I build brands, the teams that make them, and the systems that keep them moving. Strategy, identity, packaging, product and production for CPG, nonprofit and startup brands.
Brand systems built end to end, plus the websites, AI tools and video that carry them.
The healthy home revolution has begun.
A non-toxic cleaning brand for free spirits and peaceful warriors. An Outlaw-meets-Innocent archetype, a soft botanical palette and a highlighter-marker voice that pushes back on the category.
For the man who can't afford to slow down.
A daily capability system for modern men, built from zero: positioning, Ruler and Hero archetypes, a product naming system, packaging, photography and website direction.
Support your swing.
Performance golf underwear with a Jester's sense of humour. The book itself is designed as a scorecard, carried through the logo, type and packaging.
Full flavour, full fun.
A small-batch hot sauce brand built for the life of the party. Hand-drawn marks, a loud coral-and-teal palette and a voice that never takes itself too seriously.
A shaker bottle company that looked like every other gym brand, rebuilt as the one brand in the category that's actually fun.
The company launched as Performa, just another athletic performance brand with a shaker bottle as the product, and it wasn't getting noticed. They renamed it PerfectShaker and wanted a new personality to go with it, but didn't know how to get there.
Almost every brand in the space is selling high performance. If PerfectShaker pivoted to having fun, it could own a space nobody else was in.
I pulled a line the team used internally but had never owned, made it the slogan, committed fully to the Jester, and built every asset around it.
What happened
Solidified the brand, pulled the slogan out of the team's own vocabulary, rebuilt the visuals and made every asset after that in line with it.
A Canadian organ supplement brand built for a consumer nobody on the shelf was talking to: the women buying for their families.
Buyers wanted more organ supplements, but there was no Canadian option that was reliably in stock. The closest competitor, Heart & Soil, isn't made in Canada, and no one was speaking directly to this customer.
The buyer is the wellness-conscious matriarch. Whole Foods is where she shops, and whole foods is how she eats. She wears Lululemon, does the shopping for the whole family, and wants natural supplements with real benefits that she can pick up on the same trip.
In a beef organ supplement, the health of the animal and the quality of the product come from the land. So we built the brand around her connection to the land and the farmers: a pasture-to-table story, hand-drawn cattle, kraft textures and an earthy palette, with made in Canada front and centre.
What happened
Built the brand from scratch: strategy, identity, packaging, website and trade show presence.
Teams of ten race to pull a 20,000-pound delivery truck across Nathan Phillips Square to raise money for Canada's largest food rescue organization. We rebranded the event, promoted it with our own video and photography, and staged a fake protest against food waste.
The Truck Pull's look had gone stale. It was built on a cheesy superhero theme that didn't speak to the large donors and corporate teams who make up the event. And because it was only open to registered teams, it did nothing to reach anyone else.
Protests stop people in their tracks. If we staged one that was positive and cheeky instead of angry, we could use that instinct to pull passersby into the event instead of pushing them away.
We rebranded the event for its corporate audience and promoted it with our own video and photography. We added a market and a fake tattoo booth that were open to the public, then staged a positive protest against food waste outside, with signs like “Honk if you love food.” People honked, cheered and came in to see what was going on.
What happened
Led the marketing department on the rebrand and promotion: identity, video, photography and the on-site activations. Also worked on this year's event video.
Concept, casting, locations, shoots and post. Social series, commercial spots and documentary.
Sites and platforms I designed, from e-commerce storefronts to a nonprofit rebuild and a local news platform.
Tools I designed and built to take the repetitive work off a creative team, so people spend their time on the ideas. Plus one I'm building for myself.
RUBI creates content. It researches what to say, then makes the articles, videos and social posts, and runs everything around them: approvals, publishing, campaigns and analytics.
One console for the whole content operation, with a person signing off where it matters. I helped build the MVP, created the brand and designed the console.
Custom-branded shaker mock-ups used to be made one at a time in Photoshop by a full-time designer, a $50K-a-year role. Each one took about 15 minutes from start to finish.
I designed and built an app that does it in about a minute. Drop in the customer's logo, pick the bottle, lid and colours, choose the print method, and export a ready-to-send mock-up.
Duolingo wasn't doing it for me, so I'm building my own.
A course and a practice area, both at your own pace. A new word only counts once you get it right three times in a row. It's built on behaviour science so you can actually speak the language, not just pick the right answer. Knowing the song by heart, not reading along with the lyrics.
First draft. Branding comes next.
I build and reposition brands, then carry them into every campaign, product and channel they touch. I've spent a decade as a hands-on creative director, agency-side and in-house, across consumer brands, nonprofit and AI startups.
Most recently I led brand and creative for a multi-brand CPG group, launching 10 new brands. Before that I built Second Harvest's marketing department from the ground up as VP, Marketing.
Most of my work starts as strategy. I find the problem, the insight and the move, then build the brand and campaigns around it. I've done it for clients at Wallbanger, in-house for a multi-brand CPG group, and at Second Harvest.
I also build with AI. I set up custom design workflows for creative teams, and I design and build my own apps.