I build brands +
the systems,
products & films
that bring them to life.products,
& films that
bring them to life.

Approach

I had missed my connection home and was stuck overnight at Schiphol, alone in an airport bar, when Ben Hulse called and asked how I was doing. I told him, at length. He said, “Well, perhaps I can brighten your day. How would you like to help us rebrand the Canadian Olympic Team?” The next day I joined Ben, Greg Durrell and Andrew Simpson back in Canada and we got to work.

We treated it as much as restoration as design, spending time in libraries and in conversation with historians and Olympians, defining what the Team stands for and where it came from. The aim was an identity that felt inherited rather than newly invented. A flexible architecture let every sport, program and partner sign consistently, and the familiar maple leaf gave the organization an internationally recognizable mark with a vibrant graphic system drawing from the tones of the five Olympic rings and the colours of the Canadian landscape.

Outcome

The system gave the COC a single identity for the entire Team, built to carry it for decades. The work was recognized at the Brand New Awards in both 2010 and 2011, and the Committee described the result as new life for a brand over a century old.

Approach

I led creative direction and the data-visualization design. Our governing rule was that the software should do the arithmetic and the strategist should make the call, so every screen was built to empower the pit crew to make decision rather than displaying a torrent of stats and data.

We designed three connected views. Race Strategy predicts which drivers are genuinely competing for a position once differing tyre strategies are accounted for. Car Status turns the MP4-28’s 150-plus live sensors, including tyre health on a contact patch no larger than a sheet of paper, into gauges legible at a glance. Race Trace charts actual and predicted lap times against a target and models alternate pit strategies as the race develops.

Outcome

The system became flagship innovation work for SAP and as well as a film I directed and produced, showing a global audience how predictive visualization changes the sport. The decision-led approach to dense data carried into enterprise and product projects for years afterward.

Approach

After speaking with many members and younger prospective members we found that they were actually looking for a sense of history and authenticity. Gastown was full of bars and restaurants trying to manufacture a sense of place and heritage meanwhile The Vancouver Club had it in spades. It was just a matter of reframing it as elegant and sexy instead of old and stuffy.

We kept the crest, the archive and the sense of occasion, and made the club feel warmer, more current and easier for a prospective member to picture. Over close to a decade I worked as creative director, lead designer and producer across campaigns, photography, film and the digital presence, holding heritage and contemporary appeal in the same frame.

Outcome

The work moved the metric that mattered most. New membership shifted from predominantly men over 55 to a group that skews under 35 and is considerably more balanced, a meaningful repositioning for an institution of its age.

Approach

Under my direction the team built Nectar, Klue’s design system, on a principle of reduce, then refine. We cut duplication first, then hardened what remained and documented it so usage was never a guess.

We rebuilt the core components for reliability and clarity. The button component alone went from 63 variants to 12, governed by explicit rules, accessible patterns and a considered set of design tokens, with variants across the wider library reduced by more than half. The work was largely invisible to customers, which is the point, because it is the foundation that lets everything visible move faster.

Outcome

Once the system was real, delivery on the work we measured improved by roughly 30 percent, and every new component had a standard to meet. Nectar became the foundation that both the brand refresh and the product vision were built on.

Approach

I positioned Unison as the connector rather than the lead, substantial enough to add value and restrained enough to keep each affiliate in front of the client. The promise was operational, not cosmetic: in-house marketing, legal and administrative support at a ratio well above the industry norm, and a partnership structure modeled on a law firm, built for succession and multi-generational growth rather than a one-time sale. The tone throughout was quiet confidence, generations of local expertise that does not need to announce itself.

I built the brand architecture so Unison sits as a consistent layer beneath the affiliate brands, present on every touchpoint while the affiliates lead. That meant a lockup system pairing the Unison mark with each brokerage and written to satisfy BCFSA advertising rules, plus a messaging framework covering the mission, five pillars and a tone of restraint over hype. The organizing line, Thriving in Unison, carried into the identity, a Freight Display and Quire Sans type system, and a brand film we produced.

Outcome

Unison launched with a coherent story, a defensible position against the global names that offer reach without local depth, and a system the whole network applies consistently, from recruiting a new founder to marketing a single listing. Each affiliate kept its independence and reputation, now backed by infrastructure it could not have built alone.

Approach

The work resolved into three parts that had to operate as one: the identity itself; a web interface kit, including the chat window, prompt field, response area and controls, in modal, sidebar and full-page layouts; and a voice mode, a subtly animated variant of the same form. Everything was designed to live within the existing IOC brand.

Outcome

The result is a single assistant with a consistent presence across text, interface and voice, prepared to scale across the Olympic Movement’s digital touchpoints as its first consumer-facing AI.

Approach

I built Yard Sign around a single promise, that pasting a listing link returns a finished, on-brand Instagram post in about ninety seconds, and designed it largely by deciding what to leave out.

Paste a URL and it imports the photos, price, beds, baths and address automatically. It applies the right status badge for each stage of a deal, from Coming Soon to Just Sold, so one listing yields a series of posts. It reads an agent’s logo, colours, fonts and writing style from their website, then schedules the week to Instagram. I led the brand, the product and the marketing site.

Outcome

The result does one job well, with a clear advantage over the tools agents tolerate today. It is in free early access, building a waitlist ahead of launch.

Approach

We anchored the identity in five values, smart, community, hospitality, security and quality, and let them set a tone that is confident and warm at once.

The design decisions followed from the values. The brandmark is a small flock of birds, a quiet reference to kinship rather than a literal house. The palette runs from deep forest green to soft cream so the brand feels settled and a little aspirational. We drew the mark in full and simplified forms so it holds up from architectural signage to stitched thread, and anchored the voice in the client’s own line, smarter living, in the heart of Kelowna.

Outcome

The result is a complete, ownable identity and voice that gives Akin a more human position in its market, with a system ready to scale across signage, print and digital.

Approach

We built the film around a clear arc, moving from the natural environment, to the scale of the infrastructure, to the people who run it, with the company’s mark woven into the imagery. The reference for tone was a NASA mission film: precise, a little proud, and delivered in plain language rather than overstatement.

To reach the production value the story required, we shot in 4K across a range of real NRG facilities, spanning natural gas, wind, solar, coal and nuclear sites, with helicopter aerials and an original score. We structured a single production to deliver two films, an external recruiting anthem and an internal onboarding piece, to get the most from the shoot.

Outcome

The result was an anthem with the polish to stand beside the technology brands NRG was recruiting against, and the relationship continued across further films in the years that followed.

Approach

We decided the most credible voices were the employees already doing the work, so we built the film around honest, on-camera interviews rather than scripted claims.

We structured the interviews around the questions a prospective hire actually has, about what the work is really like, who their colleagues are, and how a career there can grow, then shot the campus and the work to a standard that matched the brand. The aim was for the film to feel like the place, not an advertisement for it.

Outcome

The interview-led approach gave the film its credibility. It presented the data center as a serious career rather than a job, and gave Facebook a recruiting piece grounded in the experience of its own team.

Approach

I treated the content as entertainment first. The marketing films set the tone, and the educational series taught real technique with a sense of humour, so viewers stayed to the end and came back for the next one.

I directed, produced and edited a run of marketing films and an educational series, and created MovingUI, a publication on animation that gathered the thinking in one place. Each piece was built to stand on its own and to work as part of a library people could keep returning to.

Outcome

The result is a body of work that does two jobs at once, marketing the product and teaching the craft, with MovingUI giving the ideas a home that outlasts any single video.

Approach

I work end to end, shaping the concept and script, running the shoot as director and frequently as camera operator, and leading the edit. Because my background is in design and brand, the films stay true to the identities they belong to.

The reel spans sport, technology and consumer work, including the Tokyo 2020 One Year To Go Olympic film, Klue’s Series B announcement and Times Square moment, the Team Canada and SAP McLaren pieces, and brand films for NRG, Bria Communities, Discovery’s Shark Week, Classmate, Flow and Arc Energy.

Outcome

The briefs differ, but the assignment is consistent: announce the raise, launch the brand, and put the work on the largest screen available.