As Art Director for Eurosport / soccer.com I am tasked with developing and managing all website and email marketing creative assets, Flash design and coding, interface design, integrating vendor (e.g. Nike, adidas, PUMA) campaigns and whatever else it takes to keep thousands of customers happy every day.

Synaptis is where I cut my teeth with Flash and Swift3D, working almost exclusively in those applications for 3 years, illustrating, animating and coding. I also did a fair amount of print marketing materials to support the sales staff. The eLearning interfaces and content are proprietary, but I can present the creative out-of-context without fear of legal reprisal.

With 2 years of part-time work leading up to 1 and a half glorious years of full-time work, Osiris was my 2nd more robust attempt at running a business. Despite having gifted partners and solid products & services, work dried up fast after the dotcom bubble burst. With an intensely competitive local market we decided it was better to call it even and move on.

Latitude360 was the eLearning division of a larger consulting firm. Most creative types like myself were in a separate office 20 miles away from headquarters doing research & development on a number of web-oriented tools as well as supporting the marketing needs of the company. I often thought of our remote location like an animal quarantine at a zoo.

I lived the dotcom bubble startup dream, just without the free BMW and enough money to retire after the company's technology was bought. In fact I lost my job afterwards due to redundant staffing. C'est la vie. I did an enormous amount of interface design and prototyping as well as marketing materials for the companies who signed agreements to use the Easyres booking engine.

EMJI was a fantastic period of learning and growth. The internet was bubbling and companies of all sizes and kinds were clamoring to have a web presence. Business was good and I was busy churning out mostly hard-coded sites in under 3 weeks from concept to completion.

I'll admit to having nostalgic, slightly romanticised memories of the mid 90's with a fledgeling internet. A freshly earned college degree and a brand new PowerMac 8500 makes you feel pretty invincible. Despite the not-exactly-tech-hub-of-the-world location and the eye-glazing at local business meet & greets, my partner and I managed to win work from East Carolina University and the Greenville Chamber of Commerce among other Eastern North Carolina organizations.

Acrobat Media Website - QTVR

There's little chance of a website from 1997 holding up to current standards but amzingly my ZIP drive and disks are still kicking enough to pull this example. QTVRs sold themselves and were realtively easy to put together even though the version 1.0 manual was contained in two bulging 6" binders.

Every day I am someone else. A shoe salesman, a teacher, a teen athlete, a female shopper, a corporate executive… effective commercial art starts with understanding the audience and the willingness to forgo preconceptions and fallback habits to become a blank slate of creativity. Relying on formal elements of design, coupled with clearly defined project goals and target markets, a designer is armed with most of the necessary elements for success. But we've overlooked budget, timeline and team dynamics which all have the potential to derail a smoothly running project. If the stereotypical fine artist is a solitary, unfettered individualist, then the commercial artist is their exact opposite. Effectiveness is not measured by artistic output alone, but rather by a complex balance of creative and worldly factors. So as I am an artist at heart, I am also a technologist, a manager, a politician, a financier, my client and their audiences all at once.