I led the creative, brand, and website teams for three years at PacBio, a California-based life sciences company. I worked with leadership and stakeholders to define the PacBio brand's unique value proposition to resonate with the target audience and differentiate it from competitors (employing the liberal use of magenta in a sea of blues).
My day-to-day involved defining and implementing PacBio visual identity across segments and products (including logos, colors, typography, imagery, and iconography). I created and maintained a comprehensive styleguide that was updated and distributed every quarter to agency partners, distributors, etc., as well as a much simpler piece with essential branding rationale and rules just for employees.
This role required a solid mix of analytical skills, communication skills, pedantry, patience, and — most important, creativity — to effectively lead brand strategy, marketing campaigns, multiple websites, and digital marketing initiatives.
I’ve created over 100 custom logos for PacBio (the corporate identity system is flexible and allows for some interesting variations). These were all created with Adobe Illustrator (yep — they’re vector).
A few samples from a larger set of icons I created for computational biology tools (these — and more — can be found in PacBio’s GitHub repository, software, etc.). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Of the hundreds of single-line custom icons I’ve created for PacBio, around 200 have been recreated in color with additional embellishments (this is a small subset). These were all created with Adobe Illustrator.
Multiple contexts, aspect ratios, and colors created to showcase new theme. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Branding and context mockups for the PureTarget sub-brand released in 2024. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Sub-brands created for Star Grants, the PacBio Compatible program, and Kinnex. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Created with Adobe Illustrator to advertise a PacBio investor event.
Commemorative hat and patch designs. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Branding for a financing sub-brand — I generally try to mock up any branding in multiple contexts (different aspect ratios, reversed, etc.) to test out any weaknesses. Created with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
Assorted collateral and ads for an APAC marketing campaign. Created with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
Branding for PacBio's cancer genomics segment (introduced via shirts, and then applied to digital collateral, brochures, etc.). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
One of dozens of trade show booths and ancillary design assets designed for PacBio. This design was also paired with looping display imagery. Booth designed with Adobe Illustrator.
PRISM is a global conference launched in 2024. Deliverables included digital assets (display ads, slide decks, social imagery, landing page, popups, etc.), and physical assets (signage, lanyards, swag, etc.). Great care was taken to ensure vibrancy and consistency across the spectral gradient with printed assets. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Collateral created with Adobe Illustrator for a product launch.
Sequencer imagery at high fidelity, medium icon fidelity, and low icon fidelity (for different uses). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Corporate identity for a consortium (PacBio is a member)
Branding for a global network created to accelerate rare disease research (PacBio is also a member). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Various retractable banners to represent different products and market segments for use at smaller 2024 trade shows. Designed with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Ads for a webinar (part of a larger series that included a homepage hero image and landing page imagery). Created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Banners created for trade show use (used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Branding and assets for PacBio's 2024 global commercial team meeting. Created digital and physical assets with Adobe Illustrator, and directed an external agency on motion graphics and presentations.
Part of a rotating carousel series. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Part of a rotating carousel series. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Part of larger campaign that included multiple ads, social media, a homepage hero image, and landing page imagery. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
One of many, many package designs (with label) I’ve created. Worked with multiple vendors to spec color, finish, label design and manufacturing. Elements of the label are a mix of static (pre-printed) and dynamic (printed thermally), requiring close collaboration with manufacturing team members.
Webpage design, including hero imagery, iconography, and a popup. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
One of several landing page designs commissioned in 2022. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Design for a landing page created prior to the reveal of new products in 2022. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Printable infographic created in 2021 with Adobe Illustrator.
Installed lobby wall piece — printed for Menlo Park headquarters. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Homepage design released for new product introduction in 2022. Designed with Adobe Illustrator.
I've spent many years doing corporate identity work for freelance clients across multiple industries. A solid brand goes beyond a single mark, and I try to spend time up front on research and a creative brief. I like to audit the competition, and get a good understanding of preconceived notions of the company and the industry.
All good identities start on paper, sketching out variations, reducing designs to their most minimal form. Michael Beirut (my design hero) seeks a level of simplicity that allows a four year old to recreate a good mark with construction paper. Part of my corporate identity process involves simplifying a design until it breaks, then adding back that last embellishment. It's a balancing act, and I love it.
I created the corporate identity for this project management company in 2020. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I created the corporate identity for Deckard Prime Labs (a Boston-based software company) in 2021 with Adobe Illustrator.
I spent about a year managing design at NST, a San Diego-based PR firm. During that time, I was asked to re-brand the 45-year-old company. I evolved and refined the existing logo, simplifying the overall shape and manually setting type, with an eye for duplication at smaller sizes.
In 2019, I redesigned the logo for LeadCrunch, an AI-powered lead gen platform.
Codex DNA is a San Diego biotech selling a DNA printer, as well as reagents and tools for fighting COVID-19. I created their corporate identity in 2020.
Origin 63 is a San Diego-based B2B sales and marketing agency. I created their corporate identity in 2020.
41 Orange is a boutique marketing firm focusing on companies in the restaurant, beverage brand and live event spaces.
I was asked to design a corporate identity for San Diego DevOps in 2015. They selected a variant of the bottom right.
Health Bioservices is an Encinitas-based white-label CBD raw materials supplier. I created their corporate identity in 2018.
Pine Creek Bags is a Utah-based bespoke bag maker (mainly for cycling). I created their corporate identity in 2014, using Adobe Illustrator. One requirement: make it simple enough to be legible after it's burned into leather.
Ambitny is a San Diego-based data analytics company. I did their branding in 2016. Great care was taken to ensure predictable reproduction of the primary color between print and screen. Deliverables included landscape and portrait logo variants, in color and black and white, in CMYK and RGB, as well as web- and print-ready art.
Brand identity for a job skills ranking startup.
Identity for a parent company of multiple startups.
Mindwerks is a San Diego-based biotech. I did their corporate identity in 2017.
Identity for a London-based photographer and broadcaster.
Continuuity was a big data app builder, for whom I created a complete corporate identity. They went open-source and rebranded as Cask in 2014.
Zen Diagnostics is a San Diego-based healthcare and genetics consulting group. I created their corporate identity in 2017.
PhaseThree product development is a contract design firm. I designed their corporate identity in 2017.
Name your Game is a 30-year-old Long Beach custom apparel company. I did their corporate identity rebrand in 2017.
I created the corporate identify for this San Diego-based medical device company in 2020 with Adobe Illustrator.
I joined Codex DNA at the beginning of 2020 (when it was known as SGI-DNA). After stakeholder interviews and competitive research, I conceptualized and implemented a company-wide rebrand (including both visual and editorial standards) a few months later, completely re-creating every piece of collateral from scratch, and authoring a comprehensive style guide in the process.
This is a 40-page user guide created with Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop (cover), and Adobe Illustrator (illustrations).
A few (of over a hundred) custom icons I created for Codex DNA using Adobe Illustrator.
Embellished iconography for use at a higher level than the common, line-based icons. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Custom iconography and blurbs for BioXp™ instrument. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Custom display ads for a few Codex DNA products. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.
Ad for COVID-19 tools (part of a larger series). Created with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.
Print ad for BioXp™ system. Created with Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator.
Part of a series of different webinar campaign elements. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Flier for BioXp™ system. Created with Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator.
Custom product images (created with Adobe Illustrator).
A few ads from 2020 campaigns. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Part of a series of placements. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Additional social media placements. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
A few launch announcements for COVID-19 products. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Full-page print ad for Codex DNA library services product. Created with Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator.
Part of a COVID-19 product advertising campaign. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
A few (of almost 100) different UI screens for Codex DNA’s BioXp™ system. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
A technical illustration for use in whitepapers and application notes. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Hardware diagram used across multiple print- and screen-based collateral. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Technical illustration used across multiple pieces of screen- and print-based collateral. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I spent the second half of 2019 at LeadCrunch, an AI-based B2B lead gen software company. I rebranded them in late 2019.
I refined existing icons and created multiple custom icons with Adobe Illustrator. These were eventually housed in a CC library, which was shared with other team members for reuse.
These are slightly higher-fidelity icons (about a third of the simple line icons were promoted to this style). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
These were conceptual illustrations used in brochures and case studies. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Used in case studies and other collateral. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
A few ad samples (part of a larger set). Created with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
Conceptual illustration used across various pieces of marketing collateral. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Detail of a larger infographic explaining artificial intelligence. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Detail from a separate infographic. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Detail from another infographic. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I updated the LeadCrunch website (with the introduction of the new branding) in 2019. This is a mockup created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Detail from a redesigned LeadCrunch homepage, circa 2019. Created with Sketch, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop.
Used across various collateral. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I developed multiple whitepapers, case studies, and ebooks while at LeadCrunch. I developed a flexible, scalable template in InDesign early on, which made the process efficient.
Vector illustrations I do in my free time, using Adobe Illustrator. These occasionally make it into commercial freelance projects.
Stylized heart I created in Adobe Illustrator.
I owned this baby back in '85 or '86. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Cutaway of a mid-century chair, created with Adobe Illustrator.
One of my favorite 1960s BMWs, created in Adobe Illustrator.
One of the ugliest cars of the 1970s. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
My first car (1980 model in powder blue). Just an awful vehicle. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
My second car! Mine was the coveted “LX” model (top of the line — distinguishing feature was a rear windshield wiper).
Another hideous yet somehow endearing 1970s AMC offering. Created with Adobe Illustrator, natch.
The “poor man’s Porsche.” I still covet ‘em. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Haven’t owned one in decades. Created in Adobe Illustrator way back before the hipsters started embracing them again.
Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Created with Adobe Illustrator.
A re-creation from a 1950s magazine ad (complete with weathered paper color). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Another skull, in profile. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Simplified illustration for an old logo project. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Created in Adobe Illustrator.
I did a lot of work for California Citrus in 2018, mainly with CPDPP, an organization responsible for education about citrus pests and diseases.
I designed the 2018 annual report for CPDPP, a pest and disease prevention program, with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
I created several billboards for California Citrus using Adobe Illustrator (this one is by a freeway in LA).
This was an infographic from 2019. Created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Used for in-person presentations, I created a series of maps showing affected areas for citrus pests. They were created with Adobe Illustrator.
Created to be distributed at events. Created with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
One of a multitude of informational trifolds (this one in Mandarin). Created with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
I’ve worked on multiple campaigns over the years, from quick-hit social media posts, to years-long print and tradeshow efforts. Adobe Creative Cloud libraries are a lifesaver, as are style guides and standards, for quickly matching imagery, colors, typography, and logos.
A flier I did for WD-40 in 2018, to advertise their boat maintenance products. I spent a few days lovingly creating the boat vector art with Adobe Illustrator.
Another detailed vector I created from scratch with Adobe Illustrator, showing off all the places RV-specific products could be applied. Drawn freehand using reference RV photos found online (all of which showed different aspects that needed to be captured).
A diagram highlighting uses for professional WD-40 products. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I helped Powerdot create user manuals and brochures in 2019. Created with Adobe InDesign and Photoshop.
A SEMA flier from 2018 with custom iconography. Created with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
Another in a series of WD-40 SEMA campaign collateral from 2018. Created with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
I’ve done work over the years with VitaMedica, a California-based health and wellness brand. These are part of a much larger branding exercise from 2019. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I helped create launch materials for MoNATor for Abreos, a California-based biosciences company, in 2018. This was a mockup I did with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Test requisition form created for the product launch. Created with Adobe InDesign.
A/B versions from a set (of hundreds) of display ads I created in 2018 for Ensilo, an endpoint security company (since acquired by Fortinet). Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I worked with Gobi Gear on their branding and packaging in 2015. This project involved a lot of custom icon and illustration work. Designed with Adobe Illustrator.
Packaging insert for backpacking gear. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I worked with Hamamatsu on campaign explorations in 2017, with a request to develop a flexible, repeatable theme treatment. Created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
This was a trifold brochure I worked on in 2018 for TrellisWare, a San Diego-based communications and signal-processing company. Created with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
I did some work for Shift San Diego in 2018. This is a detail from a video storyboard. I got to work with some heavy-duty vector maps, applying custom colors, stroke weights, transparencies, etc. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
I created at least forty homepage carousel modules for Shift (adhering to their colorful and generally awesome style guide), and wrangling images into a usable composition with some unforgiving masks. Created with Adobe Photoshop.
This was a square bifold brochure for 3-in-ONE, geared towards the RV crowd. Created with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
Had to do a quick-turn photoshoot with off-the-shelf lights and a ten-year-old SLR. Assembled and touched up with Adobe Photoshop.
I designed branding for LEAD’s 2018 Visionary Awards. Deliverables were a logo, badges, signage, a massive program, and advertising. Created with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
I branded the 2019 annual meeting for the Worldcom Group, a consortium of public relations agencies. Tried my hardest to steer the client away from sailboat and surfer clichés; ended up with a fairly simple wave. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
FOTR is a San Diego-based running group. I’ve been a member since 2019 (when we all started training for the 2020 Boston Marathon and Chicago Marathon, neither of which came to pass). I finally created a logo in 2021 (with Adobe Illustrator, naturally).
I created the corporate identity for FlasKap in 2017. With a burgeoning tumbler market (YETI, Hydro Flask, etc.), the inventors wanted a shot-dispensing module that would seamlessly fit most popular models. I wanted the logo to convey a pouring motion. I additionally created custom infographics, sell-sheets, and Kickstarter collateral using Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
Sequenom is a San Diego biotech known for pioneering noninvasive prenatal testing. I was an art director there, where I also managed the creative services team. The company was acquired in late 2016 by LabCorp.
I was delighted to introduce this visual as a core branding element for Sequenom. The circles represent the human genome in an approachable, visually interesting way. The device could be dialed up or back per product. Created with Adobe Illustrator.
This is a product package design for 2016. I designed the whole affair with Adobe Illustrator. I worked with product managers, a packaging supply company, and FedEx (for testing), to design a flexible package that accommodates the shipping of blood, saliva, a shipping bag, and instructions for patients and phlebotomists, with intuitive, friendly type and iconography.
This is a responsive product page design for Sequenom.com, designed in Adobe Photoshop, and representing three (of several) media query-determined screen sizes. The overall website was templated (we used the Craft CMS), but the existing pages were fairly flat. The request from the product manager was to surface more content in an attractive, accessible way. The design was meant to be flexible and scalable, in order to surface more or less content per product, depending on length and complexity.
This is Sequenom iconography I designed with Adobe Illustrator. I wanted to create a system to visually represent both broad and fairly niche concepts, products, and services. I created both solid and outline variants (using a consistent stroke weight), for flexibility across various placement scenarios.
This is an interior of a trifold brochure for Sequenom, geared toward patients. I used Adobe InDesign for the layout, Photoshop for imagery touchup, and Illustrator for iconography. This was part of a series of simplified, patient-friendly brochures that fit into a standard, repeatable template system.
2016 Sequenom tradeshow booth
These are three of Sequenom's 2016 national and regional trade show banners. They accompanied a high-level corporate trade show booth at national shows, and lived on their own at smaller, regional shows. I designed all three using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, working with product managers, a copywriter, and regulatory.
These are a few 2016 magazine ads for Sequenom products, created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
I created business cards for the company with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. We worked with an agency to rebrand Sequenom in mid-2016, and the business cards needed to be scalable to accommodate names, titles and contact info of varying lengths. I created several spectral devices to represent the human genome, which I used here for a burst of color (which mandates the CMYK color space). I kept the back pretty simple, with just the logo and company tagline (created by the agency). The whole affair is printed on a soft touch, medium weight stock, with a spot varnish on the spectrum.
Lots of considerations went into package designs at Sequenom, including ease of opening, compression during shipping, different enclosures, etc. (we even looked into magnets on individual packages). This carrier screening box was a concept from 2016 (created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop).
Multi-page brochure from ~2016. Created with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
I designed and helped direct the implementation of the Viewpoint web application platform at Teradata, a big data analytics company, between 2008 and 2014. Some of the many users included Apple, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Coca Cola and eBay.
One of the larger dashboard portlets, which pulled together multiple bits of info into one interface, to ensure context for the user. This was created in Adobe Photoshop, with vectors from Adobe Illustrator. The final, live portlet used d3 and jQuery.
One cool feature we offered users was called “Rewind,” which allowed a user to scrub controls backward to see what was going on with their databases at a specific time. This project required a lot of interviews to understand user expectations, and the inclusion of clear affordances and user feedback. This comp was created with Photoshop.
2014 Teradata Viewpoint iconography, which I created using Adobe Illustrator. Each icon represents a different web tool available to our users. I rendered them in both solid and outline forms.
This is iconography for a different Teradata tool, illustrating some relatively obscure, niche processes and concepts ("firmware version checker," anyone?). I used Adobe Illustrator and output PNGs and SVGs for the devs to use throughout the application.
These are tiny raster graphics used within some Teradata web applications. I created them all in Adobe Photoshop and output 24-bit PNGs. The challenge here was working without antialiasing, to keep file sizes minuscule, without the icons themselves looking like video game characters from the eighties. I love the sharpness, although creating anything too visually complex just isn't possible.
Custom logo and Mac OS icon design, created in Adobe Illustrator. This was used for installers, within apps, and on marketing collateral.
Custom logo and Mac OS icon design, created in Adobe Illustrator, and used for installers, within apps, and on marketing collateral.
This is a detail of a web portlet showing data input and output, represented here using a pipes metaphor. The potential complexity of data flow is off the charts, so a friendly, fairly easy-to-comprehend visual was chosen. I used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for this.
This is a set of custom vector icons I created for the Teradata Qube product line, using Adobe Illustrator, around 2013.
One of the more technical projects from my time at Teradata. Created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
I've been a member of the San Diego Track Club for years—they're the oldest and largest running club in San Diego. I started working with them a few years ago on merchandise, as well as some race- and program-specific shirt designs. I've only lightly refined their legacy logo-mark (cleaned up some line-work and simplified typography), as there's equity in the brand; I've focused on simplifying things as much as possible.
Coastal is a San Diego tax advisory company. They asked me to create a modern, approachable identity with obvious nods to their seaside location without falling back on predictable clichés.
DATE
2014
ROLE
Designer
Portrait version of Coastal Tax Advisors logo (provided to client as PDF; part of the style guide)
Documentation of landscape and portrait versions of Coastal logo, in color, white, and black versions.
ICON is a San Diego-based building supplies company. They asked for a modern, masculine identity. After initial sketches, we narrowed things down and began refining. Once a solid direction was decided upon, I created documentation, and output full color (CMYK, Pantone and RGB) and black and white versions, at both portrait and landscape aspect ratios, paying careful attention to interpolation issues that might occur at smaller scales.
DATE
August 2014
CLIENT
ICON Building Supplies
Color logo in landscape and portrait aspect ratios, with tagline.
Rendered 3d wall signage.
Documented protected space and gutter rationale (from the style guide).
Landscape and portrait logos on white and dark backgrounds (part of the style guide)
I was asked by architectural photographer James Brady (Dwell Magazine, Luxe Magazine, etc.) to redesign his website in 2013. The site features his commercial and residential work, as well as a blog.
The site needed to be responsive, so I worked with the good folks at Tragic Media to ensure the site worked and looked good across devices (using media queries). They even created a custom swipe nav that appears only on mobile, prior to an off-the-shelf jQuery plugin.
The biggest challenge was framing images of varying sizes and aspect ratios across multiple galleries (it was important to the client that the images not be cropped to a common size). I solved this with a horizontal nav that appears consistently beneath all images (more visibly under narrow images and less visibly under wide images).
The client had equity in his existing branding, so we only lightly touched it, mainly cleaning up kerning.
DATE
2013
Comp for client, created with Adobe Photoshop, showing the responsive site in three sizes (media query-driven).
Design for manual image carousel, created with Adobe Photoshop. The imagery itself is variably sized, so the carousel controls (and the interface itself) couldn't jump around as each successive image is loaded; therefore, the width of the bar containing the arrows to the left and right was specified to remain static (and simply extend horizontally to the sides of the image as necessary), to maintain a perception of stability for users.
Detail of how multiple aspect ratios are handled with a custom navigation bar. Created with Adobe Photoshop.
Detail of blog design on mobile. Created with Adobe Photoshop.
I worked onsite at Sony Electronics' US headquarters, through Sapient. I managed a team of designers and site developers responsible for design, development and frontend implementation of multiple Sony properties, including SonyStyle.com and Sony Business. I also helped coordinate multi-agency reviews (Sony used a lot of agencies), and the creation of visual style guides (used by said agencies, as well as our own).
This is the cover for the templatized Sony sample sheet.
This is a microsite I comped for Sony Hospitality in ~2006, using Adobe Photoshop.
Comp for Sony notebook microsite, created with Adobe Photoshop, circa 2004.
This is an accessories page I created for Sony, using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. I love doing line illustrations like this.
Sony consumer electronics homepage, circa 2004 or 2005. Created in Adobe Photoshop.
I created the email templates for Sony Business. This is an email sent ~2006 for the educational market.
Another email I created for Sony Business.
This was a project undertaken with a UX designer to create a consistent experience for Sony Business customers. The goal was a scalable template to create consistent PDFs, regardless of product or quantity.
This was a templatized custom ad I created for Sony Business. Product imagery and data could be dropped in for completely custom pieces.
I created the corporate identity for Silvergate Development in 2018.
Created with Adobe Illustrator.
Provided to client as part of the refinements phase. Created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
One of several comps presented to client as part of refinements phase. Created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Presented to client as part of refinements phase. Created with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
