The Directory of Design and Marketing was an application I built with a friend as an attempt to make some fast cash selling SEO to marketing agencies. This project taught us a valuable lesson, just because you build it, doesn’t mean anyone will come. In other words, customer acquisition was much more difficult than anticipated!
During my time at the Penn Hills CDC, we operated the Penn Hebron Garden Club, using it as a home-base and also managing rentals. I built a quick and easy website for the club to support events and rentals.
One of the more memorable projects in my career was building two trade show attractions for mining safety company, Jennmar. Jennmar needed unique ideas to bring people into their booth, and our solution was to build a custom Dig Dug arcade game branded with JennMar logos and slogans along with a slots machine kiosk with custom icons on the spinners. The slots game had a USB button that when pressed, would trigger a jackpot for a valued client. It was a project that got me out of the office and assembling arcade cabinets in a warehouse.
I spent two years with the Penn Hills Community Development Corporation between 2012 and 2013. During that time I created a new logo and brand for the organization, a new website, and many print materials. As chair of the communications committee, I published a bi-weekly email newsletter and performed outreach via social media. I even spent some time as a board member.
Scioto Downs was the first responsive website I created. Launched in early 2012, we were way ahead of the curve in the web design industry! This project ran far over budget, but it was for a casino – a simple tweak of a slot machine would pay for any overage!
Caveman Fuel was a company that sold paleo diet approved products such as beef jerky and coffee creamer. I think the plan was to expand the brand into a wide range of products, but despite a killer logo and brand designed by Gino at VWA, it never really sold a lot of product. It was a very high-end product and pretty pricy for beef jerky.
They say the hardest website to build is your own. And that was absolutely the case for Vance Wright Adams. After numerous design concepts, and even a possible rebranding of the company – we, in the end, produced a professional website indicative of the work we created at VWA. Even if it wasn’t blue.
As a hockey player, I was pretty excited about this project. Synthetic ice could allow ice hockey players to skate in more rinks, any time of year, indoor or outdoor. I designed a site that reflected the colors and textures of a hockey rink, with bold calls-to-action for pricing and contact cues. And I did get to skate on it several times at demos for my client, which was a lot of fun.
Contracted with RA Snoznik custom home builders in 2011 to design and develop a new website. The website was colorful and featured an interesting, uncommon layout. However, it was built and launched just before responsive website design debuted, and the website had to be rebuilt within a couple years to display properly on mobile devices.
I’m can’t even remember how I managed to get the Andy Russell Charitable Foundation as a client, but it was many years ago as this was the second iteration of website! The organization simply needed a website to promote their annual golf outing and publish all of the great auction items for each year’s event.