emoJam - emoticons and music
EmoJam is an mobile app and custom keyboard that allows its users to discover and share new music through emoticons. Below is an early stage direction I created for the innovative and compelling French company.
Before YouTube - InsideSessions
In 2004, before YouTube and other streaming video services, I worked directly with the executives of Universal Music to lead the product and design strategy for InsideSessions; an online interactive distant learning program for aspiring musicians, writers, and insiders. InsideSessions syllabus consisted of more than 180 hours of video and thousands of supporting assets. Talent included Elton John, Sheryl Crow, Jimmy Iovine and dozens of others.
ehow and The Home Depot
Brand and Commerce Integrated Program
At the height, Comscore ranked ehow.com as the 13th most visited website in the U.S. reaching nearly 20% of households.
Brands wanted to connect with our task oriented audience. In the case of The Home Depot, I led an initiative to get their brand in front of or visitors that not only raised brand awareness, but increased their sales.
Working with The Home Depots agency and engineering teams and our design, product, editorial and engineering teams, I leveraged our platform, enhanced our content format and utilized my UX team to create a low-friction contextual shopping experience.
Integrating SKU's and keyword into our content and taxonomy while managing and tracking product through a shopping cart experience made it successful for The Home Depot. The simple experience made it a success for our audience.
MTV2 - 1996
All Mixed Up
MTV2 was MTV going back to its roots, playing only music videos. Mixing up all genres and exposing fresh music videos was the new programming strategy.
35mm
Fascinated with the Brothers Quay, I built a set, props and character out of found objects to film... with a 35mm film camera. Film processed and scanned to CDROMS, I then convinced the video editors at the agency I worked for to cut this on the Avid after hours, a $120k editing bay back then, ha!
Unfortunately, my Jazz drive burnt up about 10 years ago with the original and the betamax has been misplaced for longer than that. So here is the postage stamp survivor....turn up sound.
POP - The Movie
Opening sequence for the independent movie POP. Looking to create something as quirky and fun as the movie, I wanted to mash together inspiration from Saul Bass, Paul Rand and Perez Perado. The crazy part was that my Powermac 8100 at the time could not render the massive size of the canvas in affter-effects, so I built it in Macromedia Director and exported as a raw video composite... haha. Unfortunately, as with the MTV clip, my Jazz drive burnt up about 10 years ago with the original and the beta has been misplaced for longer than that. So here is the postage stamp survivor....turn up sound.TYRA BANKS / TYPE-F
I lead the creative and product strategy for TypeF, a fashion destination. TypeF was a joint partnership with Tyra Banks company Bankable and Demand Media. The site included fashion articles, videos and various apps and features.
PASSION PROJECT
Pay it Forward + Karma Economy
I bootstrapped KindSpark.com, an online destination for paying it forward with a karma point system that was calculated on participation and sharing. Facebook registration and integration provided for an authentic member base and community. Unfortunately, after 18 months I had to shut down the service due to competing time constraints and development costs. The overall design was inspired by the pinterest card module and created to appeal to a female demographic.
Others Like You
Trials.com
One of the internal commercials I created while working at Demand Media. Everyone in the clip works for Trails.com and/or DemandMedia. This project was completed in house in one week inbetween projects.
Featured Projects
SOCIAL PLAYER
I have been playing around with the idea of creating a more engaging video player. Content quality, production value and distribution for video has increased incredibly fast in the past 5 years, however tools to engage with the content have not.
Challenge
People want to engage with video and they want it to be contextual. Commenting is one of the most popular ways to engage with video, however the current commenting tools are disconnected from the content.
Solution
Video is linear, engagement should be as well. A commenting system that is time based encourages contextual participation and provides specific engagement data for creators and publishers.