Visual Natives is a full-service design firm in the greater NYC area specializing in the entertainment industry. In 2014 I was contracted by the owners (and at that time, sole employees) to expand the business beyond the freelance structure and into a bonafide company.

Since my contract began, revenue is up over 300% with an increase in profits of over 500%. I accomplished this through a systematic review of corporate identity and operations, implementing a steady state of change bringing business lines and practices into line with a well defined brand. Coupled with countless hours of discovery and education, I slowly molded an image for the company and the partners themselves centered around service, quality, and reliability which continues to drive the bottom line as they transition further away from a sell-on-price mentality to a sell-on-service one.

Throughout that time I was also responsible for managing, designing, and developing for dozens of projects for high-stakes clients including major record labels and A-list celebrities and performance of a variety of services from illustration, graphic design, and web development to video production, editing, and special effects.

April Kry is an up-and-coming country/pop singer named one of the top country artists to watch in 2016 by Huffington Post. Happy with the professionalism and quality of their newly deployed website, indie music label Metric Records approached Visual Natives to shoot a music video for the debut single of recently signed April Kry.

The music video for her first single, Beauty Queen was shot entirely on location at Lewin Farms in Suffolk County, NY on two Canon 5D-MkII full-frame DSLRs. Cinematography was handled by Carl Timpone and Joe Woods with a collborative directorial approach by the whole team: Mark Standish, Carl Timpone, Joe Woods, and myself. My services for this shoot included concept art, storyboarding, shot-listing, practical effects, set & prop design, direction, and project management. I have also done graphic design and web development for April Kry.

April Kry is an up-and-coming country/pop singer named one of the top country artists to watch in 2016 by Huffington Post.

For this project, April's team wanted a lyric video to coincide with her RadioDisney promotion. Considering the lyrical content and the target market, Mark Standish of Visual Natives and I decided on an animated video using the idea of a scrapbook which illustrated different scenes in the song while providing a natural medium for displaying the lyrics (i.e. being written in a book).

After finalizing the concept with the client, I hand illustrated all of scenes in Adobe Photoshop and created a series of luma mattes in Adobe After Effects which Mark used during editing to reveal the illustrations as if ink were being spilled on a page (think the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter). Other responsibilities on this project included concept art, client management, and editing.

Zicana is a full-service custom gemstone surface designer based out of Westbury, NY. Zicana uses the highest quality gemstones sourced from all over the world including quartz, agate, petrified wood, jade, tiger eye, amethyst; assembled by master craftsmen into one of a kind gemstone surfaces, jewelry, and furniture.

A long time client of Visual Natives, Zicana approached the team to rebrand the company starting with an updated website. The website was transitioned away from a static HTML page into a Wordpress Content Management System for easy updating by the client in the future.

The website was designed around large, vibrant images displaying the products, with minimal, but focused copy incorporating SEO keywords and well-formed page structure. WooCommerce was used with Stripe as a payment gateway to take care of the e-commerce needs and careful attention was taken to ensure a consistent user experience from product-type to product-type and is fully mobile-responsive.

Zicana has been featured in multiple publications including Hamptons magazine and Gotham magazine, and frequently hosts events with partners like Mercedes-Benz and Maserati. They are one of the Inc. 5000's Fastest Growing Companies.

Grok Nation is a blog by Mayim Bialik (Blossom, The Big Bang Theory) which is part lifestyle, part philosophy, part theology, and part science. A client of Primary Wave Entertainment, of which Visual Natives is a long term contractor, Bialik approached Visual Natives to create the digital home for her newly independent blogging efforts. My responsibilities on this project included end-to-end client interaction, design discovery, installation, and deployment.

As part of the deployment procedure, I produced and narrated 5 part video guide to using the Wordpress CMS to ease learning curve for Mayim as a non-technical end user. Anticipating a high demand launch, in collaboration with lead developer Bastiaan Ekeler, we arranged hosting on a managed VPS and configured both installation security and a distributed CDN.

As any developer knows, the project doesn't end at deployment. As part of ongoing services, I created copy for SEO purposes as well as monitoring and evaluating Google Analytics data and advising client on best practices to minimize bounce rate and drive readership. Grok Nation garnered over 500 new sessions per minute for the first 24 hours with a to-date viewership of over 1,000,000 sessions.

Kope Customs is an independent owner-operated fabricator and installer of aftermarket automotive performance parts located in Fairless Hills, PA. Having years of professional training and certification as a motorcycle mechanic and specialty equipment installer, owner Andrew Koping offers top-notch labor at market setting prices in the Philadelphia area.

With the majority of business coming from walk-ins and word of mouth Mr. Koping sought out my services to help generate more web based leads. As part of the project I moved hosting to a faster, solid state equipped hosting service with Wordpress optimized server environments and rewrote the copy with SEO in mind. Website design was handled with a Wordpress theme of the client's choosing which I customized to better fit Mr. Koping's needs while remaining budget friendly. Creative consisted of a design standard package including print and web logos, letterhead, and collateral design as well as background imagery, typography, and key colors, all of which were supplied to the client as a PDF with accompanying usage guidelines for third parties.

Data analysis was switched over to Google Analytics from the awstats software offered by his previous GoDaddy hosting. After seeing the real user agent hits compared to the heavily inflated awstats data which includes bots and spiders, Mr. Koping was immediately aware of how his lack of SEO was hindering his previous attempts at web marketing using the GoDaddy Website Builder.

Over the next few months I consulted with Mr. Koping, advising him on best practices and methods to increase SERP visibility for the first time placing him on the front page of Google searches for "Fairless Hills auto installation", "Philadelphia auto installation", "Fairless hills car [truck] [motorcycle] customization", and "Philadelphia car [truck] [motorcycle] customization".

Additionally Kope Customs saw a significant uptick in direct lead generation through the website contact form despite a perceived loss of web traffic (owing to the switch to the more accurate analytics platform) proving that there is truly no substitution for well-written code and SEO optimized content.

The Dark Manor has been voted Connecticut's #1 scariest haunted house more times than Leo has lost Oscars. One of the original clients of Visual Natives, owners Rick Pierce and Craig Shultz original contracted Visual Natives to build a website but the relationship quickly evolved to a seasonal retainer to update copy, manage scheduling and online ticket sales, and curate social media. After many years of growth and mutually beneficial projects, Rick and Craig requested a website refresh incorporating a more interactive and horror themed website and new technology like mobile responsiveness and device specific functionality.

Design was headed by Mark Standish who, with creative input from the the rest of the Visual Natives team, crafted new logos for each of the themed attractions and a highly thematic website.

Bastiaan Ekeler headed up development using a Wordpress wireframe to create a custom theme and numerous HTML5 and CSS3 animations to keep things interesting.

On this project I handled client management, setting milestones and goals for project timelines as well as curating social media and handling the website copywriting and SEO making sure that we hit required deadlines to be live and through beta testing before the season started with good SERP position.

New website in hand, Dark Manor had its highest grossing season to date, and unsurprisingly has been named the #1 Scariest Haunted House in Connecticut for the seventh year in a row.

Split Forks Outfitter is a full service waterfowling outfitter offering half-day and full-day guided hunts for sea ducks, puddle ducks, and a variety of geese on the East End of Long Island. Originally started as a joint venture by three friends, SFO offered a way for these accomplished outdoorsmen to turn their years of local knowledge and hunting expertise into a source of revenue.

With business booming and a significantly better understanding of the guiding business, SFO felt that their brand could use an update to reflect their more professional attitude and experience.

With little experience in digital marketing and not entirely sure of what budget they would be willing to commit, we started small with an updated logo.

I hand illustrated the logo attempting to portray themes of tradition, communing with nature, sportsmanship, and the beauty of long island. I chose a palette of warm earth tones to convey the natural, making sure to tint even the blacks since pure black is rarely ever found in natural settings. I chose to silhouette the figures against the rising sun making them appear as if part of the landscape rather than something intrusive and unnnatural. This also lends a contemplative quietude to the scene, with the high flying, distant birds emphasising the skill and patience of the sport. Finally, to emphasise tradition I chose a thin, elegant serif font in a warm earth tone and used the shape of long island as the logo to emphasise the natural beauty and hunting tradition of a place so frequently associated with urban and suburban life and dense population.

With overwhelmingly positive reception of the new logo, SFO has started offering branded outdoor wear including jackets, camoflauge, and hats adorned with the logo and has agreed to a proposal for a new website with e-commerce integration.