Approach

Everyone is busy with their lives. In spite of what many marketers say, people rarely care about brands (1). They just want to sort out their needs, their wants, their problems. On top of that, everyone’s constantly surrounded by advertising. So if you want people to pay attention, you’d better give them something good in return.

A good piece of communication does one or two of the above. A great one does all three. My goal is to help clients draw people’s attention and offer them something of value in return.

My design approach is all about finding a clear and relevant idea that informs everything, from the general look and feel, down to the smallest details (of a company or product’s identity). This can be done by first asking four questions:

• why are you doing this? 
• who is the audience? 
• what are you trying to say? 
• how should we say it?

Once the idea is agreed on, all that’s left to do is to find at least one good way of communicating that idea in a distinctive and maybe even delightful way.

My illustrations are often about putting two seemingly unrelated things together, or showing something familiar in a new, surprising way. The style is simple and clear, usually with unmodulated lines. 

My hand-lettering work aims to surprise and delight the reader by “freeing” each character from the constraints of typographic rules (2). Some hand-lettering pieces work almost like visual puzzles, making the reading process slower and, hopefully, the message more memorable. Unlike my main illustration style, the hand-lettering work often uses modulated lines and shapes, with handwriting mixed in. Sometimes I do the work spontaneously, looking for “happy accidents”, and to surprise myself.

While it sometimes helps to write things down, I believe it’s usually better to show rather than say something. So please have a look at some of the projects I’ve done so far. If you’d like us to work together, or have any questions, please get in touch.

Notes

(1) Bob Hoffman, “The Ad Contrarian”, has been debunking marketing myths for years through his books and blog.

(2) Alan Fletcher once said that “a typeface is an alphabet in a straightjacket”.