person working at a desk in a forest with unicorns

"The Best DIY Projects For Your Starter Home"

Blue nighttime bedroom scene during a renovation

"Moving Statistics Report"

"Here Are the Most Common Home Pests"

A tiny insect community living under a bed

Subin Yang

"The Things You Can't (Legally) Bring to Texas"

A Texas-themed sweater with playful illustrated motifs

"The Things You Can't (Legally) Bring to Florida"

An X-ray view of a moving truck with plants and a skeleton

"How To Move a Piano"

Surreal scene with two pianos and a giant hand

Drew Shannon

"How To Get Rid of a Mattress"

Two people carrying an oversized mattress

An illustrated guide to cleaning a mattress

Robbie Cathro

"How To Save Money On Your Next Military Move"

Military families traveling across an illustrated map in moving boxes

Naomi Ann Clarke

"Florida Moving Guide"

A person canoeing through wetlands with an alligator and a heron

Nero Hamaoui

"How To Deal With Your Landlord"

Jackie Ferrentino

"Industry Guidebook for Professional Movers"

Tara Jacoby

"Did People Move During COVID?"

"Ranking the Best (And Worst) Campgrounds In America"

Ana Jaks

"How Many Movers Are Women?"

Kyle Smart

"Ghosted by HR: Where Are Job Seekers Getting Ghosted the Most?"

Heather Vaughan

"Real Estate: America's Most Haunted Properties"

Hands using a phone to search home listings

"How To Deal With Moving Scams"

"Study: Porch Pirates on the Rise"

Mathias Ball

"Study: The Cities Robocalls Are Most Common"

An isometric call center staffed by friendly robots

"Left on Read: America's Most Unreachable Cities"

A person surrounded by phone notification badges

"A Look at the Biggest Wave of Retiree Moves in Three Years"

A person surfing with a stack of moving boxes

"Study: Where Are Retirees Moving?"

"The Cities Where Debt Collection Is Surging"

Chanelle Nibbelink

"The Strictest State Laws for Moving With Pets"

A blue cat with pet-care supplies in a moving box

Chalzea Xu

"The Cities the Most Musicians Come From"

Deb JJ Lee

"How Fast Are Couples Moving In Together?"

"Where Are Americans Moving Overseas?"

Shideh Ghandeharizadeh

"Study: The Cities Where Ghosting Is Most Common"

Marllowe Dobbe

"How People Are Celebrating the Holidays During COVID"

Jen Hatmaker's "Awake!" Coffee Campaign

While working with SoCal-based coffee brand Talitha Coffee, I was given the opportunity to develop a marketing roll-out for an exclusive Jen Hatmaker product launch.

My role as Art Director was to advise on product design, write all corresponding marketing messaging, and, alongside my team working in tandem with Jen's "people," design the web experience and email marketing campaign for the product. (We sold all the bags!)

While working with SoCal-based coffee brand Talitha Coffee, I was given the opportunity to develop a marketing roll-out for an exclusive Jen Hatmaker product launch.

HireAHelper
Corporate Branding

For almost a decade, I helped conceptualize and guide the visual language of HireAHelper.com, the largest online marketplace for movers.

Case Study: The Migration Report

The Project:

Create the Definitive Moving Statistics Report, Published Yearly

Create the Definitive Moving
Statistics Report, Published Yearly

The problem Moving titans-of-industry with over 100 years of history conquer yearly news cycles; van lines release “Top 10 Destinations” press releases that news outlets uncritically treat as authoritative.

The plan Strip ancient companies of their authority by creating a web experience that’s engaging top-to-bottom, fueled by far more generalizable data, all communicated through thoughtful art direction; win the conversation and make our company a nationwide authority in the process.

The original Migration Report from 2018 featured stock photos and was made in one day, a proof-of-concept for what was to come.

The Story

I marketed within the the home & moving industry for eight years. At HireAHelper, one of the biggest challenges I faced was the word “moving” meant something different to everybody. This made talking about moving difficult, and data analysis impossible.

Case and point: the government counts a “move” when there’s an official change of address. Giant van companies count a “move” when someone pays them thousands of dollars to move them. Movers count a “move” when someone pays them for labor.

U-Haul counts it as a “move” just for renting a U-Haul. Who is right!?

As far as local news was concerned, brand recognition was right; when big companies released their “reports,” the news treated them as gospel truth. Yet I knew their data was heavily skewed by the demographics of the people who buy their moving services, a smaller, affluent population.

Armed with tons of proprietary data for moving labor, a baseline understanding of statistics, and a couple of developers who were far too game, I set out to personally write and art direct a report that would beat U-Haul and others at their own game.

I honestly didn’t think we’d wrestle away their authority so fast. While the first years were a decent proof of concept, 2020 was a year tailor-made for a breakthrough report. How many people move during a pandemic?

I was lucky enough to work with a phenomenal storyboard artist named The-Long Ly. We designed the report's URL to unfurl migration data down the page alongside illustrations of a fictional person and their dog moving cross-country in a moving truck, depicting a scary time when people weren't going outside.

The-Long Ly

The-Long Ly

The final product looked incredible, and garnered dozens and dozens of placements. We followed it up the following year with — and I still can’t believe this— a webpage designed entirely from photographs of real-life cardboard.

Kezia Hulse

I stumbled upon Kezia Hulse online, a 3D artist who designs scenes with tactile paper. I couldn’t say no to the idea in my head of marrying her style to our Migration Report, but I’ll admit, after we began, I encountered a bumper crop of new-to-me challenges in art directing: “How do we properly light scenes?” “Do I bill per final photograph, for materials, or by hours spent gluing?” “Can the dev team transform photographs of torn paper into section breaks, and for every screen size?”

Kezia Hulse

Kezia and the dev team came through as if they had done this millions of times before. That year’s Migration Report received even more and bigger national placements than the years previous. (Check out the full report here, it's wild.)

Future reports would go on to utilize digital 3D art, traditional illustration, and more. Maybe best of all, the original data we had been creating for every report was being aggregated onto an SEO-led “Moving Statistics” URL, which garnered countless citations year-round, including from “.gov” websites! (This helped raise our site's domain authority a lot.)

I’m still proud of that mighty team of half a dozen people. They stole the spotlight away from giant corporations through sheer talent, and they enabled every dumb idea I had.