SMFD

Client: SMFD (Skylar Morgan Furniture Design)
Role: Interviewing, PR Creation

SMFD designs and builds furniture that pushes every hot-button headline point possible in the interior design biz. Made of reclaimed or sustainable materials, covered with do-no-harm varnishes and designed with an eye to both sleek modernism and quirky, almost rustic usibility, their desks, benches, shelving units and whole-business renovations are beautiful, and beautifully earth-friendly.

SMFD asked me to get to know them, learn about their work, their mission, and then write a couple of press releases touting strategic collaborations with other eco-minded entities. Check out two recent releases here and here.

Oz Magazine

Client: Oz Publishing
Role: Recurring Column Editor, Feature Writer

A few years back, when I was just beginning my freelance career, the editor of Oz Magazine (a creative industry publication here in Atlanta) approached me about editing a recurring column. They called it "OzCetera," and the deal went something like this: "Call agencies. Find out what's new and interesting and big-budget going on in their shops. In absence of any real news, read their press releases. Write up a little blurb about how great business is. Rinse and repeat." To be honest, the blurbs weren't that interesting, and I wasn't allowed to embellish or play anywhere beyond the timbre of each agency's prescribed press voice. But, it was a great experience. And, eventually, it got me this: a cover story.

Click the link to read about the "great film vs digital debate." And remember, this was 2003, before 10 mega pixel beautiousness and post-production folk out-ranking photographers on the pay scale.

Here Magazine

Client: Cooper Carry Architects
Role: Writer

Through my work with Iconologic, I had the privilege of spending the last 12 months working on the award-winning Here Magazine--a 200+ page publication the firm creates each year for Cooper Carry Architects. This is the third Here. Each edition explores a topic of immediate worldly weight, viewing it through the lenses of architecture and cultural significance. It is, as we say in the publication, an exploration of an issue at the intersection of time and place.

This year the topic was energy. Among other things, I contributed articles regarding embodied energy in everyday objects, a comparison of the electric power structures of Africa and China, commentary on vertical farming, sustainability in suburbia, and a little rant about conspicuous consumption of clean, green energy.

Go HERE to read a sampling of my favorite works from the magazine. You can read the entire magazine at www.heremag.com

**Here Magazine, The Energy Issue has been honored with a number of awards, including a One Show Pencil, an AIGA SEED Award, and entry into both Print magazine's Design Annual and its Create + Commerce archives (coming August, 2009), among a number of other accolades.

KS Recruits Online

Client: Kilpatrick Stockton, LLC
Role: Concept, Writer

Kilpatrick Stockton is a multi-national law firm headquartered in Atlanta. I've done a large quantity of work for them over the years. (See the firm's main website, some past ads and brochures for more examples.) This website for KS's recruiting division looks on the surface like a straightforward, lawerly place to get questions answered about a top-100 firm. But on the inside, it's a whole other experience.

Visit ksrecruits.com

Auburn University - CADC100

Client: Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC)
Role: Writer, Interviewer, Primary Researcher

In 2007, the Auburn CADC celebrated its 100th anniversary, setting a milestone as the oldest accredited architecture school in the southeast. To celebrate, the college commissioned a coffee table book be designed and written for distribution to alumni, friends, students, and the general public. What we ended up creating was a 200-page volume chronicling 100 fascinating, historic, emotional, personal, academic, and utterly random things about the school (presented through found artifacts, documents, letters, snapshots, lists, endless conversations, interviews, and personal narratives).

The Auburn CADC100 book was included in the Communication Arts Design Annual, 2007, and won a 2008 AIGA SEED Award.

View a Few Spreads from the CADC100 Book

InReality

Client: Amtico Flooring, UK
Role: Writer, Art Director

This piece is one in a series of four brochures designed for UK-based Amtico Flooring showrooms and direct mail distribution. Titled InReality, each brochure subverts the typical contract interior case-study format to look at a space from the view of those who are most affected by it: those who live and work within its walls. Volume II (shown) profiles an installation of non-toxic Amtico flooring in an assisted-care facility in upstate New York. Others in the series profiled installations (and people) from schools, retail, and other public-facing locales where Amtico flooring makes a difference.

See the Whole Brochure

AIGA Atlanta Online

Client: AIGA Atlanta
Role: Writer

AIGA's Atlanta chapter is the largest in the southeast and eighth largest in the nation, with just over 600 members. After languishing with a years-old web presence that was heavy, complicated to update and didn't allow for personalized touches like quick messages from the chapter president, job postings and other community-building features, the organization contracted me (and an agency) to update their web presence. I chose what I'd call now a rather "brisk" and conversational tone for the writing, (to match the communal, intimate feeling of the organization's meetings and events), and basically just had fun with it.

Visit aiga-atl.org

LuckyFish Studios Online

Client: LuckyFish Studios
Role: Writer

A small video, audio, and motion graphics production house in Atlanta begun by two industrious college friends, LuckyFish has grown from a two-person collaborative to a booming broadcast and independent film mecca that counts The Coca-Cola Company as its largest client. I've done a lot of work for them (and everyone's favorite soft drink maker) over the years, but (and you'll never believe this, but it's true) most of my work is locked up tight behind multiple NDAs. Regardless, one of my favorite projects for the LFS guys was writing their website.

Visit luckyfishstudios.com

Trinidad &Tobago In Print and Online

Client: The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago
Role: Writer, Concept, Interviews

Trinidad & Tobago is an island paradise. An island paradise that also happens to have the highest GDP in the Caribbean. Oil-rich and well entrenched in the petrochemical industry, in 2007 the country decided it was time to diversify its economy, and draw businesses in other market segments to its shores. I worked on the ensuing international branding and marketing campaign (the ad above appeared in the Economist earlier this year), as well as the country's official online investment portal.

See the Whole Campaign
Visit tandtnext.com

Zeftron Nylon

Client: Honeywell
Role: Writer, Art Director, Photo Assistant, Location Scout

Zeftron Nylon (a division of mega-chemical corporation Honeywell) makes some interesting products. Among them petroleum-based carpet fiber that is 100% recyclable, and can be made again and again from the same materials without using any more oil. They call the process "Closed-Loop Recycling," and I was commissioned to create a series of ads to illuminate the sustainable glory of this rather cool carpet. The ad above (and the remainder of the campaign, available via the link below) was shot on-location in Los Angeles by Gregory Miller, and appeared on the back cover of Contract Magazine.

See the Whole Campaign

No Q. Just A.

Client: Kilpatrick Stockton, LLC
Role: Concept, Writer

Designed as a companion piece to the KS Recruits website, this little brochure was handed out to final year law students country-wide in spring of 2007. The concept: offer surprisingly candid answers to typical questions one might ask when applying for a job, like "How much am I going to make?" and "What will my first year be like?" We figured law students weren't suit-wearing, wingtip-shining attorneys just yet, so why not be honest with them?

This piece won placement in the Communication Arts Design Annual, was featured in STEP Magazine, and won an AIGA SEED Award in 2007.

See More of The Brochure (This one is much better experienced in person, by the way.)

6ixStories Online

Client: Honeywell
Role: Writer, Concept, Art Director

Conceived as a multimedia launching point for Zeftron Nylon's Closed-Loop Recycling campaign (see the ads here), this website features six journalistic, real-life "stories" of recycled carpet in place and in use in various locations around the world. I researched, conducted interviews, location-scouted, concepted, storyboarded, and then wrote each narrative on this site. It was a fantastic experience that took me and a rotating cache of photographers all over the U.S. and Canada in search of interesting tales to tell about beautiful places and, of all things, their floors.

Each story was also produced as a large-format printed piece for direct mail and showroom distribution; was featured on 10-foot tall, 3-D graphic panels at Neocon 2006; and won best-in-show at GreenBuild 2006.

Visit 6ixStories.com

ID

Client: Interactive Data, LLC
Role: Writer

Interactive Data knows who you are. And where you lived three houses ago. And what your mother's maiden name is. And all sorts of other information about you--because they are a "Search" company, paid by banks and collection agencies to figure out who anyone is, if that anyone owes money. I've written a website, a few brochures, and a lot of PR for this company. I figure it's good to have friends in-the-know.

Visit id-info.com
See the ID Client Brochure

Align & Avaulta

Client: Bard Urological
Role: Writer, Concept

You haven't lived until you've found yourself, in all seriousness, discussing vaginal prolapse with a designer. I know this, because I've written countless ads, a number of brochures, and named several medical products having to do with that particular ailment, and others like it. Bard Urological is the largest maker of the tools that help doctors help patients with these problems. Really, all ickyness aside, it's fascinating. The two brochures above are proof. They're designed to help physicians understand complex innovations in Bard's medical tools, and keep attentions rapt while doing it. See more ads for Bard here, and click the link below to see an entire brochure for the "Avaulta Plus Biosynthetic Support System."

See the Avaulta Plus & Solo Brochure