For two decades, I've worked in corporate communications strategy, message, and design creating direct mail and digital campaigns. In 2022, I founded Design Is The Message, a design-focused strategy communications firm where I am now primarily working with new business startups and growing small businesses to establish their brand and marketing strategy. I work with a design-first philosphy where great design leads narrative storytelling.
Not everything is about a profit. I apply creative energy to producing fun projects that push our perception of the world, whether that is looking at ordinary objecets in new ways or reconceputalizing the world by manipulating mass media. Each of these internet performance art projects can serve as a proof-of-concept on how to impact the world.
Brooklyn Playgrounds
Webflow, photography, writing
As a parent of a toddler, I visit a lot of playgrounds. They aren't all built equally. We wanted a resource to help us find better playgrounds and non existed. So we built it.
I've worked alongside my wife on this project and we both contribute reviews. We also solicit feedback from our three-year-old. The most important thing was creating a method to find specific features at a playground. For a long time the only thing our infant did was swing in the toddler swing. Now he hates swings. If want to find a playground with a sandbox, there was no good way of doing it. That's why we created Brooklyn Playgrounds.
Sound Cloud, 2021
Animated Gif with MP3 Sound, HTML
Playing on the "check out my SoundCloud" meme, the Sound Cloud is a literal cloud with the repetitive phrase "sound" playing in the background. While most SoundCloud's serve as a commercial product to genreate profits or at the very least to inform, the Sound Cloud does literally nothing but exist
Toilets of New York
Photography, Tumblr
Toilets of New York began in a bathroom. I came to notice that often, bar and restaurant bathrooms were heavily decorated, aesthetically pleasing experiences. Some person had spent hours choosing the objects, wallpapers, and style. I took photos.
I began amassing photos of bathrooms over the course of several weeks and eventually launched a tumblr to catalogue the images. I began to notice patterns emerging and bathrooms that fell into categorical experiences: graffiti covered bathrooms; highly curated bathrooms filled with object d'art; institutional bathrooms striving for ascetic cleanliness.
Game of Thrones: New York City’s Most Filthy and Fascinating Bar Toilets
New York Observer 2.22.2013
What You Can Learn About Brooklyn By Looking at Its Bathrooms
The Atlantic Cities 3.5.2013
New NYC toilet blog delves into the dirty world of New York's bar bathrooms
New York Daily News 3.24.2013
Are these the world's most interesting toilets? Photographer goes on a quest to document the bathrooms of New York City
The Mail Online 3.24.2013
GUESS WHAT THE “TOILETS OF NEW YORK” TUMBLR FEATURES
Animal New York 2.25.2013
Visitez ... les toilettes de New York, Street-Art included !!!
Skeuds le Blog 2.26.2013
The Tumblr was the inspiration behind a short film by Brandon Bloch and Tim Sessler. For the film Dive Art, the Toilet Tumblr was used as a basis for location scouting. THey sough the toilets with grimiest, most graffiti-filled bathrooms. Most of the bars were accomodating
The film generated additional press:
You Can Finally Explore Brooklyn’s Grossest Bathrooms Set to Sexy Slow Jams
New York Observer 11.25.2013
This Video Makes Brooklyn's Dive Bar Bathrooms Look Beautiful
Gothamist, 12.2.2013
Brandon Bloch And Tim Sessler Find Beauty In Brooklyn Bar Bathrooms
Huffington Post, 12.2.2013
The Hidden Art of Dive Bar Bathrooms
Bloomberg, 11.29.2013
HIPSTERS RUIN EVERYTHING. A proposal for East Williamsburg to secede from the union emergesbit.ly/UJQXTF
— amanda chatel. (@angrychatel) November 16, 2012
East Williamsburg Seccession, 2012
White House Petitions
Following the 2012 Presidential election, people from across the United States flooded the White House's online petition system with requests to allow their states to secede from the Union. To satirize these petitions, I filed a petition not seeking to secede from the United States, but simply asking the President to support East Williamsburg's secession from Williamsburg, as two neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
The petition, written in a patronizing tone mimicking the existing state petitions, also touched on key words to attract attention in New York City: hipsters, real estate, Williamsburg. Gothamist reported on the petition the same day it was launched.
The Neighborhood News
New York Magazine 11.14.2012
East Williamsburg Graphic Designer Starts Petition To Secede From Unhip Williamsburg
Gothamist, 11.15.2012
A Petition to the Petitioners Trying to Secede East Williamsburg From Namesake
The Observer, 11.6.2012
Hipsters vs. Newcomers in Williamsburg Prompt Secession Movement
New York Daily News, 11.21.2012
East Williamsburg Petitions to Secede from Williamsburg
Curbed, 11.16.2012
The war between the nabes: East Williamsburg wants to secede!
Broklyn, 11.16.2012
Resident Starts Petition Wants East Eilliamsburg To Secede From That Other More Hip Williamsburg
Free Williamsburg
A proposal for East Williamsburg to secede from the union emerges
Brooklyn Vegan
Office Haiku, 2003-2016
Text, animation, sound recording
Office Haiku chronicles the daily grind of office work among an assortment of fictional characters.