DumLuk is my creative outlet, a testament to what little success I can claim: the sum product of a wee bit of talent, a lil' bit of hustle, and a lot of dumb luck.

Now accepting new:

• Friends
• Connections
• Potential Work Inquiries
• Dad jokes

Creative Director → 2019
Principal → 2023

Brand Creative Direction and Leadership at Thinkingbox, managing a partnership with Riot Games.

My past couple of years have been growing a bespoke team in LA and building out verticals for entertainment and gaming. We're currently passing the days and living the dream working with one of the biggest names in entertainment and gaming, delivering experiences that are first and foremost: player-first.

Designer → 2015
AD → 2016
ACD → 2018
CD → 2019

As VCT touches down in Tokyo for Masters 2023, Riot came bearing a love-letter to the cultural zeitgeist of Japan: a manga. You read that right. Riot tapped my team at TBX to help architect and build a digital web experience to house the manga that they had been working so diligently on, scaled to meet all supported locales across Riot's regions, as well as a scalable site supporting both desktop and mobile (and everything in between) to a feature-robust experience within.

Made with Riot Games, VCT and Riot Esports teams.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Krystyn Claire.
Animation by Miguel Sarroca.
Production by Emi Mason, Colin Greenberg.
Development by Nicole Rego, Saugat Malla, Luke Jensen.
Art by SHOTOPOP.

Creative direction and oversight for the visualizer production of "Lightbringer," the main theme for The Mageseeker, Riot Forge's latest video game. Our team at TBX was tapped to help bring to life a string of key visuals, setting the tone and helping to tell the story behind The Mageseeker.

Made with Riot Games → Riot Forge, Marketing.
Working in partnership with Thinkingbox's sister company, The Heist.
Direction by Kal Nguyen, Miquel Reina.
Design by Miquel Reina, Andy Burdin, and Annie Myron.
Animation by Arturo Acevedo, Miquel Reina, Ken George, Miguel Sarroca, and Prajay Mehta.
Production by Emi Mason, Colin Greenberg, and Daniel Midgley.

Creative direction, design, writing, and positioning for a video piece for Codashop. Introducing CODEE, our adorable but trusted mascot and sherpa through the world of top-ups and third-party gaming wallets. I was able to help direct, write, and design a treatment that captures Codashop's offerings through the lens of their new mascot, and help to establish a better foothold in the gaming space for third-party wallets, and navigating the future of all of it with Codashop.

I was also able to help direct and finalize a series of animations centered around CODEE to establish his personality and demeanor, some of which you'll find in the "Only on Codashop" brand offerings video itself.

Made with Coda Payments → Codashop, Marketing.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Kal Nguyen, Ben Marley, and Miguel Sarroca.
Animation by Ben Marley and Miguel Sarroca.
Character Development by Chris Martinetti, Scott Hiers, Ken George, Ben Marly, and Miguel Sarroca.
Production by Nicole Blake, Colin Greenberg, Prajay Mehta.

Visualizer for VALORANT's LA son, Gekko. Creative direction, art direction, design, motion graphics, and production all wrapped up into one fun video set to ericdoa's "greater than one" theme track.

Made in partnership with VALORANT, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design & Animation by Miquel Reina, Arturo Acevedo, Ken George, Miguel Sarroca, and Prajay Mehta.

For League of Legends' yearly ranked reset and kickoff, we teamed up with LoLPC (and some cross-collaboration with LoLEsports) to create the Season 2023 digital campaign and hub experience. Together, we created a myriad of digital work across an smattering of keyart, social, moments within the League client hub, mograph, and other marketing assets to help bolster the campaign across both League and LoLEsports networks.

Made with LoLPC GMC + LoL Esports Global Creative.
Design by Kal Nguyen.
Animation / Motion Graphics by Ben Marley, and Ken George.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Art and animation by BUCK.
Development by BOND.

Overseeing the strategic and creative production support for Riot Games' very own social channels across Instagram and Twitter, spanning from ideation and concepting to implementation to full-scale production, as well as community management across evergreen and tentpole campaigns.

Making with Riot Games, Brand Social Team.
Working in partnership with Thinkingbox's sister company, AntiSocial.
Design by Julie Chang, Annie Myron, and Coco Petersen.
Direction by Kal Nguyen and Julie Chang.

Short-lived, but worthwhile. Coming off the success of both LoL and VALORANT's esports scenes, Wild Rift hit the ground running to setup their own platform. To coincide with the league's first major tournament, Icons 2022, my team at Thinkingbox was tapped to create a sister-platform. Now this ain't our first rodeo within the ecosystem, but we knew we had to deviate a little on the core experience because we knew WR was a mobile-first game, hence: a mobile-first web experience.

Made with Riot Esports, Wild Rift Esports, Creative + Engineering, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen
Strategy, UX by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Bryan Park, Kal Nguyen.
Development by Luke Jensen, Saugat Malla, Christian Boswell.
Production by Corey Hankey, Bronson Molen.

After almost a year after Arcane's release, Riot tapped our team at Thinkingbox to help own the lead-up to their new behind-the-scenes documentary series, Bridging the Rift. Over the course of five episodes, each with its own focus of moments and stories, our team pitched and helped create a series of content buckets that would maximize viewer attention and re-capture eyes over the 5-week release schedule.

Made with the Riot Games, Entertainment Social team.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design and creative by Kevin Chen, Coco Petersen, Annie Myron, and Julie Chang.

Creative, strategy, UX, and visual design support for League PC's Worlds 2022 experience within the League client. A lot of this work was translating an expansive brand-kit built for primarily broadcast and campaign work into a digital and interactive experience geared towards a LoLPC-first demographic.

Made with LoL Esports Global Creative + LoLPC GMC.
Design by Kevin Chen and Kal Nguyen.
Development by BOND.

Visualizer for Harbor's release. Creative direction, design, motion graphics, and production set to the "RAJA" theme track. Lots of fun with localization here, we even had Praj (Direction, Animation) consult his mom for some guidance lmao.

Made in partnership with VALORANT, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen, Prajay Mehta.
Design & Animation by Miquel Reina, Arturo Acevedo, Ken George, Miguel Sarroca.

Creative direction and creative strategy for Set 7.5's minigame event. Diegetic design and art direction to extend the metagame system (MGS) in line with the larger event thematic and keep things cohesive.

Made in collaboration with Riot Games and TFT.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Krystyn Claire.
Development by BOND.

Together, we made a mini-game bigger than any other we've built so far: from defining the core player UX to honing the UI and expanding theme-fantasy to creating animations and sequences for a storytelling-driven experience of friendship vs. evil—we worked on it all. Then we applied those learnings to a marketing experience for LoL players within the League client, expanding the Star Guardian reach as far across the galaxy as we could. Honestly there were lots of moments and findings where we expanded on brand-building for Star Guardian and our work helped define core elements that were then used across various other experiences during Riot's annual summer event, making a unique and holistic campaign across the board.

Made in partnership with LoLPC Events team, and LoL PC GMC.
Direction by Kal Nguyen, Andy Burdin.
Design by Coco Petersen, Annie Myron, Krystyn Claire, Andy Burdin, Kal Nguyen.
Animation by Arturo Acevedo, Miguel Sarroca, Ben Marley, Kyle Castro, Miquel Reina.

For Episode 04, the VALORANT marketing team tee'd up a slew of marketing campaign initiatives across a 3 act arc, driving to create deeper and richer storytelling within the VALORANT world, as well as bring players along for the ride and provide opportunities to participate and bring their stories to life. From UGC curation and prompts that allowed us to create highlights and cutdowns, to titles and design around RGX's fated return, to a campaign around Fade's release (with both her visualizer and a series of story illustrations), this episode was one for the books.

Direction by Kal Nguyen, Miquel Reina.
Design by Miquel Reina, Coco Wang, Arturo Acevedo.
Animation by Miquel Reina, Arturo Acevedo, Praj Mehta.
Illustration by Chris Martinetti.
Production by Laura Kanter, Dan Midgley.

Enter the magical mythical world of… Dragons! Our team at Thinkingbox was able to help the TFT Global Marketing team bring Set 7’s marcom campaign assets across the board to life—whether it be YouTube thumbnails, in-client visuals, banners, site updates, and ASO—we were able to help where we could. Top it off with a mograph package that included title-cards, supers, transitions, lower-thirds, and endcards to round out a holistic visual campaign. We are proud to work with our partners at Riot, as well as alongside friends at Wild Blue Studios and Brunch Studio.

Battle Animals, squad up! Ok, Bill Barteldes would have written a better line here but we're here now. Working with the LeaguePC GMC team, we made a client hub experience that helped you find *your* specific Battle Animal, all through an interactive quiz that would result in five unique takeovers, with each aligning with a different champion's animal. From creative strategy, UX, prototyping, and visual design, our teams were able to help bring this to life to make a niche skinline more than meets the eye.

Made with League PC GMC.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Krystyn Claire, Coco Petersen, Annie Myron, Kal Nguyen.

Creative platform, direction, and tactics ideation for Wild Rift's Yuumi's Adventure campaign. Set around Valentine's Day for the launch of Yuumi and Heartseeker skins, Wild Rift tapped my team at TBX to help build out a creative platform that would extend the metagame system (MGS) from in-product to marketing ephemera. From there, we were able to concept and craft tactics to creating assets including illustration, design, and copywriting to highlight the campaign at large.

Made in partnership with LoL: Wild Rift, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Writing by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Krystyn Claire, Kal Nguyen.
Illustration, Art by Chris Martinetti, Anbi Lee.
Production by Dan Midgley.

Like the old saying goes, "don't fix it if it ain't broke." Alright, so it was a little broke. Through a deep UX and design strategy exercise, TBX and Riot set out to redesign the system in which new LOLPC champions are presented within the League client hub. Moving quickly through a set of design sprints, we were able to help fill out the blueprint for Riot to scale the act of launching new champions without reinventing the visual wheel each time, looking instead for quick and easy content management and ability to launch in shorter ramp-ups.

Case study coming soon. A few reference images below.

Building off the previous year's complete brand overhaul, our team worked with Riot to craft the key visuals and an updated evolution of the brand for Season 2022. The rallying call "Forged in Fire," laser-focused everyone on Riot's MOBA franchises, to create a unified brand moment across League PC, Wild Rift, and LoLEsports. Riot tapped our shoulder to bring it home via campaign visuals and tactics across social, digital, and in-client.

Made with LoLPC GMC, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Bruno Galvani, Andy Burdin.
Animation by Ben Marley, Ken George, Miguel Sarroca.
Production by Joey Bright, Dan Midgley.

Rise, chosen one. Creative platform, direction, and social tactics for Wild Rift's Dragonmancer campaign. From penning the creative platform, to implementing the League Dragonmancer brand as an extension into the Wild Rift universe, to concepting and crafting tactics and production design for a 5-week social campaign, my team at TBX was able to collaborate and make some fun work with the WR crew.

Made in partnership with LoL: Wild Rift, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Writing by Kal Nguyen, Wyatt Fossett.
Design by Bryan Park, Kal Nguyen, Andy Burdin.
Motion graphics by Ben Marley.
Production by Dan Midgley.

A time-gated metagame experience that unlocked as Arcane progressed and dropped a new act from week to week. UX strategy, interaction design, art direction, visual design, and boy howdy a lot of production support to bring an immersive storytelling experience to life for the LoLPC diehards.

Riot launched a mf'ing TV show, y'all. With a robust launch strategy in place, our team at Thinkingbox was tapped to help bring a plethora of beautiful moments to life via your phones. Get people's attention, tease the show, launch the damn thing, and keep all eyes on Jinx. Or Vi. Or whatever team you roll with. Made in conjunction with the Arcane Social team at Riot.

For the 2021 Lunar New Year season, Riot had a hyper-focus on uniting their MOBA properties with one cohesive brand package. Lunar Revel is a brand revival from previous LNY campaign experiences, now re-packaged with an ability to scale year-over-year while encompassing brand umbrellas across LoL PC, TFT, and Wild Rift.

My team at Thinkingbox was tapped to envision and build out the brand-kit for Lunar Revel, scaling across each MOBA brand as needed. Our team covered bases from brand, guidelines, tactics, and production for marketing as well as consulting moments within product (notably TFT). This helped build up our work for the following year with Lunar Revel 2023.

Made with Wild Rift, LoL PC, and TFT GMC teams, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen, Andy Burdin.
Design by Andy Burdin, Bruno Galvani, Miquel Reina, and Tony Yu.
Motion Design by Miguel Sarroca, Ben Marley, Prajay Mehta.
Production by Joey Bright, Dan Midgley.

Big beefy boisterous bubba. Riot launched a TV show. We made a bunch of stuff on the digital front. Two social campaigns, two interactive experiences, and one big fuckin' moment.

To keep it short:
Into the Arcane - Branding, Creative — Interactive Marketing Hub Experience for LoLPC
Council Archives - Creative — Interactive Exploratory Hub Experience for LoLPC
Riot × Arcane - Design — Marketing + Social Campaign
Arcane S1 Launch - Creative, Design, Production — Social Campaign

There's a running joke that throughout all these years, Riot made video games so they could have an excuse to make music. Then 2021 came around and the meme became reality, and Riot Games Music was born.

Right before the grand debut, TBX was approached to help tighten up RGM's brand kit, with an ask to find new ways to further execute on core tactics, and expand on their limited design elements for scalability and future longevity. Our team helped propose a few new ideas core to their brand with design and art direction guidelines in place for the RGM team to roll through their launch, and set the tone of how music in the gaming industry would change forever. Mic drop.

With the success of LoLEsports.com, VALORANT was looking to piggy-back a copacetic experience within Riot's web ecosystem for their own use as VCT was spinning up. My team at Thinkingbox was able to tap into the existing dev stack and CMS to further build an all-in-one platform and landing experience on the web for VALORANT Esports viewers, readers, fans, and potential advertisers alike.

Throughout the past couple years, we've been able to help bolt-on and create other experiences within VALORANT Esports, including new product features across the site, improved UX and a multitude of scalable and adjustable modules, to new marketing initiatives like the VCT '23 reveal pages.

Made with Riot Esports, VALORANT Esports, Creative + Engineering, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen, Andy Burdin.
Strategy, UX by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Andy Burdin, Krystyn Claire.
Content by Ken George.
Development by Luke Jensen, Saugat Malla, Christian Boswell.
Production by Corey Hankey, Dan Midgley, Bronson Molen.

Partnering with Riot Games, Global Marketing, we set out to create a brand for Sentinels of Light, helping to bring the encompassing massive summer campaign to life over a 6 month period.

Creative direction, visual design, interaction design, mograph, social, the whole kit n' kaboodle.

Made with many partners across LoLPC GMC team, as well as the LoLPC Events team, and then collaboration with Wild Rift, TFT, and LoR as they rolled out their applications.
Direction (Creative, Art, Brand) by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Miquel Reina, Christian Broadbent, Bruno Galvani, Andy Burdin.
Production by Corey Hankey, Dan Midgley.

In Spring 2021, TFT launched Set 5: Reckoning, twisting the world of the Convergence with the ever-encroaching Black Mist. My team was bolted on to serve as design consultants, helping to craft the identity of Reckoning, as well as provide creative production support and anything we could to help launch the visual campaign from in-game, social, video, editorial, and interactive.

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Made with Riot Games, Global Marketing, TFT — while at Thinkingbox.

Freshly minted, "Season 2021" entered the fray with a new look, feel, and attitude to help bring LoLPC players up to speed on what the year holds in store. We paired up with Riot to create mascot moments for Season 2021 across their whole umbrella of game titles; crafting a design system that scaled to accommodate each IP's unique personality while unifying the Season brand at large. Keyart, social, digital, in-client hub experience, and early art direction to help set the scene for their livestream visuals.

Made with Riot Games, Global Marketing, LoL — while at Thinkingbox.

Visuals and ephemera for the highly-anticipated return of the queens of KPOP. Are you ready to go All Out?

LoLPC came to us with an updated brand identity and art direction around K/DA's fated return, and tapped us to help figure out the rest of the execution across a multi-week lead up digital marketing campaign. Album and singles art, TikTok takeovers, interactive client hub experiences, teasers, hype moments, and more countdowns than you can, well, count.

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Made with Riot Games, LoL Inc Marketing — while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Alex Bell, Abby Bayles, Christian Broadbent, Miquel Reina, Kal Nguyen.
Brand Identity by Cory Schmitz.

TFT honored us with the opportunity to design an identity and for Set 4: FATES. We were able to support through branding, creative direction, art direction, and design across all of Set 4 and 4.5's marketing moments and channels to create a cohesive visual identity across both set and half-set, building on each other to create a memorable 6-month season.

Made with TFT, GMC at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Christian Broadbent, Abby Bayles, Alex Bell, Miquel Reina, and Kal Nguyen.
Production by Hannah Hendricks, Corey Hankey.

The Spirit Blossom festival is one part anime meets another part Ionian folklore, all packaged within a 6 week campaign releasing 2 new champions, multiple new skins, 2 marquee animations, and a mini-game like no other. Our team at Thinkingbox was asked to help Riot Games concoct a digital experience unlike anything Riot had done before... a dating simulator. uWu your heart out.

We embedded into the Spirit Blossom team and helped carry out touchpoints on branding, overall visual language, storytelling and UX, interactive and digital design, and animation & social teasers. We had a blast helping create one of the most memorable and largest moments in League history so far.

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Made with Riot Games, LoL Inc Marketing — while at Thinkingbox.

Continuing our long-standing relationship with Adobe, our team was augmented to help support with a plethora of design support working within Spectrum, and eventually expanding the Consonant brand language and presence. This was a lot of auditing and UX strategy work to help define patterns, stress-test design decisions, and work across verticals to ensure all teams, whether Experience, Doc, or Creative Cloud, were heard and accounted for in their initiatives, funnels, and goals.

Direction by Kal Nguyen, Scott Hiers.
Product design by Dylan May, Ena Curisinche, Alex Coelho.
Animation by Ben Marley, Kyle Castro.

League was turning a decade old, and when Riot asked us to help drive the core creative visuals for their 10th birthday, how could we say no? After the smoke settled, we walked away 6 new games (and 6 Ryze reworks) richer.

I led a small team to craft a brand package that allowed regions across the globe to implement as necessary, scaling the system across all digital elements: identity, keyart, social, interactive, and mograph.

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Made with Riot Games, LoL Inc Marketing — while at Welikesmall.

Origin, Roasting, and Craft — boiling down the essence of coffee into digestible stories that educate, inform, and train new Starbucks Partner's as they begin their journey working anywhere from behind the counter to behind a desk. Understanding the story of coffee starts from farm to cup, and helping partners grasp the cycle of coffee is paramount to what makes Starbucks more than just your average coffee brand.

Working alongside Starbucks, our team set out to concept, write, create, and direct a series of videos for each vertical within Origin, Roasting, and Craft. Leveling up from 100 to 200 to 300, we crafted a series of videos with found footage (from our years working on 1912 Pike and Starbucks Channel) mixed with memes, gifs, and a tone that lowered the barrier of entry to understanding just how much good Starbucks does in the space, minus the eye-rolls.

Written by Mike Kern, Matt Heath, with support from Kal Nguyen. Art direction by Kal Nguyen.
Design by Dylan May, Mike Kern, and Kal Nguyen.
Production by WLS, Fern, and Digital Gravy.

Marketers are capable of amazing things, and Adobe set out to remind them just how. Working with Experience Cloud and building on our campaigns from the previous two years, we created a brand platform and visual execution that brought the wonderful world of the circus as a bridge to the many skills that marketers bring to the table. The New Amazing and it's many marketing arts.

Our experience was a microsite that provided an in-depth program that is focused on unlocking all parts of the marketing experience, and just how Adobe can help you reach the next level. Our team at Welikesmall was responsible for all creative and visual fronts, from directing a bespoke content shoot, to creative direction and development for the site itself. What a show.

In collaboration with Adobe.
Creative direction by Kal Nguyen.
Art Direction + Design by Kal Nguyen and Anthony Troester.
Video Direction by Mike Kern.
Content by Ryan Gass, Ryan Dearth, Kal Nguyen.
Development by Luke Jensen, Kyle Cummings, Mitchell Barton.

Awaken, player. Focusing on all things core League, our team at WLS helped Riot craft a keyart visual design language that could house a series of beautifully rendered 3D champions, and expand into a mograph package for their broadcast and video content. Pair that with a microsite and League client experience that peppered content over the course of the week, we helped lay League's grand plans and roadmap for what their players could expect in 2019.

Keyart, visual design, motion graphics, UX, interaction design, and creative direction.

NDA'd. What I can say is that this work was completed during a time when Oculus was internally eyeing a complete strategy shift across their marketing channels and redefining their consumer targets, largely as prep work and brand positioning for the new identity that would succeed in 2021. Change takes time, y'all.

Special mention that it was a fun experience building something so deeply engrained in the FB system.

With the future of smart home technology progressing faster every day, the landscape was ripe with competitors trying to make a name for themselves. Vivint was no exception, but they were also no stranger to the smart home security game. To match their knowledge and expertise in the space, our team at Welikesmall was tapped to dive deep into the strategy and UX around the website to generate and captue leads, establish SEO dominance, and update the visual brand of Vivint.com.

Direction by Nadya Bratt, support by Kal Nguyen.
UX + Visual Design by Nadya Bratt, Kal Nguyen, Dylan May, Christian Broadbent, and Ena Curisinche.

When competitive ranked just isn't enough. Clash is League's answer to the intensity of professional esports-level play for the masses, creating a live-tournament system where you and 4 teammates band together to compete in real time against a series of equally matched teams, from Friday to Sunday. With a brand new system and a plethora of rules and formats to follow, WLS teamed up with Riot to create an educational microsite experience that walked you through what a Clash weekend could look like, leading you from your first game of the tournament, all the way to Clash winner. Top it off with a free Clash ticket, and a custom shareable team card to get your friends to join your climb to Clash Winner.

UX, interaction design, visual design, development direction, animation.

A decade after the iPhone killed Flash, and changed the way we interact with Web 2.5. Adobe reached out to WLS to craft a mobile-first (buzzword!) experience that highlighted the importance of the device many of us hold dearest to our hearts (and pocket pants.) Targeted at marketers and information technology professionals, Adobe was keen on showcasing deep data on all things mobile to their DX enterprise audience. From writing, concepting, art direction, interaction design, and a quiz that helped shape your own color-personalized report, WLS owned the design pipeline to create a web experience that launched during Adobe Summit 2018, tying the experience together in both physical and digital spaces.

Seriously, a robot fish? Teaming up with our friends at Wieden + Kennedy, WLS created a campaign for TravelOregon.com. We shot and directed a series of 360° videos, built a custom video player, executed a 5 location, 25 person crew shoot, and of course—built the worlds first robotic puppet salmon with renowned creature expert Rick Lazzarini and voiced by comedian James Kirkland.

Time comes for us all, and innovation is a consequence of survival. Reebok Innovation Collective is Reebok's initiative in creating sportswear technology in new and unexpected spaces, and finding the intersection of humans and athletes in streetwear, haute couture, businesswear, and more. Nike can't have all the fun.

Reebok approached WLS to build out RIC's digital online presence on Reebok.com, with Hovercraft crafting the brand identity, and Legwork on motion design. We further explored the evolution of how to further include a digital community and UGC, looking to Reebok's devout to help shape where RIC could go in the future.

Digital art direction, visual design, development. Gif by Legwork.

'Adobe is the world leader in software for creatives, but years of disparate publishing and a fiercely independent audience had left their communication channel fractured.' Yeah I stole that from the WLS write-up but it does the job. To be real, we spent the better part of 18 months both developing a site that would consolidate and organize 150 different blogs into one. Built on Wordpress and eventually Adobe's own AEM, we gave publishers the tools they needed to create bespoke content with tools for readers to get the most out of their content, as well as working alongside the Adobe team to manage content across all editorial. You know how much goes into a re-working of taxonomy, workflows, thought-patterns, and organization as well art direction and design across both individual moments and Adobe as a whole? Yeah, I found out the hard way, too. My first fully realized design system, and end-to-end editorial experience.

Made with Adobe, while at Thinkingbox.
Direction by Mike Kern.
Design by Kal Nguyen, Christian Broadbent, Anna Larsen, Rebecca Clayton, Mike Kern.
Production by Corey Hankey.
Editorial and Brand support from our friends at 7D8.

1912 Pike → 2015
Starbucks Channel → 2018
Starbucks Stories → 2021

Agency of record for 1912 Pike, managing and creating content and the full editorial pipeline in partnership with Starbucks. Working alongside other parallels to bring coffee education and resources to the Starbucks ecosystem.

Teaching the world about coffee, one cup at a time. Complete digital ecosystem design, from an editorial website, to content strategy, writing, video, film & content, brand, design, and more.

Made while at Welikesmall.
Creative leadership by Mike Kern.
Kari Juip, Michelle Buhler, Tommy Chandler, Ryan Gass, Christian Broadbent, Ena Curisinche, Alex Bell, Elan Bartholomew, Kyle Cummings, Anna Larson, Abby Bayles, Kal Nguyen.
Countless others who came in and out of the process throughout the next 6 year stint as we kept it going.

I'll say it: pollen allergies fuckin' suck. So when JWT approached our team at Welikesmall to tackle the redesign of Zyrtec's mobile app, we said yes, and asked for payment in the form of a lifetime supply of Zyrtec pills, please. Our team was asked to design an app that could be your single destination for all your pollen-allergy woes: from pollen and weather forecasting, to symptom tracking and monitoring. We worked to better visualize Zyrtec's "Allergy Impact," and create a tool that anybody could use to monitor, and hopefully improve, their life from day to day, free from allergies (we hope.)

It's a pirate's life for thee, even if you haven't got your sea legs. Social in the 2010's was still a wild wild west of figuring out what the hell good the difference between Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else isn't kickin' it anymore. So when Ubisoft tapped STS to own the social campaign for ACIV: Black Flag, we manned the ship without any hesitation. Leaning more into game-education and knowledge, we utilized social to highlight key game mechanics and character bios, building deeper trust in the lore, and showing just what's so different about this latest addition in a renown franchise. See you on the seas, matey.

Made with Ubisoft, while at Super Top Secret.
Creative direction by Ryan Martindale, Jared Strain.
Art direction by Thiago Gutierrez.
Design by Thiago Gutierrez, Tanner Capua, Shawn Leboutillier, Kal Nguyen.
Production by Sara Quintero.

Rossi: a brand known for being one of the oldest ski brands in history. So you may be asking... wtf were we doing designing snowboards? At this point, STS had been the AOR for Rossignol's Snowboards division for a number of years, winning Rossi over with STS' deep history in counter-culture, skate punx, stick it to the man, degenerate couture lifestyle. Snowboards deserved a different strategy than skis, and STS was ready to make that change.

For the 14-15' lineup, I was a young designer fresh from school, hungry to make something real. I was given the chance to help concept, art direct, and design a number of snowboards and bindings, alongside a tight-knit and talented team of creatives, designers, illustrators, and artists.

Direction by Jared Strain.
Art Direction by Shawn Leboutillier, Jared Strain, Tanner Capua, Blandine Mathieu, Kal Nguyen.
Design by everybody above, also including Dan Wells, Jordan de Mik, Kit Nordfelt.
Production by Sara Quintero, Roxanne Wise.