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CATALYST®

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Challenge

Objective

Results

Challenge · Solution · Impact, copy to come

The case-study frame is set. Send a paragraph on the constraint, what you built and what it moved, and it drops straight into these three slots.

Team leadership

Before & after

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Inherited Redesigned

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                Eleven of sixteen SKUs shown
              

Direction

Eight boards
Four rules

Logotype anatomy

Colorway

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Flavour

Label ground {{ knockChipLabel }} {{ knockChipTypeLabel }} {{ knockType }}

Toggle the knockout: printed, the wordmark is one flat ink. Knocked out, it fills with the sauce. Which is exactly the colour that goes into the palette above.

MCC press proof for the Tropical Thunder label — Die5.570 × 3.010 in, 0.0156 in corner, 0.125 in gap SubstrateClear BOPP 2.0mil / S7000ER / 1.2PET SeparationsCMYK + white + D-stock clear: the clear plate is the sauce PressMCC Napa, job 81800. Seven items on one proof

The mailer open, four bottles seated in the insert — The box, made Printed, folded, packed. The mailer with the four-bottle insert seated inside.

Printed mailers stacked, “go with your gut” on every side panel — The box, made Printed, folded, packed. The mailer with the four-bottle insert seated inside.

{{ p.socialNote }} Pick a cut on the right; tap the frame to pause.

hotdrops · 4h Send message

hotdrops Santa Rosa, California

hotdrops {{ socialTag }} #HOTDROPSAUCE · Go with your gut

Palette & type

Highlight tint {{ sw.tint }}

Sauce, sampled {{ sw.sauce }}

Sixteen approved pairings How to read a tile: the outer field is the label ground, the logotype carries the counter colour, and the bottom fifth is the ground lightened. The highlight tint the labels use behind the band and inside the letterforms. Black is never a fill; it is the hairline and the letter outline, which is what holds every pairing together at shelf distance.

Texture & surface

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Execution

One dieline, four panels — story, ingredients, front, nutrition Hazelnut Swirl label, flat artwork across all four panels

The flavour wall, one saturated ground per SKU

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The site theyellowpad.com

The mark, assembling

One hundred and three particles resolve into a C. Separate holdings, one platform: the logo does the argument before a word of copy is read.

CATALYST®

The wine colour system

Every glass hand-coloured to its true appearance, then placed chapter by chapter, white before red, so the varieties a student meets in each region arrive in the order the book teaches them.

64 Glasses drawn
16 chapters

The first growths

Five châteaux drawn for the Bordeaux chapter, the 1855 classification rendered in the same hand as the glassware, so architecture and appellation sit in one visual language.

Bordeaux chapter
1855 classification

Cartography

Every chapter is anchored by a locator, a terrain map, and an appellation map, one consistent cartographic key across fifteen regions, so a student reads geography the same way each time.

Three map types
Fifteen regions

Taxonomy

The source text was coded for visual needs and narrative weight before design began. Every asset in the book traces back to that tagging system.

Asset code format

[Type][Scale], [Role]

Types

P Photography M Map C Chart D Diagram X Technical section I Icon IL Illustration

V0The Overview V1The Plans V2The Urban Innovations V3The Partnership

Palette and surface

Read together, the five sit in one narrow band of desaturated, dusty tone — close enough in value that no platform outranks another, distinct enough in hue that any two can share a slide without arguing. It is a family that behaves like a mineral set rather than a tech spectrum: nothing fluorescent, nothing primary, no one company allowed to become “the loud one.” Sandstone anchors them from behind, so the parent reads as the ground the others are cut from.

Sandstone #E4DDD1 · SIP Etched fine stone The parent, blind embossed, never inked

Melon #E7BF98 · Cavnue Wet resin Warm signal, the lane that never ends

Brass #C69D89 · Resilia Brushed metal Milled metal, charge held at rest

Slate blue #96BBC9 · CoFi Frosted glass Cool air, coverage over a city

Sea glass #91BAB1 · Polysift Tumbled glass Recovered material, re-tinted

Periwinkle #7A8EBA · Verrus Wet clay Cold storage, the data floor

01 Etched fine stone The SIP logotype is only ever pressed into stock, no ink, no colour. It reads as carved rather than printed, so the parent never competes with the companies.

02 Wet clay and glass Every platform mark is modelled as a physical object: soft-bodied, slightly wet, lit from one side. Sub-surface scatter keeps the forms organic where competitors go flat and vector.

03 Brushed metal Resilia carries a milled-metal finish: anisotropic highlights that streak with rotation, so the mark declares its axis as it turns.

04 Frosted depth The ecosystem cube is a frosted volume the marks are suspended inside. Depth of field does the hierarchy: whichever platform is being discussed comes into focus.

Parent brand The parent is the ground, not another logo in the set. SIP is foundational by design: a logotype pressed into stock, no colour, no motion, no render. It never appears alongside its companies as a peer, it appears underneath them as the substrate they were cut from — the thing that was already there when each platform was founded. Every platform is the opposite: a 3D-modelled object, lit and suspended in air so it can be examined from any angle. Innovation you can walk around. Each mark holds one idea — a corridor, a coverage dome, a storage grid, a conveyor loop — built as a physical thing rather than drawn as a symbol, so rotating it reveals the argument instead of just the silhouette. Identity, website, and every RFP, white paper, press release, animation and illustration the firm issued, produced single-handedly.

01 · Ground state The parent is fixed In quantum terms SIP is the ground state: the lowest, most stable energy level a system can occupy. Blind embossed, no colour, no motion. Everything else in the family is measured as a displacement from it, and it never competes with the companies it launches.

02 · Excited state Each platform is a particle Energy applied to a ground state kicks a particle up into a discrete orbit — never a smooth gradient, always a defined level. Each platform is one such quantum leap out of SIP: a single primitive form rotated, extruded and sectioned until the sector it serves, road, grid, wireless, waste, compute, is legible in the geometry itself.

03 · Observation Observed in four dimensions A particle’s state is only resolved once observed. Every mark was built to be examined in 4D space — modelled, spun, cut and re-lit for film, stage and print — so what it does under motion is the identity, not a treatment applied afterwards.

Five companies, one physics

The five platform marks suspended as particles in a cube

Five sectors, five identities, one family. The logic is borrowed from quantum mechanics: the parent is the fixed state and each platform is a particle launched out of it, then observed in four-dimensional space — a single form rotated, extruded and lit until its behaviour over time becomes the identity.

That gave every company the same physical laws to obey. One idea per mark. Modelled, never drawn. Soft-bodied and material rather than the cold vector geometry infrastructure brands default to. Lit from a single source so the whole set could be composited into one frame without any of them looking borrowed.

The cube is where they are observed together: five platforms suspended in one volume, depth of field doing the hierarchy so whichever company is being discussed comes into focus while the others stay present behind it.

Cavnue America's first dedicated corridor for autonomous vehicles. The mark is the corridor itself folded into an infinite loop, a dedicated lane with no start and no end, drawn in two colours so the neutral asphalt and the melon lane stay distinct as they pass through each other.

Verrus Next-generation data centres, launched as Circular Compute: carbon-negative computing, with waste heat driving direct air capture.

CoFi mark rotating into the Dense Air mark

CoFi Shared wireless infrastructure for smart cities. The mark is a coverage dome built from the arcs everyone already reads as WiFi, then it rotates in space and resolves into the Dense Air mark, showing the separate coverage layers assembling into one network.

Resilia Advanced power plants reimagined for the energy transition. The mark is an interconnected grid of storage cells running hot to cold, every node linked to the next, so the logo reads as a network holding charge rather than a single plant.

Polysift Robotics-enabled recycling for the circular economy. The mark updates the recycling triangle into a möbius loop, one continuous surface reading as a conveyor belt that keeps returning material to the front of the line, so waste rotates instead of ending.

What each platform is solving

CoFi Solving — Digital divide High-speed connectivity of at least 100 mbps, aimed at borderless classrooms and rapid, equitable wireless build-out.

Resilia Solving — Grid failure North America’s largest virtual power plant, capacity during California blackouts, 100k+ metric tons of CO2 cut annually.

Cavnue Solving — Transit deserts New public transit across 10 economic opportunity zones in Greater Detroit, mobility for underserved communities.

Polysift Solving — Plastics crisis A first-of-its-kind recycling facility diverting ~100MM pounds of plastic a year and opening markets for discarded polymers.

The summary band that closed most investor conversations.

In pursuit of the raise

Almost everything here was made to move capital: platform theses, system diagrams, RFP responses to cities, policy white papers, the website, and the rooms themselves, launch events, a salon series, and closed logistics sessions hosted at Google. Nearly all of it is confidential; what follows is what can be shown.

Platform theses, one spread per company

Cavnue platform thesis spread — CavnueThe future of roads

Resilia platform thesis spread — ResiliaVirtual power plants

CoFi platform thesis spread — CoFiShared wireless

Polysift platform thesis spread — PolysiftCircular economy

White papers and RFP responses

I³ PlanFederal policy proposal · hover for interior

I³ Plan interior spread — I³ PlanFederal policy proposal · hover for interior

CAV Corridor ConceptMichigan RFP response

Bridging the Digital DivideCoFi, City of Inglewood RFP

The Salons

Capital moves in rooms. The Salon series put investors, city officials and operators in one loft in Dumbo, neon mark on the DJ booth, a drinks list built for the night, no slides. Closed logistics sessions ran on the same model, hosted at Google.

Guests arriving, mark vinyl on the glass — Arrival, 41 Flatbush, Brooklyn

Inaugural Salon drinks menu — Drinks list, designed for the night

Investors talking over wine — Operators and investors

Co-CEO addressing the room — No slides, one microphone

The full room during remarks — The room, mid-remarks

Guests in conversation — Between sessions

Pink neon mark against brick — The mark, fabricated in neon

Two summits at Google

Both invitation-only, both hosted inside Google: one on infrastructure for connected and autonomous vehicles, one on advanced logistics. I built the identity, the environment, the printed programme and every slide in the room, panels of city officials, OEMs, DHL, Flexe, Soft Robotics and Google Brain.

Infrastructure for Connected & Autonomous Vehicles Summit, February 2020

Summit title wall in the Google lobby — Title wall, lobby

The main stage before doors — Main stage, before doors

Slide reading it is not all about the cars — Session slide

Isometric diagram of a siloed infrastructure future — Systems diagram, the siloed future

Digital infrastructure and mobility coordination panel — Panel, digital infrastructure & mobility coordination

Environmental graphics running up the stair risers — Stair risers, animated

Alphabet Advanced Logistics Summit

Automated warehousing panel — Panel, automated, advanced warehousing

Printed programmes on the table — Printed programme, one per seat

$1.4B Raised across Alphabet, StepStone and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan on the core narrative and LP materials.

1,000+ Decks, system diagrams, RFP responses and white papers, most of them made with the co-CEOs and nearly all confidential. Each brief technically complex; each deliverable legible to financial, civic and technical audiences at once.

$2.5M Brooklyn headquarters, directed end to end, a hospitality-forward space that embodied the firm's mission. Covered in Dezeen.

sidewalkinfra.com. The cube is the whole thesis in one object: five platforms suspended in a single system.

Cavnue.com, narrative, art direction and launch film. Watch the film

Innovative Infrastructure Initiative website

I³, the Innovative Infrastructure Initiative, SIP's public policy platform.

CoFi, Dense Air’s shared 5G platform. The mark builds as the page enters.

The film, and the platforms in motion

Scene 01The past, under glassRoads, wires and pipes are compressed into a single glass sphere, lit like a specimen. Infrastructure as something inherited and sealed.

Scene 02The problems namedThe sphere multiplies. Each one carries a failure — the digital divide, grid failure, transit deserts — sitting in the same frame at the same scale.

Scene 03Launch out of the parentThe SIP cube opens and the five marks are released as particles, each rotating into its own axis and finding its own material and colour.

Scene 04Observed togetherThe camera pulls back and all five are suspended in one volume, depth of field bringing whichever platform is being discussed into focus.

The platform film, in full

Infrastructure of the past, held in a glass sphere

Resilia: distributed storage, village scale

Polysift: robotic sortation, plastics recovered at line speed

The digital divide, one sphere among many

Press relationsPromoted to lead all press for 18 months

Established SIP as a national voice on resilient infrastructure with sustained coverage in Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune and Fast Company, and launched a weekly newsletter covering market news and the firm's own thought leadership.

Bloomberg Forbes Fortune Fast Company Dezeen

Behind the scenes Samples reviewed at a kitchen table 2,900 miles from the site, colours approved off photographs held against the brick, and a raw floor kept on schedule by video call.

The system

Colour, type and production standards set in-house, then held across four volumes and every piece of collateral around them.

Colour system, volume colours

Accents, illustration and diagram

Typography

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Production

Design philosophy

I started with raw Google Docs spanning sustainability, housing, mobility, economics, policy and infrastructure. I read and coded the entire corpus, assigning each passage a visual form and a narrative weight. That hierarchy defined what needed to exist, how large it should be, and where it should live.

From there I wireframed every chapter so layout followed logic, not decoration, and built a visual taxonomy that ranked maps, charts, renderings, diagrams and illustrations by magnitude. Scale determined placement, spread behaviour and proximity to text, a consistent rhythm across four volumes and 1,524 pages.

To execute at pace I interviewed twenty candidates and assembled a focused team: typographer, cartographer, generalist, architectural illustrator. Daily stand-ups, coordination with policy, engineering and product.

Execution path

The operating sequence for turning an unstructured, multi-disciplinary corpus into a coherent publication.

I read and coded the full body of Google Docs across policy, engineering, urban design, sustainability and finance. Each passage was tagged with a required visual type and narrative weight, forming a content hierarchy tracker that dictated what got built and where it lived, so heterogeneous material could behave as a structured argument rather than a pile of documents.

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Colophon

← All work

Previous ← {{ prevTitle }} Next project {{ nextTitle }} →

I've spent a decade making things feel inevitable before they exist.

A small child at a Macintosh — First workstation, c. 1994

Design and strategy direction for high-stakes subjects, urban policy, engineering, infrastructure finance, deep technology.

Everything I do starts with learning the subject properly. Not a summary, the actual mechanics, deep enough to sit with the engineers and enjoy the detail. Curiosity is the method: read it, ask about it, build a version, test it, and let what you learn change the work. That's how a brand ends up feeling true rather than decorated.

I work closest with CEOs and co-founders, visionaries who can see the whole thing clearly but have no way to draw it. I become the extension of that vision: I take the half-formed idea out of their head, give it form, and hand it back sharper than they described it.

The measure of the work isn't only what shipped. It's whether the thinking behind it is clear enough for the next person to build on.

I work fractionally with early-stage companies that need a senior creative mind in the room without the full-time overhead. If you're building something that doesn't exist yet and it needs to feel real, to investors, to press, to the public, let's talk.

          Full CV
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DisciplinesBrand strategy & positioning
Visual identity & systems
Complex publication design
Narrative & investor materials

CollaboratorsPentagram
Heatherwick Studio
Snøhetta
Beyer Blinder Belle
Squint/Opera
Kilograph • Try Studios

RecognitionTIME Best Invention, Cavnue
Harvard teaching reference
Dezeen • Fonts In Use
The Dieline

Elsewherestudiouscreative.com
LinkedIn

How I work

Four things I hold to, whatever the project is.

Curriculum vitae

Download PDF

Experience

2022–Present

Fractional Design Director, STUDIO•USEmbedded design and brand leadership for ventures in infrastructure, sustainability and deep technology. Interim Creative Director for Upgraid, FoundationAI and Catalyst Housing Group. A five-week AI-native sprint for Upgraid delivered brand, website and positioning supporting $44M in competitive wins and 80% faster sales cycles.

2019–2022

Design Director & PR Director, Sidewalk Infrastructure PartnersFirst and only creative hire for an Alphabet-backed venture. Built the narrative and LP materials behind a $1.4B raise from Alphabet, StepStone and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan; branded five portfolio companies; led press for 18 months; directed the $2.5M Brooklyn headquarters.

2020–2022

Founding Design Director, CavnueSole designer on the three-person team that won the Michigan DOT RFP for the first automated vehicle corridor, then built the brand. Named a TIME Best Invention.

2018–2019

Design Lead, Sidewalk Labs • GoogleInternal design direction and leadership on Toronto Tomorrow, the four-volume Master Innovation and Development Plan for the city of Toronto.

Modes of practice

Three ways in

Same standard of work, three ways to buy it.

Press

Selected coverage / 2019–2024

Sidewalk Labs unveils Toronto Tomorrow, its masterplan for the Port Lands Toronto Tomorrow2019 ↗

Toronto Tomorrow, the publication’s typography, annotated Toronto Tomorrow2019 ↗

Best Inventions, Cavnue, for the first roads built for autonomous vehicles Cavnue2021

SIP creates an inspiring office design in New York SIP2022 ↗

SIP, New York private office SIP2022 ↗

A sleek workplace designed for culture and connectivity SIP2022 ↗

Shelf Life 012, snackable pasta, wax seals and elevated beauty Twisted Dough2024 ↗

Hot Drops sauce is heating up Sonoma County restaurants Hot Drops2024 ↗

Ask me about…

Two, and then we’re even

Following my grandmother’s diaries across post-war Europe She helped rebuild Vienna after the war. I read each entry standing where she wrote it, in order.

The Bristol, still keeping the 1950 letter to Felix Primus on the wallVienna

The Staatsoper from the upper circleVienna

The Vienna Opera House, where she often went with friends or on datesVienna

Gilt and painted panels above the landingVienna

Stephansdom, the roof rebuilt after the war she was writing throughVienna

Loos’ American Bar, 1908 and unchangedVienna

The valley from above, the spa town stacked up the slopeBad Gastein

Nikolauskirche and the funicular line down the gorgeBad Gastein

The Gasteiner Ache falling through the middle of townBad Gastein

Grand Hotel de l’Europe, empty since the cure yearsBad Gastein

Reissacher-Quelle, 1920, one of the thermal springsBad Gastein

The ridge trail up the StubnerkogelBad Gastein

A tarn below the ridge, the water still cold in SeptemberBad Gastein

The viewing platform cantilevered off the rockBad Gastein

A Märzen and a Verlängerter on the way downBad Gastein

Rupertikirtag, dirndls and Trumer PilsSalzburg

The logistics of travelling with a dog across borders Penny has cleared more customs desks than most people. Nineteen stops, nine countries, and a folder of paperwork for each one.

Where she has been Seventeen stops · hover a marker

Make it undeniable.

The next idea worth building deserves a story worth telling.

I help founders and companies make their brands undeniable.

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