Presentation

National Managed Healthcare Congress

September 14, 2013 by

The National Managed Health Care Congress (NMHCC) is an annual event that connects health care executives across the entire managed care realm to facilitate collaboration for improved business practices. It is owned by IIR Holdings. One of their events was produced in collaboration with Astra-Zeneca, a multinational pharmaceutical and biologics company.

Dan and his San Francisco-based boutique agency, Sp3d, was contracted to design event’s theme and extend it to materials such as the event brochure and a splashy animation for introducing the keynote speaker on a huge screen behind the podium. The artwork needed to illustrate the power of partnerships in healthcare, the theme of that year’s event.

Spare the Air PSA

September 14, 2013 by

Dan and his San Francisco-based boutique agency, Sp3d, was commissioned to conceive, design, and produce a 30-second television spot for “Spare the Air” which alerted commuters to days with bad air quality.

The public service announcements were financed and managed by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Dab created a series of cartoon characters and hand-drawn scenes for animation, based around storyboarding for the TV spot. The PSA was broadcast throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Watch the video

High Start Group

September 14, 2013 by

High Start Group is a consulting company that helps their clients accelerate the success of their innovations by leveraging its unique customer-centric and data-driven approach. HSG works closely with them to rapidly conceive, validate, and launch products that customers will love.

Dan was HSG’s creative director and worked with a wide variety of their clients, including AT&T, Vivox, and Santander. In addition, Dan created HSG’s brand and designed the company website and collateral materials. Bob is HSG’s Senior Web Developer, handling the backend of the consultancy’s many clients.

Betterscape

September 14, 2013 by

Betterscape is a Facebook gaming app that rewards and promotes people who make the world a better place in their day-to-day lives. Players tell short, real-life stories about how their friends improve the world around them. By rewarding others with karma points in specific ‘good deed’ categories, points let players earn badges like Earth-Saver, Do-Gooder, Mentor, and many others. BetterScape donates 90% of the revenue from the sale of virtual karma refills to a different set of high-impact 501c(3) non-profits every month.

This game was based on the observation that people spend hundreds of hours playing games like Farmville, with no obvious benefit other than to kill time. A game that actually rewards positive behavior could be an element of change.

Dan was the team’s creative director, responsible for branding, messaging and the design of the user interface of the Facebook game.

Generate, Inc.

September 14, 2013 by

The meeting

From coffee-soaked idea to acquisition

The road to success started on a napkin, at a golf course, in a smoky bar…

Generate is one of those happy-ending startup stories Dan just loves to tell. Dan met twin entrepreneurs Tom and Darr Aley at a golf course, where a sketch was produced on a napkin. It was the basic interface concept behind what would become Generate g2—technology that solved the fundamental challenge of acquiring essential business, profiles, executives and relationships in a single view. G2 was business intelligence on steroids.

So first off, there needed to be some down-and-dirty branding and product front-end development—young Generate’s first suit, tie, and loafers! And Generate’s first corporate logo. Tom was carrying his bag to different venture capitalists to secure seed funding. He needed a basic look for his baby company. And the product interface needed to look professional. All this basic branding and interface design wound up in his PowerPoint presentation for pitching investors.

Dan made the brand green and crisp, like an apple. Generate was positioned as a premium business intelligence service empowered with a social-networking component. Its business intelligence database was real-time. It was like selling organic vegetables—the product had to be fresh to retain maximum value. The color green on white and black was simple, straightforward, and fresh. Organic, crispy intelligence just harvested from rich, black soil!

And Generate got funded!

After initial funding, the first year, Generate was in stealth mode. The team was immersed in building the product, while quietly wooing new customers and investors. Dan worked with the developers to create interface designs that could be built efficiently as scalable CSS templates for future expansion.Generate g2 had deep data on millions of companies and executives—and showed how the customer connected to them. The interface needed to be simple to use while offering business intelligence from our proprietary dynamic business databases.

One year later and Generate g2 was in place. It was time to take it to the stage. CEO Tom Aley began public introductions of Generate g2. Generate was a finalist at the American Business Awards as well as at the SIIA CODiE Awards. This got Dan to change hats at produce promotional materials: banner ads, a landing page, and print advertising. Also, an identity system for a line of data products that was evolving. And of course, alongside the product website, the marcom website was designed and built.Generate g2 was marketed across the United States. They were very active at trade events and were getting daily press exposure. There were trade shows to design for, webinars, presentations, animations, collateral, data sheets—the whole nine yards. Dan also was pushing the envelope by researching and developing techniques to visualize connection paths in better ways. And then…

Acquisition!

On Thursday, April 17, 2008, 11:00 a.m. Generate Inc. was acquired by Dow Jones and Company.

Success at last! Now the limitations of a startup were removed, and Generate had the resources of a major corporation to promote and develop our technology. It was the best outcome the Generators could hope for.

The acquisition meant that Dan would be part of an established brand and would need to understand it intuitively.

Awards

2008 Software and Information Industry Association CODiE Awards:
Best Content Aggregation ServiceBest Content Newcomer
Best Solution Integrating Content into Workflow
Best Business Productivity Solution
Best Online Business Information Service
Best Online News ServiceFinalist, 2008 Red Herring 100 AwardsInterface Design, Dow Jones g2
Finalist, 2008 SoftwareCEO Software Innovation Awards
Finalist, SBANE 2008 Innovation Awards
Finalist, 2008 SoftwareCEO Awards
Second Place, Top Innovator of 2007
2007 Information Today People’s Choice Awards
Second Place, Top Enterprise Application 2007 Information Today People’s Choice Awards
Finalist, 2007 American Business Awards

Moms & Jobs

September 14, 2013 by

Moms and Jobs—MoJo—was a Boston-based social venture whose objective was to address the issues facing poverty-stricken mothers. MoJo’s goal was to provide single mothers freedom from the strain of daycare costs and a new career path by enabling then with a new start in the apparel business. All proceeds from product sales were devoted to providing better-than-minimum-wage salaries, new career paths, and freedom from prohibitive daycare costs.

Dan was the Creative Director of Moms & Jobs. During his time there, he created the company brand (in two phases—”Original MoJo” that you see here, and later, “American MoJo), managed a vast array of product photography and model shoots, designed the commerce website, and conceived and designed the many seasonal product promotion campaigns.

The “Original MoJo” brand was the first incarnation of MoJo’s look-and-feel.

National Managed Healthcare Congress

Spare the Air PSA

High Start Group

Betterscape

Generate, Inc.

Moms & Jobs

Stay in the loop: Newsletter coming soon.

Contact RPS

Presentation

Footer

Stay in the loop: Newsletter coming soon.

Contact RPS