Roles I've Grown Into

The title never quite fit. That's how I knew I was doing it right.

It started at a vocational school in Fitchburg where I thought I wanted to do drafting. Then I sat down at a computer, started up Illustrator for the first time and drew a tree with the pen tool and my teacher came over and said you'd like being a graphic designer.

Turns out he was right.

I graduated 5th in my class, won SkillsUSA twice. 7th in the nation for technical graphic design, then 5th in the nation for pin design the following year.

After Monty Tech I went to Salem State, which technically had an art program but I felt like an amature magician to all the other students who thought drawing was a cool party trick. I left and went to Mount Wachusett Community College instead, where the art program was genuinely great. I got better as an artist through fine art, sculpture, and graphic design. Drew figure models with a stick of charcoal taped to a long stick. Made a four foot beaded glass jellyfish and a plaster conch shell that accidently stood up. From there I applied to the New Hampshire Institute of Art, majored in graphic design, and that's where it all clicked. The intersection of design and art, communicating through graphics and text, a little detour through photography, pottery, and oil painting that rounded out how I understood the way artists actually work.

My first real design internship was at Dyn DNS in New Hampshire. The Google of the state, basically. Office dogs, a slide, a secret whiskey room. I was there to design their year end company yearbook. I finished fast so they kept handing me more work. I would have been hired on if the marketing department hadn't been laid off before I finished my hours. First lesson in how fast things can change and how you just keep moving anyway.

Students dressed in graduation gowns and caps seated on stage during a graduation ceremony, with a woman speaking at a podium and banners hanging above.

Group of students in graduation caps and gowns celebrating outdoors.

A woman with red hair wearing a red jacket, concentrating while working on a desktop computer in a classroom or office setting.

Two different views of a large star-shaped seashell sculpture, one from the top and one from the side, both placed on wooden surfaces.

Interior view of a modern office space with an industrial design, including exposed ductwork, a mezzanine with a railing, open workspace with desks and chairs, and a lounge area in the background.

An indoor exhibition booth displaying strength and safety equipment by TY-FLØT. The booth features a black backdrop with the name 'STRONGHOLD' and a tagline 'THE DROP STOPS HERE.' There are red safety harnesses or lanyards hanging on the display. A small TV screen shows a person in a blue shirt. To the left, there is a blue and red vertical banner promoting TY-FLØT field services and FME cabinets.

A photography setup with a black tripod, a couple of studio lights, and various equipment including red and black straps, and a yellow canister on a white background marked with yellow tape.

Three men in safety gear: the first shows a close-up of a man's waist with a harness and tools; the second depicts a man in a reflective vest with tools and safety equipment attached; the third features a man in a black shirt and helmet holding a device, standing on a blue mat.

Ty-Flot

The Title: Graphic Designer

The Reality: Creative department of one

During my last year of school I started working at Ty-Flot, a safety equipment company focused on nuclear power plants. The brand needed work so I redid it. Shot photography using my friends as models, cut video, traveled to nuclear plants across the country during maintenance shutdowns in something closer to a sales role than a design one. That part surprised me. Turns out I wasn't just good at visual communication. I was good at the talking-to-people kind, too.

They sold the business not long after I left. I'd like to think we made it look worth buying.

A person riding a bicycle on a rooftop parking lot, wearing a bear mask with yellow eyes. The background includes a wall with graffiti that says 'Be An Individual' and a partly cloudy sky.

A shiny suit of medieval armor displayed at an exhibition, located next to a tall, orange sign with black text about night in shining armor, shushing, and other related topics.

A person filming two women paddling a canoe on a river with a camera on a tripod, with lush green trees and cloudy sky in the background.

Cookies decorated as various characters with their names written below each cookie.

Laddawn

The Title: Graphic Designer

The Reality: “I can probably figure that out”

I started as a temp. They hired me full time. And then it became one of the most creatively alive jobs I've ever had.

Laddawn was a packaging manufacturer that refused to take itself seriously in a commodity business, and that was the whole strategy. I designed a full product catalog every two months, made self referential ads that stood out because they were genuinely weird and funny, cast actors to play characters like Mother Nature and Big Yellow Chicken, built props out of cardboard, scouted locations, wrote production schedules, and coordinated entire video shoots. I ran social media and direct mail campaigns. One Christmas I made 72 gingerbread cookies decorated as every customer facing employee and sent them as a card to our customers.

The title said graphic designer. The job was concepting, directing, producing, and executing everything a customer would ever see.

We rode out Covid together too. Sales shot up, everyone moved online, and we met them there. That lasted until 2021, when my boss left and everything changed.

The seams were already busting.

A green screen background with various objects on a table, including a cardboard box, plastic wrapping, a pair of scissors, and some wires and electronic components. A stand with a horizontal rod and wires is set up in front of the green screen.

A person standing in a room holding a large blackboard in front of their body, wearing a face mask and gloves, with stools and chairs in the background, and the ceiling revealing metal framework.

Multiple screens displaying promotional content for a business distribution platform, including a boombox illustration, a notebook and telephone, a website homepage, and a map of the United States with highlighted states.

Open cardboard box with packing materials, including a wrapped item with a red frame, a Rubik's cube, a green object, and other items, on a green background.

Berry Global

The Title: Marketing Manager

The Reality: Accidental divisional lifeline

In 2021 my boss left and overnight I was responsible for the marketing of a business unit inside a global company that had just acquired us. I had a team of four. I learned how they worked, built systems around their strengths, and got moving.

We made marketing that spoke to real customer pain points but met them as actual humans doing actual jobs. What's annoying about ordering packaging? How do we fix it? What if your work day had a little fun in it? What if a bright pink catalog landed on your desk that was genuinely useful? We made customers feel like they were in on the joke and gave them tools that made doing business with us informational and, believe it or not, kind of fun.

Then Berry decided to build an ecommerce platform. Laddawn was a SaaS company disguised as a packaging manufacturer and Berry bought us partly because we knew how to make the front end talk to the back end of manufacturing. They wanted to scale that. So began a four year journey building the brand and marketing infrastructure for what became a multi product line ecommerce platform with 20,000 plus monthly logins.

We built everything. Animated videos, email journeys, outreach campaigns, outbound calling scripts, tradeshow presence, webinars, leave behinds, how to video series. The whole bit. Once the rest of the division got a whiff of what we were doing they all wanted in. Notes started sliding under the door. Product lines we weren't responsible for needed materials. We absorbed it because there was nobody else.

Then Berry fired their entire global marketing department. The division was starving, my team was fielding requests from every corner of the business, and we were technically still supposed to be focused on one product line.

Then came the next acquisition.

Amcor

The Title: Marketing Manager

The Reality: Department architect for a $1.9B division

When the dust settled after the Amcor merger the organizational charts came out and marketing wasn't on them. The function had been left out entirely.

I noticed immediately. I'd been ghost marketing for the whole division anyway so I went to the VP and made the case. You need marketing. The global company isn't coming to save you. But I've got an idea.

I pitched a divisional marketing department from scratch. The positions we'd need, the digital infrastructure to generate new leads and protect existing customer relationships, a roadmap built around what the product lines were already asking for. The pitch landed. Within a year I hired two new team members, a brand manager to handle the mountain of rebranding ahead of us and a graphic designer so I could stop moving pixels and start managing the system.

We were handed the opportunity to market for 1.9 billion dollars worth of business.

So that's what we're building.

A promotional digital graphic for the AF&C&D Marketing Hub features a rocket launching from a laptop screen, surrounded by smoke and fiery trails, symbolizing innovation and growth.