As a design apprentice for upper-scale decorating magazine Traditional Home, I created layouts that ranged from single-page collages to five-spread feature stories. I learned to select images that highlight the home's best qualities and to design layouts that allow readers to comfortably explore the home on the page. These layouts—after a few rounds of edits—ran in the print publication, reaching roughly 4.6 million people each month.

Working as Brand Design Manager for dfine Branding, I created a brand system, designed a layout, and mocked up hundreds of custom items for an internal document between Comcast Spotlight and dfine. During the holiday season, dfine sends this digital holiday catalog to our clients in CS who use it to select customizable gift options for their clients.

Denver comedy group the Pussy Bros. hosts their own monthly comedy show called Birthday Party at Rackhouse Pub in the popular RiNo district. The cat-focused, all-female group throws a party of a comedy show every month, and their lively and fun poster art is designed to match. 

Working as Brand Design Manager for dfine Branding, I created a logo, brand system, and collateral for farm-to-table restaurant and luxury knife vender, Foraged. The name “Foraged” was created by the owner to bring out two sides of the same business: the foraged and forged. They desired a strong, metal-working feel in the design system and in the restaurant itself; so we pulled pieces like the leather bar apron and anvil napkin rings to use in the decor.

As a senior journalism student at Drake University, I participated in a one-semester capstone project in which we—19 upper-class students and a faculty advisor—created a publication from scratch. The result was Think Mag, an award-winning online news magazine and tablet produced for Midwesterners by Midwesterners. During that semester, I served as the Think Mag editor-in-chief. I learned to develop a brand, manage a staff, maintain a website, promote a product and edit. I did lots and lots of editing. 

While most of my time was spent managing the staff, I did contribute my own work to the Think Mag website. I wrote a weekly column called "Wiki Wednesday," delving into interesting Wikipedia articles relevant to the Midwest. I also created aggregated content when needed—about a Chicago artist and, later, about the Wisconsin Film Festival—and designed various infographics, images and tablet layouts.

Working as freelance designer for dfine Branding, I created a logo, color palette, and style for the anti-slavery and -human trafficking non-profit Race Against Traffick. An organization of athletes that raises money to fight against modern day slavery and help loose the chains of injustice, Race Against Traffick needed a logo that was inviting and dynamic but illustrated the cause.

As a web editor for beauty and fashion website divinecaroline.com, I designed and edited this 21-page web download to encourage readers to sign-up for our weekly beauty newsletter. Photos were provided by Meredith staff photographers and our regular beauty bloggers. 

After a few years performing as a comedian, I've accumulated a number of illustration projects as requested by friends and colleagues. They usually serve as online marketing tools to advertise a comedy tour, show, or a podcast.

Working as a freelancer for dfine Branding, I created an icon, logo, and color palette option for Highlands Ranch Historic Park & Mansion. The icon is based on a lantern that sits atop the Highlands Ranch front gate. Whether it’s a stop on a walking tour or the backdrop behind a wedding photo shoot, the gate and lanterns are a focal point of the mansion. This concept combines the timeless elegance of that gate with a classic serif type and an approachably modern sans serif. Like the type, the color palette—warm neutrals with pops of green and orange—captures HRM’s commitment to being both historic and inviting.

It's not hard to tell that the current Java Joe's website needs an extreme makeover; so I gave it one, a hypothetical one. Using some of the existing content and images, I restructured, rewrote and redesigned the site to make it  more useful, more intuitive and more appealing.

Working as Brand Design Manager for dfine Branding, I created a logo, color palette, style, and collateral for childhood cancer support non-profit Braedi + Beyond. Inspired by the B+B mantra, “Super families kicking cancer’s butt,” their look was designed to be fun, kid-friendly, and generally super-heroic. In addition to a complete look and feel, I designed the B+B original Braedi Board, a simple color-coded method of keeping track of a child’s weekly medication schedule and consumption designed to be wiped clean and refilled at the end of the week.

This handmade booklet was designed to showcase Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group by Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Aleksei Gan using an appropriate constructivist aesthetic. It features a range of typographic treatments and geometric illustration but maintains a very simple color palette. 

As a former swimmer and long-time swim meet attendee, I decided to design an application that would make keeping track of your swimmers easy. Using content and branding information from Maverick Swim Club, a team I used to swim for, I designed the basic structure of an app that keeps track of up to six swimmers' times, achievements, events and practices. 

I create this wall calendar to explore color palettes especially as they relate to emotion and feeling. While typography is important in this piece, the calendar's ever-changing shapes and color palettes are what make it such a fun, modern calendar. 

Working as Brand Design Manager for dfine Branding, I created a logo, color palette, and style for metal fabricator company Seifert MetalCraft. Inspired by the vintage hot rods Seifert often works on, their logo sports curvilinear letter forms and a bold teal straight from the metalworking process.

Jest, a prototype magazine "sponsored" by Comedy Central, born from a thoroughly researched business plan, designed to suit the “innovative, irreverent, clever,” and “smart” Comedy Central audience, placed first in the Individual Startup Magazine Project category of the annual Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) contest in 2013.

During the 2013 school board elections, I created this infographic about Des Moines public schools for th Drake journalism website. It educates its audience on the districts changing demographics, test scores, income levels and programs using data illustrations and striking typography.

As a comedy fan and proponent of quality web design, I created a hypothetical redesign of the Funny Bone Comedy Club website and logo. The redesign includes a simpler, responsive website and a more modern logo to bring the company into the 21st century.

Working in a small group of senior design students, I helped to create a branding system for a local non-profit, Food Rescue: Des Moines. Our team worked on elements of the design individually and combined them to create a business card, a pair of informational hand-outs, food labels, stationery, and a template flyer for promoting their events. I worked personally on the logo, business card, and process card.