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I'm an accomplished creative leader with more than 20 years of experience. I've built, mentored, and managed multidisciplinary teams and led design for large consumer products like CNN, AOL, and EarthLink at the heights of their influence, and I've been a creative jack-of-all-trades for startups in the entertainment and consumer spaces. I've done everything from product management and user experience, to illustration and video, to discovery, usability and focus groups, to strategic roadmaps for technology, product, and brand direction. I'm passionate about great design, compelling user experiences, and making technology accessible to everyone.
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Recent Work
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Case Studies
Did someone say "Free Fonts"?
Over the years, I've digitized several fonts, some of which I've made available for free download. Grab some fonts while you're here!
Yes! Free Fonts!
Resume
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Gallery
Skills
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Inspiration
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Contact
Case StudyCNN Digital · Core News
The process
behind the news.
As Creative Director for Core News, I built the team, the process and the system that let CNN's digital products move at newsroom speed, and proved it with numbers.
Role
Creative Director
Team
12 designers & researchers
Verticals
News, Politics, Business
Platforms
Web, Mobile App, OTT
01
Team
Talent first, then structure.
The best products are built by the best people with well-defined processes. I embedded designers with product and engineering on each surface. Research and the Design System ran as shared practices, so every team started from the same insights and the same components.
02
Process
Discovery and delivery, always overlapping.
There's no hand-off and no finished spec. While one idea is being built and shipped, the next is already in research and prototyping, so every release is shaped by what we just learned and the team never stalls waiting on the next thing. It's one continuous cycle, not a sequence of phases.
Each idea's discovery begins before the last one ships.Ongoing →
03
Work
Three systems that changed how CNN ships.
Design System
CNN's first. One component language across News, Politics and Business, carried to Web, App and OTT.
Registration
Newsletter and podcast sign-up, measured end to end, and built for future subscriptions.
Stellar CMS
A homegrown publishing backend that replaced a sprawl of legacy systems and brought improved data tracking across the product.
04
Results
The numbers.
$300MM+
CNN Digital annual revenue contribution, 2020
259,090
Registered users and 162,895 opt-ins by September 2020
50 → 10
Third-party vendors after Stellar, ~60% operating savings
Seconds
Editorial publishing time, down from double-digit minutes
Audience · Q2 2020
CNN Digital's best quarter ever.
As COVID-19 and the summer's protest coverage pushed news traffic to record highs, the products the team built carried CNN to #1 in global news, U.S. visitors, mobile, video, politics and readers aged 18–34.
169M
U.S. unique visitors a month, Q2 average
226M
Global unique visitors in May, up ~61M year over year (BBC: 180M)
143M
Mobile unique visitors in June, 18th straight month above 100M
604M
Video starts in May (Yahoo News: 418M)
Source: Comscore, via CNN Digital Sees its Best Quarter in History, CNN Pressroom, July 21, 2020. Unique visitors, not registered users.
Case StudyHLN Keywords · 2015
Usually the app follows the show.
This time it led.
HLN commissioned a companion trivia game for Keywords, "the Search & Tag game of Internet Trivia" and the network's first-ever game show. I was the only designer, working with two developers. It launched in January 2015, nearly three months before the premiere, and HLN redesigned the set, the music and the gameplay to match it.
Role
CCO / Creative Director
Team
MYSELF, 2 DEVELOPERS
Client
HLN · The Daily Share
Platforms
iOS, Android
Side by side
What carried from the phone to the studio.
The app
The show
Set
Production design taken from the app's look and feel.
Gameplay
The broadcast format adjusted to match the app.
Music
The app's audio, used on air.
Icons
Achievement characters on screen.
Why it worked
The app was the first playable version of the show.
A TV format lives on paper until taping day. The app had to work for real much earlier: rules, timing, scoring, what a "keyword" even looks like. I turned the tagline into two mechanics. In Search, you name a subject from search-style clues against a 30-second clock. In Tag, you pick out every keyword that belongs to a subject, and three strikes ends the round.
Once producers could hold the game in their hands, it was easier to adopt than to reinvent, and the app became the reference build for the franchise.
"Fast paced and incredibly fun to play along with."
The cast
80+ trophies, every one drawn by hand.
Each trophy is also an avatar, so progress shows on the leaderboard, filtered down to your Twitter network if you like.
Timeline
In stores before it was on air.
Jan 2015
The app launches on iOS and Android, nearly three months ahead of the show. HLN adapts the set, music and format to it.
Mar 31, 2015
Keywords, HLN's first game show, premieres at 10 PM ET, hosted by Olympic gold medalist Summer Sanders.
Post-launch
Multiplayer and leaderboards added to keep players coming back.
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Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. That’s just good advice.
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In setting
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Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
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“No one can win every battle, but no man should fall without a struggle”
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Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...
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