Smirnoff, one of the world's biggest names in vodka, chose AKQA NY to be their digital agency of record. We created a digital presence for them, and launched smirnoff.com in every global market except the US. Smirnoff.com is a destination for vodka drinkers, allowing users to create/share their own version of the tv commercial, learn the rich history of the brand, browse product offerings, and even log on via their mobile phones to access drink recipes and locate the nearest nightlife in proximity to them.

Smirnoff.com won the following design award:
Cannes Lions Winner 2007 : Bronze Cyber Award, Smirnoff.com, AKQA NY

http://www.smirnoff.com/
(When first visiting the site, please choose a country region such as Great Britain, as we do not control the content for the US market. Thank you.)

AKQA is an independent, digital agency that connects ideas and innovation to deliver award-winning results for the world's leading brands, including Coca-Cola, Nike, Smirnoff, and Xbox to name a few.

In May 2007, I was tasked with the sole creation of the Global AKQA Reel. The brief was to create an awe-inspiring showreel that represents work from all global AKQA offices, to be shown at the Cannes Internation Advertising Festival, and used to attract new clients.

My role included the concepting, storyboarding, art direction, design, animation, compositing, and editing of the piece. This was one of the most challenging projects I have ever worked on, and also the most rewarding. My goal was to capture the momentum and unique perspective AKQA has in the industry. The piece was extremely well received within the company and by our clients.

Watch the AKQA 2007 Global Reel (95 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

Nike iD is a one of a kind shop. It was created on the sole idea of giving power to the users, and let them create custom shoes based on their style and interests. The flash e-commerce was the first of it's type when it was first launched, allowing users to interact and in real time, tweak their kicks to their hearts content. With a large palette of colors, and limited edition fabrics, it quickly became a cultural icon.

My role was to design and upkeep the US site on a daily basis. This meant designing/animating flash intros, created promo touts for various product, and special feature landings for limited edition gear. I also concepted a look/feel for an interactive kiosk that would be in a mobile Nike iD vehicle, visiting schools across the nation and allowing students to design on the field.

Nikeid.com won numerous design awards:
2006 Communication Arts Design Annual (december) : nikeid.com, R/GA
2006 AIGA : Design Archives , nikeid.com, R/GA
25th Annual Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) : Silver Award, nikeid.com, R/GA

http://www.nikeid.com/

Target wanted a website that would provide an experiential extension of its “Design for All” print and TV advertising campaign, one that celebrated accessible design. Emphasizing Target’s continual commitment to well-designed everyday products and its outstanding designers, the “Design for All” site invites guests to connect with the design community and play with some of their excellent products.

Using flash, I created multiple interactive "vignettes" that encouraged the user to play and experience the product through interaction, with payoff animations evoking an emotion within the user. In addition, I also created the opening intro build animation to the landing page, and the main playful navigation represented by mini products.

Target DFA won numerous design awards:
Cannes Lions Winner 2006 : Bronze Cyber Award, Target Design for All, R/GA
Ad Tech Awards : Best Consumer Web Site, Target Design for All, R/GA
Ad Tech Awards : Best In Show, Target Design for All, R/GA
STEP magazine : Best designed site, R/GA
Web Awards : Target Design for All, Outstanding Web site, R/GA

http://designforall.target.com/
(update: site was live from April - December 2005. The link above now directs you to the site posted on R/GA's external awards server)

In conjunction with their Nike ID & Nike Basketball sites, Nike wanted to rollout a number of various rich media banner ad's for their latest shoe, the Nike Shox Bomber. Featuring three athletes, these ad's would promote their Shox Bombers shoes tailored for Andrei Kirlienko, Jermaine O'Neal, & Shawn Marion. The ad's ran on the homepage of ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Hoopsworld, Sportsline & Slam.

My direction was along the theme of "owning the sky", and I wanted to feature the shoes as if they were planes cruising the open skies amongst the clouds. With a military inspired look/feel, I created animations supporting this such as a time bomb ticker effect for the text and specs, and a fog like effect for the runway. The athletes were the "pilots" - the owners of the airspace.

There are three states to the banner ad. The first was an intro that played upon reaching the homepage. After the intro played, the banner collapsed into a looping mode, featuring a call to action to initiate the third state. This state contained a military like stat card with info pertaining to the athlete, as well as a Nike ID colorway showing off various configurations of the shoe. Clicking anywhere on this expanded unit would then take you to NikeBasketball.com where you can purchase and customize your own shoe.

View the Flash Nike Shox Bomber Ad featuring Jermaine O'Neal
(note: Ad's for other players were similar, just featured different specs & shoes.)

Virgin America is a brand new airline company based here in the USA. Virgin approached Deepend to develop a prototype of the user interface for it's new interactive in-flight entertainment system. Using the latest technologies, Virgin was going to serve up various forms of entertainment to it's users via a flat screen display located on the back of each airline seat.

My concept was to radically simplify the process of current competitors IFE systems, and minimize the amount of interaction needed to get to specified content. A unique grid layout was chosen to deal with the various information architecture at hand, and a 3 column layout was used to organize various content in buckets; allowing the user to quickly scan information and make selections.

My direction was produced as part of a design pitch for Virgin America in which Deepend participated against a number of other agencies. The conceptual work is by no means representative of the final user interface that will be used by Virgin America when the airline launches in 2006. The work shown is my personal design proposal of how the in-flight entertainment system should look/feel from an user interface perspective.

Watch Virgin America In-flight Entertainment Pitch Proposal (26.5 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

Intel approached R/GA to redesign the Centrino Mobile Technology site. My concept suggested bringing the new chipset to life by illustrating the core benefits & offerings to site visitors.


Intel is an invisible product. It is the ingredient that makes things in your digital life run properly and smoothly. I wanted to visually represent this, so by bringing the Centrino logo to life, it becomes an animated avatar that brings everything to life, illuminating the way for consumers to enhance their lifestyles.

Dry™ is a nyc startup boutique t-shirt company that sells fresh designs you can wear. A vision of myself and partner, Ben Ginnel - we wanted to create a authentic nyc brand that reflected the industrial and modern feel of the city around us, and serve up shirts to our friends and neighbors.

Dry™ is currently still in production and is scheduled to launch very soon. Spread the word! Winter line on sale for launch, and Spring/Summer line to follow shortly thereafter. The storefront is a flash e-commerce solution designed and coded by Boblett Design. All t-shirts are designed by Ben Ginnel and myself.

Harp Photography is the portfolio of Michael Harp, a New York and Paris based photographer. Using light, color, and emotion - his work creates a sense of narrative in such categories as fashion, editorial, commercial and travel. Michael came to me wanting to re brand himself, for he felt his existing identity and website no longer fit the style and feel of his current photography.

Michael's work can speak for itself, so the challenge was to create an interface that didn't compete with the work, instead making the work hero by using dramatic animation that inherited attitude, much like the photos themselves. By keeping the design clean & simple, it enabled me to focus more on the overall fluidity, and transitions between the sections. A little elasticity was used to tie all the work together. Experience it for yourself.

Michael Harp Photography was selected as a finalist in the "Personal Portfolio" category in the 2006 SXSW Interactive Design Contest.

http://harpphotography.com/
(note: this site best viewed at 1024x768 and above.)

In my graduation quarter at the Portfolio Center, an amazing opportunity arose and I was selected to do a 4 month internship with the folks in the MSX UI design group.


A team of around 35, these are the people that concept and design all things Operating System. At the time, their next up and coming OS that was under development was Microsoft Vista, code named "Longhorn" at the time. Each day, the designers are hard at work developing visual language and prototypes in the new look/feel for all aspects of the OS. One of the projects I got to work on while I was out there was a local intranet for the MSX design team. This site would hold all the designers day to day work, and serve as a hub for all areas of the team to view and give feedback on selected work.

Inspired by the new "glass" interface for the Aero graphics layer in Vista, I constructed a visual look and feel for the intranet. I wanted the OS and the intranet to feel consistent in language, and intuitive by nature. By keeping things clean, I was able to focus on the information at hand and construct an architecture that best suited it. The homepage prototype I built had slick DHTML and Java transparent drop down menus that sat on a layer on top of the content. The main homepage featured a dynamic flash "featured work" area that held the latest submissions from the team.

Be sure to check out the Microsoft motion graphic stings I did for an attract loop touting Vista.

At the 2002 One Show Interactive Contest, a small team from Portfolio Center came up to New York to compete against young creative's from around the world. The brief, was to create a complete brand presence on the web in 72 hours, including an identity, product design, and website. The product that we had to create a brand for was in the category of soft drinks, and was targeted to the baby boomer generation.

With time ticking, we set out to concept what the product would be. With out target audience in mind, we tried to put ourselves in their shoes, and develop a product that they would bond to, a product they could relate to. In today's busy world, parents are often running around with no time to take a break for themselves. We created 'Vinea', and came up with the slogan: 'Take Five'. Vinea was a health conscious sports drinks designed to refuel today's busy parents. Loaded with vitamins and nutrients, the drink allowed one to reminisce about the good 'ole days & relax for 5 minutes while stopping to re-hydrate.

Having the culture-rich Chinatown as our backdrop & inspiration, we used simple shapes and lines to create the bottle form, mimicking a slim body figure. Approximately 36 hours passed and the product was created. It was time to create the website. The sitelet, created in Flash, featured Dave Brubeck's classic 'Take Five' single to set the tone while users browsed the site. It featured a blog-like community section for users to post their stories and experiences with others their age. In addition, a section was devoted to historical events that these baby boomers could relate to.

Every year, Leo Burnett makes a presentation at the Cannes Advertising Festival in France. It's a big deal for them, and many flock to see what Leo will talk about this year. Each year they present a talk about a theme, this theme they feel is appropriate to the upcoming year in advertising. In 2004, is was all about women in advertising, and in 2005, it was back to men's role in advertising.

Leo Burnett wanted application like functionality such as a traditional Powerpoint program, but wanted to use Flash to leverage it's animation capabilities. Working closely with the designer's and their vision, I brought specific slides to life with fluid animation. The presentation was coded to be driven both my the mouse and keyboard, for control when using with a projector.

2004 'Miss Understood' designer: Ryan Boblett
2005 'Metro vs. Retro' designer: Jeremy Smallwood

Widely considered to have been one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers of the late 20th century. Kubrick's films, most of which were adapted from literary sources, are characterized by technical brilliance, inventive, often economical storytelling, and timeless wit. To pay homage to an idol of mine, I wanted to create a mark that would forever symbolize the 'Father of film".

Aquent is a professional services firm that specializes in helping companies all over the world, across a variety of industries, make use of people, processes, and technology more effectively than ever before. Since its founding in 1986, Aquent’s pioneering approach to staffing, consulting, and outsourcing keeps the company a step ahead.

The project was to create a paperweight gift that Aquent would give to it's clients as a way of saying thanks for their business. Since Aquent deals with so many creative's across the various industries, my idea was to create something that was original and made of found parts. I wanted the keepsake to be of value, one that eluded to the past and something that we as creative's were proud of. So each keepsake contained a small letterpress kit inside, allowing one to stamp customized messages. The actual form of the paperweight was made out of an electrical 4 in. square steel box, with steel plates as the cover, and washers acting as the sliding hinge.

Schick approached Deepend to develop a brand vision video establishing the language around a new product going to market, the Schick Quattro for Women. It is the world's first four-blade high performance razor designed uniquely for women. By analyzing the product's target market, we were able to pinpoint specific qualities about the Schick Quattro woman. She is confident, independent, self-defined, real, focused, strong & driven. Around this I developed a motion graphic piece that featured footage of active women that illustrated each of these qualities. The Brand Vision video was used internally to get people excited about the new product. It was also used in presentations to various resellers of Schick products, to get them on board and to generate product awareness.

3d model product design by: Paul Sheppard

Watch the Schick Quattro for Women Brand Vision (47.4 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

Microsoft Vista was going to be a major overhaul of it's underlying core OS, and part of the MSX team at microsoft were working on the OOBE: Out Of Box Experience. This represents the first boot-up of the newly installed product, whether it be a newly purchased computer, or buying Vista off the shelf and installing on your existing pc. This is a great opportunity to show off the new engine in the OS. Full motion video plays highlighting various new features in the OS, and how it can improve your experience. These are short clips, giving a high level overview. During the last week of my internship, I was able to participate in designing a few short prototype stings for the OOBE.

Watch the Microsoft OOBE Logo Sting (6.4 MB)

Watch the Microsoft OOBE Photos Sting (13.7 MB)

Watch the Microsoft OOBE Shell Sting (5.1 MB)

In response to the war over in the middle east, it is important that people from around the world come together and create something good out of all the violence in the world. MTV & non-profit organization Save the Children joined forces to create a cd compilation that featured songs of love and peace from the world's most talented musicians in today's rock work.

My concept was to create a package that was an immediate recognizable symbol of love & help: a ration bag. The idea was that these bags would be dropped along with food rations in the Middle East to various countries that needed help, especially those with young children. Music breaks all barriers, and one does not need to speak the language to feel it. So by keeping the packaging identity simple, all one would have to understand is that this gift of music came from the people of the United States. These packages would also be in large cardboard bins through Virgin Music stores and large music chains throughout the world, where all sale proceeds would go back to the organization to provide further assistance to these people of need.

The project was to redesign the identity of an existing wine brand. I chose Mendocino Hill, a small husband and wife winery located in the rolling hills of the Russian River Valley in northern California. Known for it's rich, fruity and full-bodied with the intense color & finish that you would expect from the finest cabernet vineyards of the world. Known for it's rich, red volcanic soil in the hills above Hopland, California, the eastern setting assures plenty of late afternoon exposure and the long summer days allow the fruit to ripen to full maturity with almost perfect sugar-acid balance. This was the setting I pictured when trying to capture a symbol that best represented the brand. I ended up with an identity that was timeless yet true to the land and the company's philosophy.

Capstone is a multi-strategy firm that trades equities, commodities, fixed income and money markets around the world. Capstone has a unique business model, one that truly integrates traders with financial engineers and strategists to work together in harmonic unison. Capstone approached Deepend looking to refresh their brand across the board, including collateral & trading jackets.

My treatment featured multiple triangles, a symbol that has strong roots in mathematics and is found in nature. These triangle arrows made up one large unit, containing 4 sections. Each unit stood for a different part of the company. The bottom three units represented financial engineers, strategists, and traders. The top unit represented the capstone, which ultimately sealed the unit and represented one cohesive community of people working together for one cause. You can find this logo on the jackets of the traders on Wall Street & in financial markets around the world.

Visit Capstone on the web: http://capstoneco.com/

The project was to create a brand in the sportswear division. Having an affinity for swimming and the ocean, I created an identity for a pseudo company called 'Pipeline', which specialized in swim wear for surfers and swimmers alike. The company used natural products in the fabric such as hemp in the manufacturing process of the swim wear.

In April 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation launched what became the largest design competition in history. Across six continents, from 63 nations and 49 states, 5,201 individuals answered the call to honor all who were killed in terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. I was truly honored to participate in such a good cause for my country.

'And Up We Climb' was the name of our submission. Working together with teammate Amanda McCauley, we created a monument based on the abstract form of a ladder. The ladder is a metaphor for ascension. Three spears support and make up the ladder. They are the metaphors for justice and authority. In some ancient cultures, the spear was awarded for outstanding deeds of bravery. Our ladder unites in points of three, creating asymmetric triangles. This universally transcribes as all aspects of creation; mind, body, and spirit; birth, life, and death; and past, present and future. Made of glass, these spears would light up at night to symbolize life everlasting.

View our full memorial design submission here: http://www.wtcsitememorial.org/ent/entI=832210.html

In news broadcast stations around the country, Holiday ID's are created to play during the various days such as July 4th, and Martin Luther King days. These are simply motion graphic stings that honor the holiday at hand. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001 - that day became a national observation day. In honor of all the brave men and women that were lost that day, I designed a broadcast holiday ID in their memory. The video shows both towers lighting up, starting from the top, using the light to engrave the real men and women's names onto the surface of the building, creating the twin towers. The towers are slightly blurry, to elude to the spiritual quality of the message. It end's with the words: 'Remember 9/11'.

Watch the 9/11 Observation Holiday ID (8.3 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

AIGA, the professional association for design, is committed to furthering excellence in design as a broadly-defined discipline, strategic tool for business and cultural force. AIGA serves as a hub of thought-leadership and activity for the designing community. The association is committed to stimulating thinking about design through conferences, competitions, exhibitions, publications and website's.

Inspired by the grid and it's power in design, I decided to create a webmercial for a pseudo AIGA conference called: lectures on proportion and composition. The conference was to be hosted by Kimberly Elam, a long time advocate of mathematics in design, and author of such books: 'Grid systems' and 'Geometry of Design'. The moral of the conference is to find inspiration from nature in all forms. The webmercial was a teaser of sorts, a trailer that would be posted on design blogs around the world and in email invitations for the conference. It was to raise awareness of the conference and get people to sign up. The trailer proposes a question: 'What do a pine cone, a trout, and the human body have in common?' The answer... 'They all have natural proportioning systems that provide the foundation for the work of many designers.'

Watch the AIGA Design Conference webmercial (8.5 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco, California featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. Every TV channel has bump-in and bump-outs, simply to play before and after commercials as a way back to the live TV programming. This bump in featured the various shapes of the logo rotating to reiterate the 24 hours tech news aspect of the channel.

Watch the TechTV Broadcast Bump-in ID (1.7 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

Apple Computer, known for its innovative well-designed hardware, such as the iPod, iMac, & G5 as well as software such as iTunes, and Mac OS X, its current operating system. With a style for simplicity, Apple is king when it comes to 'less is more'. This was the challenge when setting out to create an attract loop for an in-store point of sale kiosk demo to promote it's debut of the OS X software. Aimed at people who were just getting into the digital age, the attract loop touted how OS X could help you share and manage your photos, music, and video with ease. By keeping elements to a minimum, I was able to get the message across in the most simplistic way as possible, while keeping the clean, modern apple look/feel.

Watch the OS X Point of Sale attract loop (12.4 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)

Ad Council is a private non-profit organization that distributes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including non-profit organizations and government agencies. In reaction to the recent violence in schools across America, I decided to do a commercial hi lighting the problem.

Children are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and prescribed drugs based on disorders voted into existence by psychiatrists and recorded in the psychiatric industry’s diagnostic and billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). As many as eight million American children are now taking psychiatric drugs — representing hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Multiple diagnoses, and prescription of multiple drugs, are not unusual. An examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry found that “kids are commonly on as many as five to six medications at a time.” The fruits of the campaign, fueled by billions of dollars in pharmaceutical revenues, are becoming increasingly visible, as an estimated seven to eight million schoolchildren today take psychiatric drugs for nonexistent diseases.

More and more children and teens are turning to violence — including killing classmates or parents after taking psychiatric drugs. In 1998 alone, more than 1.6 million prescriptions for antidepressant drugs alone were written for schoolchildren in the United States — up sharply from previous years. Reliance on psychiatric drugs today permeates the youth care industry from schools and the family pediatrician’s office to foster homes and juvenile offender programs. While the long-range consequences of these drugs cannot yet be measured, the increasing outbursts of unreasoning violence witnessed thus far give clues. Figures available in early 1998 showed that Prozac — the most widely prescribed of the drugs in the class which includes Luvox (also known as fluvoxamine), Paxil, Zoloft and others — alone had amassed more than 40,000 adverse reaction reports, including 2,300 deaths, under the adverse reaction reporting system of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — by far the most of any drug in history.

Between 1988 and 1992, when Prozac was scarcely being prescribed to children, reports accumulated of more than 90 children and adolescents who suffered suicidal or violent self-destructive behavior while on the drug. As far back as February 1990, a published study by a team headed by Harvard Medical School's Martin H. Teacher, M.D., found that six depressed patients free of recent serious suicidal ideation developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupation after 2 – 7 weeks of fluoxetine treatment. While the world has already witnessed far too many instances of carnage from this manufactured fury, experts say that the future holds more of the same unless society does something to halt the legal but unnecessary doping of millions of children. Escalating violence, suicide and homicide by youth – prescribed drugs have caused those concerns to skyrocket. Another pill is not the answer...

Watch the Ad Council 'Hidden Hand of Violence' commercial (31 MB)
(note: Quicktime is required to view this movie. Get it here for free.)