Plum Organics needed a new website to reflect not only their revamped packaging but also to vibrantly stand out against competitors. We architected and designed a crisp responsive site to help parents learn about Plum’s products and to establish the brand as a trusted source for information. Additionally, our small team art directed and executed a photoshoot to add life and character to the system.
The brand’s key differentiator is palate expansion—introducing new and unexpected flavors to help children to grow into adventurous, healthy eaters. While this was happening in the products, the site needed to fundamentally reflect this at all points. Working closely with our strategy team, we found opportunities to integrate this concept throughout the user experience. From featuring flavor profiles throughout the site, to building rich patchwork imagery reinforcing this idea, to incorporating Plum’s “flavor wheels” on product detail pages, to explaining and enumerating the concept at key points—we ensured that this message was clear and understandable even for potentially sleep-deprived parents.
We also improved functionality at a fundamental level with clarified structure and new features such as a product locator. We also forged a cutting-edge tone—talking to parents in a clear and relatable way with abundant personality.
The brand itself also needed to be extended and enriched along with the site. Beyond the typography, color, and iconography, we also photographed 20+ children and parents, including some extra special little Madwell team members. This not only helped the site shine, but we also worked with the client to build a photography library for the Plum team to use across Social, Paid Media, and physical experiences.
A very special project, indeed!
Agency:
Madwell
Collaborators:
Chris Sojka, Co-founder + Photographer
Diana Bosniack, GCD, Copy
Eric Holton, Senior Designer
Christian Ewing, Strategy Director
Regina Strong, Senior Copywriter
Javier Ortiz, Senior Copywriter
Greg Rich, Developer
Jinook Jung, Developer
Coming out of a brainstorm with copy partner Charity Lombardo, we devised the campaign idea that Visible could use their iconic blue to show that through their Visible the phone store could be literally anywhere.
The “This is a phone store” campaign grew to an extremely large scale, encompassing 830 units across 7 cities across the US, including OOH, train wraps, taxi toppers and even a beach takeover in Los Angeles.
The campaign got some attention, including a Silver One Club Award for Print & Outdoor / Experiential & Installations.
Agency:
Madwell
Collaborators:
Jeff Gillette, Executive Creative Director
Rebecca Goldsmith, Associate Creative Director
Charity Lombardo, Copywriter
Lindsay Liang, Designer
Anna Lindell, Designer
Netflix knows their audience loves their favorites shows—and loves them hard. So, we worked with them to celebrate their fans in the most permanent way for Geeked Week 2023.
The solution: a week-long national "tour" of top tattoo parlors in five cities across the country. We hit up Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, and Richmond and invited these superfans to get permanent art from world-class artists. Oh, and it was free.
Our team also briefed the shops so that they could create covetable custom flash designs pulled from Netflix's biggest shows, like Black Mirror, Stranger Things and Wednesday.
We created modular kits of promotional materials, signage, and swag to brand the tattoo shops while still showcasing their own art. The shops also received a suite of social media assets to promote the event and drive interest.
Lastly, we created a mobile-first microsite to showcase the artists, promote the event, and allow fans to book appointments. All five cities were fully booked in less than 48 hours.
We got some nice press, too!
Action Figure Insider
AOL
Game Spot
IGN
Popverse
Times of India
Agency:
Bankrobber / Madwell
Fabrication Partner:
Millwright
Production Partner:
Blue Revolver
Creative Collaborators:
Laura Wasson, Group Creative Director
Ryan Kurz, Senior Designer
BriElle Munizzi, Senior Designer
Social Media Team: Jeremy Clyde, Ian Rubini
Development: Greg Rich, Mike Cargian
Raising public awareness about the LGBTQ+ community’s contributions to American history is more important now than ever.
Back in 2017, I worked closely with the Project’s founders to create a bold brand system for the project, and then quickly extended it across digital and print media. The mark captured the city grid, orienting it in physical space, while its bold color palette connected to the movement’s history and vibrancy.
Going as far back as the 17th century, this map-based online platform launched with 100 historic and culturally significant sites across New York City’s five boroughs. Each site was carefully documented and categorized based on its location, historical era, and cultural significance. Profiles of each site include an array of historical content, anecdotes, interviews, imagery, and multimedia. Curated themes connect sites across the city by subjects such as Art & Architecture, Activism Before Stonewall, and Transgender History.
In close collaboration with the project founders and our technology team, I ran UX workshops to help organize this information into a flexible and easy-to-use web experience. Additionally, I executed a UI system, in line with our new brand, to create a vibrant, accessible, and responsive site. I’m proud to say that the site has expertly scaled—there are now 468 documented historic sites, and the register continues to grow and scale.
We also brought the brand to life in print with presentation templates, stationery, and print collateral to help communicate the project’s importance, whether to a public audience in a talk or tour, applying for grants, or recommending sites to be included in the National and State historic registers.
The project continues to receive awards, including: the Trustees' Award for Organizational Excellence by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2022; an award for Excellence in Historic Preservation by the Preservation League of New York State in 2019; and the New York State Historic Preservation Award by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in 2018.
It was an honor to work on such an important project!
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Development:
Car of Tomorrow
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Andrea Davis, Development Lead
Our team at Madwell had an exciting challenge from our partners at Jobs Ohio—to feature Ohio’s quality of life in a National March Madness campaign.
Our solution: to create a multi-part series showcasing Ohio’s quality of life through the lens of a support group called “N’Ope” (New Ohioans Processing Everything). The diverse set of characters talked through their move, discussing their “last straw moments” that led them to Ohio. The process was an amazing one, culminating in a week-long shoot in Cincinnati in January of 2022 with Director Amanda Speva and a crew of incredible actors and comedians.
The series was supported by an integrated campaign targeting our big city competition—including paid + organic social, print + digital out of home, emails, podcast + radio spots, and programmatic display banners. Digital OOH trucks were a special focus, as they highlighted a key Ohio benefit—lower traffic.
I helped to lead the team throughout the process, from concepting, to filming, to post production, and finally to asset creation. I worked closely with our designers on the art direction for both the final spots but also the rich photography library shot with Madwell on set. Additionally, I worked to establish the visual direction of the campaign would come to life across media.
Obviously the tech bros on Twitter weren’t amused, a sign of success in our books!
Agency:
Madwell
Director:
Amanda Speva
Executive Producer:
Kris Rey-Talley, Minimal Productions
Creative Collaborators:
Laura Wasson, Group Creative Director
Elinor Beltrone, Creative Director
Laura Munoz, Senior Copywriter
Javier Ortiz, Senior Copywrigher
Emma Wood, Senior Designer
Matt Reuter, Senior Designer
Emma Gaedje, Designer
Elena Anunciado, Designer
When Madwell founder, Chris Sojka, wanted to create a new content production company, I jumped at the chance to bring the brand to life. The name was inspired by Prince’s iconic song “Starfish and Coffee” and the vision was for something dynamic and iconic.
I led a design team to explore an exciting range of options, from the flexible to the iconic. We netted out with a bright beautiful brand system inspired by the iconic brands of the 70s, with a decidedly modern twist. When being inspired by Prince though, is there any other color choice but purple?
The next order of business was to build a living-breathing website. We engaged a render artists to visualize the brand’s inspiration in animated form on the home page. At the site’s core, we needed to evoke our inspiration but also truly showcase Starfish’s stunning content portfolio, while also infusing quirk and character to help the brand stand out from the competition. The site isbuilt upon a mix of beautiful gridded order, white space, and a bit of chaos—just don’t forget to “release the swarm.”
Agency:
Madwell
Collabrators:
Chris Sojka, Founder
Chris Talamo, Photographer
Conor Birney, Executive Design Director
Alex Rhubart, Senior Designer
Tyler Moses, Designer
Ziyun Liang, Designer
Uncommon Goods needed a refreshed brand to modernize, but also to reinforce what makes them such a special company.
Our strategy laid a strong foundation—highlighting their commitment to doing good and supporting local makers, while also focusing their brand—our team accomplished this with a colorful warm modernist look.
For the logomark, I made a modernized and geometric version of Escalator, a pre-release from XYZ Type, designed by my friend Jesse Ragan. I engaged and modernized their “bing” to evoke the excitement of finding an unexpected product on their site. Escalator became a prominent part of their type system.
Alongside the typography, our team worked to create a rich visual landscape—one that the client’s product design team could expand and extend in a website redesign. The Uncommon Goods team has done an amazing job executing on this vision, please do check out the website to see more of the brand in action.
Brand feature:
Fonts In Use
Agency:
Madwell
Collaborators:
Laura Wasson, Group Creative Director
David Salisbury, Copy Director
Anna Lindell, Senior Designer
Tanya Pedra, Designer
Jake Williamson, Copywriter
In close collaboration with Chris Church, I developed and designed a comprehensive brand system for the launch of Visible, a Verizon-owned affordable phone service provider.
When they came to Madwell, Visible already had a kit of parts, but lacked a clear unifying system. Keeping the materials that worked, including a logo, emoticons, and the striking bright blue brand color—designed by Natasha Jen & team at Pentagram—I led the development of a comprehensive identity system that could scale as the company grew. We enriched the color palette, codified usage of their emoticon system, established photography, and developed a motion guidelines. Alongside the traditional guidelines in print, we also created an online guidelines portal, for partners to utilize. This allowed the brand to maintain a consistent, bold voice across all channels.
We also worked on a bold launch campaign, which included a rich out of home system that showcased the brand across the country for the first time, as well as a multitude of print, motion, and digital advertising. Likewise, other members of the Madwell team worked to create an app and website consistent with our brand look and voice. The Madwell team has continued to grow and flex the brand, which has grown to be the agency’s largest client.
Agency:
Madwell
Collaborators:
Chris Church, Senior Designer
Nate Kerbin, Copywriter
Visual identity of the 2015 TED Women Conference, titled “Momentum.” The two-day conference “explored the bold ideas that power how we think, live and work,” and required a similarly bold identity system to express the ideas underlying the conference and blend with the iconic TED brand.
The logo, accompanying program guide, and suite of graphics emphasized the idea of movement and change with a custom ribbon-like wordmark that transformed responsively based on the application.
Along with brand guidelines, we also provided a series of additional graphics based off of the logo, which the TED design team utilized to create signage, ephemera, and stage graphics – resulting in a seamless branded experience for conference attendees.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Min Jin Shin, Designer
A multi-faceted, multi-year effort to streamline and revamp member-focused communications for AIGA.
The geometric shapes that threaded the communications together emerged from early sketches – an idea that represented the design's disciplines, designers, and the tools of our trade – multifaceted, bold, and colorful.
Our work began with the 2014 AIGA Conference, for which we created a graphic video and interactive photo booth, which turned into imagery that to be used throughout the campaign.
Expanding on this, our efforts then focused on the design and content of AIGA’s first-ever membership toolkit – a 200+ page binder to equip local chapter boards with information about AIGA, including its history, structure, and membership benefits. The toolkit (also available digitally) also included an exhaustive library of design templates for use by local teams. Since the release of the toolkit, membership has steadily increased and two new chapters have sprung up.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Meagan Durlak, Designer
Min Jin Shin, Designer
“Artists always have been the first to rally around any national or international problem, acting as a conscience.”
— Robert Rauschenberg
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation came to Kiss Me I’m Polish looking for help creating a platform for exploring socially engaged art. We worked closely with Risë Wilson, the Foundation’s Director of Philanthropy, to built a website to showcase this type of change-based works as well as to help define the practice for future expansion.
The site was an extension of a report from Helicon Collaborative and the Foundation on the state of the practice. Our team took this long well-researched document and architected it into a compelling UX experience. We also created a compelling design system, which allowed us to not only feature artistic works, but also made infographics to help to explain this diverse artistic practice. We were excited to help spread knowledge of this meaningful and powerful work on the site—making this information accessible across the world (and across responsive devices).
A dream project for a dream client!
Agency:
Kiss Me I’m Polish
Development:
Car of Tomorrow
Creative Collaborators:
Agneiszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Andrea Davis, Development Lead
Risë Wilson, Director of Philanthropy
After the AIGA Membership project, my team at Kiss Me I’m Polish was asked to rebrand AIGA as an organization—one may say the most graphic designest graphic design project there ever could be. I was truly honored to be able to work on this rebrand.
We worked closely with the national leadership to develop an identity that built upon the iconic square mark, and the wordmark developed by Paul Rand himself. We paired the square with a new flexible set of typography, Grilli Type’s Haptik was the perfectly modern geometric counterpart for the existing square. Likewise, we highlighted “for design” in an accent color matching the square. This made the logomark more correctly reflect AIGA’s position as the advocate for design and designers on the national stage.
Additionally, we built a vibrant and flexible identity system inspired by the organization’s national (and international) membership. It included a palette filled with bold color, geometric typography, and a modular grid. We developed a unique grid system built for flexibility with the square logomark at the core of each piece. And don’t worry, the system was all summarized with a comprehensive brand guidelines to help explain the process and carry the brand into the future.
We also introduced a system for all local chapters to use. The goal was to to create a clearer system, while also building in choice so that each of AIGA’s 70+ chapters could keep their own sense of identity.
Lastly, we helped the organization move into their new office with environmental graphics evoking the membership organization.
Agency:
Kiss Me I’m Polish
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Francesca Campanella, Graphic Designer
Min Jin Shin, Graphic Designer
Visible’s phone service employs a unique brand of transparency for their customers. Thus, our team at Madwell developed two unique experiences at SXSW 2019.
Firstly, we built a giant see-through recording studio outfitted with instruments and recording equipment, giving karaoke stars, up-and-coming acts, and established musicians like Japanese Breakfast maximum exposure at the festival.
Plus, we let visitors recharge their phones and themselves with Visible themed retro arcade games and free blue slushies in a bucky dome!
My main focus on this project was to help the experiential team to realize their vision with signage and environmental graphics to help draw the user in and clarify the experience.
Awards:
One Club - Print & Outdoor / Experiential & Installations: Bronze
Agency:
Madwell
Creative Collaborators:
Matt Fry, Experiential Lead & ACD
Alex Kaufman, Associate Design Director
Ben Kirk, Designer
Cullen Whitmore, Designer
Complete brand evolution of Starr Catering Group to Constellation Culinary Group, in light of their 10 year anniversary.
The new name and brand system was inspired by the company, which evolved from being centered around a single celebrity chef, to one that features it’s entire network spanning across the United States.
The company required a comprehensive system, including a brand toolkit with templates for stationery, ephemera, and a multitude of applications specific to the business’s needs.
Agency:
Madwell
Collaborators:
Diana Bosniack, GCD
Courtney Schopfer, Creative Director
Devin Kharpertian, Copywriter
Jessica Auville, Copywriter
Lindsey Liang, Designer
The Municipal Art Society of NYC has shaped New York’s built environment since 1893. In light of their 125th anniversary, MAS needed an interactive space to celebrate their historical impact while bringing the organization into the present, with a cutting edge website that can help to clarify their mission and facilitate their work.
We completely reworked their site through a comprehensive UI + UX process, adding new functionality when needed so that the organization can grow into the future. Through visual design, we used bold typography, a monochromatic color palette, and a crisp design system to create a scalable site inspired by the character of New York City.
Agency:
Kiss Me I’m Polish
Web Development:
Car of Tomorrow
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Andrea Davis, Tech Lead/Developer
Comprehensive web design and brand refresh for the Design Trust for Public Space, an organization that works to increase and enhance public space for all New Yorkers.
The process, including engaging the organization's diverse community, sought to revamp the organization in light of its 20th anniversary, and to give a the organization a dynamic and modern public face to help effectively communicate its mission clearly and engage the public to do its important work.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Web Development:
Type/Code
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Min Jin Shin, Designer
Lev Kanter, Development Lead
Brand system and campaign materials for Care with Pride™, an initiative in which Johnson & Johnson teamed with Walgreens to raise money for the non-profit Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
The print advertisement for this campaign was nominated for a GLAAD Amplified Award.
Agency:
Johnson & Johnson Design
Photography:
Jeri Heiden
Collaborators:
Amy Shepard, Design Director
Dory Pogers, Design Manager
Alex Lezberg, Designer
The online exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective, “Gauguin Metamorphoses,” traces the artist's work across medium, theme, and technique, and provides a rare, interactive glimpse into the artist’s modern influences and processes.
This exhibition focused largely on his exploration across media, including many forms of printmaking that are far less known than Gauguin’s paintings and sculptures. Features such as the biography and timeline + map allow users to compare pieces across time periods and geography, gaining further insight about the work and the artist.
he site’s background image showcases details of three pieces within one of three themes, emphasizing the materiality and evolutionary nature of the work in the show. The user is randomly assigned one of the three themes upon visiting the site, which parallels the experience of exploring the exhibition.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Web Development:
Type/Code
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Lev Kanter, Development Lead
Book design for the illustrated edition for Superfreakonomics. This project was an extraordinary opportunity to work closely with Stephen Dubner and his team to add additional layers of design, illustrations, and infographics to the sequel to the bestselling Freakonomics.
Agency:
Number Seventeen
Collaborators:
Emily Oberman, Creative Director
New York Preservation Archive Project is a non-profit that preserves the history of New York City's architectural preservation movement.
We revamped their website, bringing it into the 21st century with a rich but clean responsive design inspired by traditional paper archives. The site showcases the organization's rich records, as well as a treasure trove of beautiful historic imagery.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Web Development:
Car of Tomorrow
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Andrea Davis, Development Lead
Branding, information architecture, and website design for Resnicow & Associates – a leading New York communications firm specializing in clients in arts and culture.
The system showcases a modern innovative approach to not only emphasize their strong messaging, but also their preeminent clients.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Development:
Car of Tomorrow
Design and development a clear and simple brand system for Westerly Education Center, a non-profit job development center located in Rhode Island.
WEC trains workers in the region to be equipped for industrial growth in the region. They needed a bold brand that evoked their work, but also could be easily scalable and modular. The crisp, clean mark was inspired by construction, the forms evoke bricklaying or wooden palettes. The system used black and white for maximum flexibility and clarity.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Collaborators:
Agnieszka Gasparska, Creative Director
Online exhibition showcase for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art showcasing four key series of Claes Oldenberg's work.
Through a horizontal scroll, the site design and architecture evoked walking through the exhibition itself.
Agency:
Kiss Me I'm Polish
Web Development:
Type/Code
