A character in a favorite book of mine said “I’m an artist with the soul of an accountant.” This resonated with me in part because it was inverse to the typical phrasing you’d hear among struggling artists, and in part because it summed me up so well. The things I do in life are creative endeavors, be it design, music, writing, or putting out zines and putting on festivals. The flip side of that is having a fairly left-brained approach to those endeavors. I say all this because I believe in doing work that fits your life, and my life is one of an artist, with the soul of an accountant.

my work

Creative Direction

Since 2000 I've been working in the creative, often high volume environments of the tech industry. Dealing with imagery from books, tools, jewelry, and cell phones to high end fashion, model and band photography.
As a designer I specialized in digital visual design, photo editing, and process / production development. As a director I look to foster the creativity of my writers and designers to help them find ways to push the brand forward while maintaining it's identity. As a manager... I actually prefer to think of myself as a facilitator, helping my directs find and follow their paths.
Ultimately my goal is tying those things together to create, and aid in the creation of, an enthusiastic team and a compelling brand.

As a Manager/Creative Director at T-Mobile I helped create a new team within our digital studio that was to be focused on "Performance & Optimization" (our formal name, but more affectionately known as "Products & Offers" as that made up the brunt of our efforts). This team was put together to create work for T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile, as well as continuing work with our new partners from Sprint. Part of that work was a new field for the digital studio in "Display" advertising, those banners that appear on sites like CNet and Ebay. I worked with my creatives to develop our templates, processes, and best practices for the display work as well as the web work we were all already familiar with so we could improve on that as well. I oversaw many projects from every aspect of the work our new team was doing, leading from both the design perspective that was my background, and the copy perspective that my copywriting co-workers were always kind enough to think I had an affinity for.
These projects ranged from small and simple deals on the latest phones, to more complex new device launches from the likes of Apple and Samsung, the complete holiday treatment of our website, and exploring efforts to target our work to customers and prospects based on locale.

Design & Production

Visual / Web / Brand

Other Stuff

Game Design / Photography / Nonsense

me

"Mark combines passion and candor to deliver positive results, both in Creative and in Leadership." - Chris Noble, former Director

"Mark is without a doubt the best production lead I have ever worked with." - Marie Thacker, former Sr. Manager