Overview: Precision Design and Engineering for Physical Retail:
A planogram is a 1:1 blueprint for retail product placement—a system where zero tolerance for measurement error is a requirement. Designing for enterprise retail displays means starting from a blank canvas and building a complete experience that scales seamlessly across hundreds of physical store locations.
1:1 Technical Precision: Developing exactly measured layouts that drive physical mounting templates for on-site installation teams.
Agile Problem-Solving: Designing dynamic table features, custom assets, and structural solves on the fly as display constraints evolve.
Real-World Execution: Partnering alongside 3D-rendering teams to translate technical specs into high-fidelity previews, resulting in live, high-impact rollouts for major national brands.
Overview
The Mercedes-Benz Commerce Creative System was a rapid-response design initiative launched during the 2020 pandemic to pivot dealership customer engagement from physical showrooms to digital channels. Designed and shipped in just two weeks. This system powered targeted email communications for prospective and existing Mercedes-Benz owners nationwide.
Key Highlights & Execution
Email Design System: Spec'd and built templates across 4 distinct email formats (optimized for both desktop and mobile) tailored to dynamic user profiles, owner promotions, dealership events, and service messaging.
Scaled Visual Asset Engine: Developed a standardized photo creation and branding framework for hero assets. Sourced high-resolution vehicle imagery, applied precise typographic hierarchy, and produced 200+ unique hero assets for the initial MVP release.
Rapid Deployment: Delivered full design specifications within a 2-week sprint for immediate integration by Salesforce developers the following week.
Impact
Drove a sharp increase in email-initiated sales conversions during a period of extreme economic uncertainty, establishing a scalable digital communication standard across the dealership network.
Overview: Independent Reading on iOS
Sets is a flagship feature designed for the Newsela Student iOS app, accessible directly from the main navigation. Sets is built to make reading feel less like an assignment and more like an engaging experience, Sets leverages light, encouraging gamification mechanics to cultivate intrinsic motivation and encourage young readers to explore topics deeply.
The Dual-Set System
Curated Sets: Research-backed article collections compiled by the Newsela content team to drive amplified engagement around high-interest topics.
User-Created Sets: Customizable playlist that grant students full agency to collect and organize articles on topics of their choice.
Role & Execution
As the Lead Product Designer for Sets, I owned the end-to-end design lifecycle—taking early-stage concepts (originally an internal project "Beats") and transforming them into a production-ready feature.
Concept Expansion: Synthesized foundational student motivation research and preliminary low-fidelity concepts into comprehensive wireframes and user flows.
Pioneering Student Research: Conducted competitive analysis and led prototype testing and interviews directly with students—establishing Newsela’s first-ever student-facing user research initiative.
Iterative Prototyping: Executed multiple research, prototyping, and testing loops to refine interaction models and map out the app's main navigation bar.
Engineering Alignment: Partnered directly with the Head of iOS to optimize UI components, dynamic flows, and edge cases throughout development.
Impact: Sets is currently live on the Newsela Student iOS app for Premium Accounts.
Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/944781232/chimera-affliction-book-5-of-the-gryphon-generation
Initially, author Alex Bizzell, came to me to design the typography lockup for the book cover. It grew into me designing the official kickstarter page from start to finish!
( Please see above link to view full design )
Official Kickstarter “Project We Love”!
Floor funding ($8,000) met in under 2 weeks!!
Final funding of $15,121 achieved after 30 days!! This kickstarter was a success!
I created some basic style sheets, aligning with his current branding, to review. From there, we collaborated on specific styles and highlight areas to delight the audience and potential backers.
At the project’s end, 128 unique backers funding the kickstarter. And all but the final stretch goal of $16K was achieved.
This was a massive success and the project is fully a go!!
Inroads and the AMG are bi-monthly and quarterly newsletters released by Mercedes-AMG. They are important in conveying the company brand, lifestyle, history, and upcoming events for the company. Each newsletter has a distinct style, MB highlighting luxury and AMG highlighting speed and danger.
These newsletters require a huge amount of collaboration, with multiple teams converging on one piece of holistic, branded storytelling.
These newsletters also provided critical information regarding the COVID crisis of 2020. The focus on digital marketing led to an average 20% increase of clickthrough rates compared to previous versions of the newsletters.
View April Inroads
View June Inroads
View Q2 AMG Newsletter
This was a larger print project during my contract with Global Payments, a Fortune 500 financial services company. This guide would be the first piece of branded material a new customer would see. And, since it’s a guide, it must have crystal clear information and messaging so the customer is confident they are setting up the terminal correctly.
This guide was a multi-team effort, requiring multiple sign-offs before going into print production of around 500 guides. Design time was around 2 weeks including some late changes and sign-offs.
Skate Spot Pins was a small illustration project I saw through from idea all the way to print!
Pin collectors are a huge market for art collectors and casual buyers alike. I have a small collection of enamel pins myself!
I wanted to create something for the skate community. Skateboarding can be esoteric in its references. And making a visual for skateboarding that didn’t steal from artists made the subject matter difficult to choose. While creating some assets for a small animation I was working on, I came up with the idea for Skate Spot Pins!
It’s a simple idea. Create pins of famous skateboarding locations. These settings are host to some of the most memorable skateboarding tricks in history.
I created 6 different designs, and many other illustrative assets for social media, stickers, etc. I would eventually print the designs. I sold the pins online, at skate shops, during skate events, and just hanging around the skatepark!
Skate Spot Pins was a labor of love. So I did not speedrun the designs. Each illustration probably took 2-3 days to finalize from sketch to vector. Getting the pins manufactured took a couple of days to get a proof, then two weeks to get the pins in hand.
Skate Spot Pins was a very successful side project that still gets attention from the skate community to this day!
From page to print. Collaboration with Chattanooga embroidery champ, Stitch Effects. After 5 years of operation, Stitch Effects came to me to to create the lettering design for their first piece of official merch. After a few layout tests, we decided on one to clean and vectorize. After a few days, the sample stitch was created and proofs were approved! A very limited run of 20 hats were stitched. Over half were sold on the first day. The remaining hats sold out over the rest of the week. This was an incredibly quick and successful collaboration with an established Chattanooga merch staple!
Jan. 2025
Link: https://www.youtube.com/@CoolGuyDesigns
A fun side project to showcase my graphic design and personal sensibilities and humor.
Cool Guy Designs began as a comedic, tongue-in-cheek design tutorial channel. As the channel matured, I took a more educational approach, as that was what the audience openly appreciated the most. However, I was still able to insert comedy and audience delighters in order to keep the content engaging, while remaining clear and educational.
Cool Guy Designs has acquired over 200,000 views over its history, helping many young designers along the way!
I have created the flyer for Southern Supreme’s Halloween Contest, held in Tuscaloosa Alabama. It is Southern Supreme’s official annual contest. Always a fun event with some of the best in Alabama coming out to represent! Skate and destroy.
The 2023 design featured illustrations by myself. I used real models and the actual skatepark layout in order to create a unique design for a local contest.
The 2024 design was a bit of simpler approach. I used some vintage skate graphics and cleaned them up in order to make a clean flyer design. More of a “if you know, you know” design. But this features vintage ZERO skateboard graphics. Zero has been long known for it’s horror based designs and marketing. And they have a large following in Alabama, as their owner is from the state. So this design uses familiar skate and horror imagery to promote to the local fanbase of Alabama.
Newsela was the Featured App of the Day in the Apple iOS store in September 2019. This was not just a feature for education apps, this was THE Featured App of the Day.
I, with the help of a few key people, conceived, created, managed, packaged, exported and uploaded the final art assets to Apple with an entire 5 minutes to spare.
This project presented a lot of interesting problems. It required new art assets to be conceived, a very long, very technical requirements sheet from Apple, and a real timeline of 3 days.
After submitting the final images to Apple, we could only wait. Apple held all the cards. We even had to make the files in a way that allowed Apple to move elements and, potentially, completely change the final image that would be used. And that’s even IF they used it. Finally, a month or so later, we received word that Newsela was going to be the featured app on the following day. It was as high stress and technical as a ticket could be! And I’m very proud of my small team, and honestly, myself for getting it done.
View the feature here!
Visual design for Standards alignment represented on the article page.
Standards is a multi-team project that required a shared understanding of the complex nature of national and state learning standards. We conducted user testing early, in order to learn from teachers what information is most valuable regarding standards. This user testing required specific examples to be represented in clickable prototypes. This specificity in unfinished designs allowed us to get specific feedback from many different teachers, broadening our understanding of standards and allowing us to hone our designs to their simplest, most effective form.
On my team, I worked alongside a Senior UX Designer, a User Researcher, and a Product Manager. But, this project had many stakeholders on all teams and levels of the company.
I have designed numerous landing pages for Newsela.com. These had to represent different products, but maintain a cohesive style and tone to create a shared brand experience.
Landing pages required me to illustrate lo fi’s, icons, and other graphics, arrange and retouch product shots, apply brand styles while also expanding upon them, and create the hero images.
Each landing page was also built to be responsive. They work at various breakpoints with specific considerations given to mobile devices.
Illustrated vector backgrounds for the Newsela.com Registration & Sign In Page. They were created for different seasons and would change accordingly. Illustrations were also made with responsive breakpoints in mind. So they work well regardless of browser width or device being used. They are fully vector and were converted to svg, making them easy to implement in code while maintaining maximum image quality.
Students’ Vote Campaign from the 2016 election. Newsela partnered with Rock the Vote among many others to gain mainstream attention for the students’ election day. Over 380,000 students cast their vote in this monumental online election. Marking the campaign a huge success in student engagement and built awareness of civic duties.
My responsibilities included building the landing page for the election. This required me illustrating new assets, including the main logo lockup, and branding a look outside of the regular Newsela brand. After the success of the election, I created an infographic in order to summarize the details of the campaign.
Illustrated and produced the first 3 Newsela Summer Retreat hoodies.
Each summer, Newsela would trek to mountainous regions outside of the city limits in order to hush the noise of New York and come closer as a team. Since you had to actually attend the retreat to receive one, the retreat hoodies became a huge part of company culture! A vintage hoodie meant you were a Newsela veteran - a badge many continue to wear proudly.
