I am an award-winning creative director in New York whose past clients include the Lincoln Motor Company, Microsoft and New York Lottery. I specialize in branding and integrated campaigns where I can take a Big Idea and translate it into a spectrum of offerings and iterations, from TVC to digital to social.
I was first published at 18. I like writing about outsiders, music and underground scenes, subjects like Japan’s illicit sex trade, Russia’s ex-pat feminist rockers Pussy Riot and California’s underground pitfights where brawlers bloody each other in dockside warehouses. To get stories, I’ve interviewed extortionists, followed a fire-breathing, sword-swallowing sideshow circus across the country, and survived the fourth-ever Burning Man on nothing but water, nuts, dried fruit and psychotropics. My work has appeared in the Atlantic, Playboy, Rolling Stone and numerous other publications.
I was in a band for a few years. Capitol Records gave us some money and we recorded with a big-name producer. Our van had captain’s seats and royal blue shag carpeting, and we spent a lot of time loading stuff into and out of it. Interpol once opened for us. Backstage, they got into an argument with each other where one of them said, in a really whiny voice, “All I’m saying is, I just want to be acknowledged!” Then another one of them hit on my girlfriend and passed out in a chair. We made fun of them, which tells you how little we knew about how the music industry works.
Being a writer and being in a band taught me hard-won lessons in branding, collaboration and promotion. If your art isn’t generating commerce, in ideas if not currency, then it doesn’t exist. This is the riddle of advertising: how to solve business problems with creative output. I devise new answers every day.
I’ve worked with the commercial Web since its inception, making websites, digital experiences and immersive environments. I’ve owned or co-owned two digital shops, handling scores of successful projects for clients ranging from Whole Foods to CAT Footwear. My teams produced websites and digital content for seminal anime films like “Ghost in the Shell,” independent movie distributors and Arizona Jeans.
I’ve taught classes at DePaul University in game design, digital media and history.
Activism is important to me. I was illegally arrested for protesting the Iraq War on March 20, 2003, won a five-figure settlement from the City of Chicago, and figure prominently in a documentary about the protest called “Where We Stood.” I’m also in the documentary “The King, The Lawyers and the Cheese” about underground comix artist King Velveeda and his legal battle with Kraft, and have been interviewed by WNYC, Vocalo Radio, Chicago magazine and other outlets.
I’m a rare cut of meat.