I have a great deal of graphic design and advertising experience in the business, consumer and nonprofit sectors.
This includes the design and layout of advertising, marketing and promotional collateral – including the development of banners, logos, images, typography, key messages and copy – to meet a wide range of client positioning, call to action, storytelling, sales, search (SEO), message placement and visibility objectives.
I started my advertising and graphic design career while I was working on my undergraduate degree in communications and marketing – with an emphasis in creative writing and video production – at Central Connecticut State University. This is when I served as the advertising and promotional manager at the Comet, an incredibly unique and popular upscale restaurant and alternative dance club that at the time, was located in the West End of Hartford, CT.
I went on to produce and edit a wide range of editorial and marketing collateral including mailers, invitations, media kits and promotional pieces during my time working in marketing and special events at Hartford College for Women (HCW) and while managing the HCW public art gallery.
I expanded my experience in graphic design and copywriting after leaving Hartford to finish my graduate degree in New York City. This is when I moved to the art center at 111 First Street in Jersey City, NJ and when I worked for a small communications firm on the layout, design and editing of a wide range of Sony consumer catalogs.
I’ve studied art at the School of Visual Arts and art history at the University of Hartford. I have an MFA from Parsons School of Design where my thesis was sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I wrote and illustrated Fiber Optic Lighting, A Guide for Specifiers, one of the first books to explore how fiber optic lighting systems could be used to illuminate architectural and museum environments. This well reviewed educational text was published in multiple languages and acquired by libraries around the world.
I’ve spent a good part of the last decade working on proactive and results-driven communications programs that integrate powerful graphics, content and messaging for clients positioning in data center, security and privacy, cloud, sustainability and Industry 4.0 markets. This experience includes some of the trendsetting content and digital ads I created to position edge and fog computing initiatives in markets around the world.
My design style and best practices for content development have generally remained unchanged as the ad industry moved from broadcast and print to video and social media. I tend to be a fan of ads and promotional pieces where key messages stand out and are easy to read from any device and on any social media feed.
I have had the opportunity to work on hundreds of results-driven community building and social media campaigns and programs during my career to date. I include a list of some of the ads and some of the strategic content – along with some commentary and a best practice or two – I’ve created for various clients and initiatives below. I update the list relatively frequently.
I’ve recently posted a content development and marketing case study that includes a few best practices for community building and a discussion on analytics on my Driving the Fog Conversation blog. Read the case study here and check out the often fun-to-click-through content portfolio here. – Russ DeVeau
The image above is a piece of content I created for a GE Healthcare and RTI public webinar in 2019. The piece follows the content style I launched in 2017 where messages stand out on any social media feed and on any device. This was an extremely successful event – over 300 attendees – with GE Healthcare and GE executives posting this content regularly on a wide range of social media feeds.
Hashtags play an important and very strategic role in every social media campaign I manage. I developed the widely circulated image above in support of ISO (International Organization for Standardization) releasing the first set of draft standards for drone safety, which took place in the fall of 2018.
I developed the image above for OpenFog to position fog computing experts as ‘foggers’ in markets around the world. Foggers were a fun and important component of the trendsetting multimedia #thisisfog positioning campaign I managed during my time leading community building and message development programs for the OpenFog Consortium.
I wasn’t a big fan of the existing OpenFog logo, but made the image work on hundreds of pieces of branded content I developed for the organization.
The image above is a fun blast from the past. The Comet was an incredibly unique upscale restaurant and dance club that was located at 267 Farmington Avenue in Hartford, CT. The dance club played alternative and new music and was frequently compared to Studio 54 in New York City.
I designed the invitation for the Comet’s fifth year anniversary party. The concept for this glossy black and white invitation was based on a series of fives to complement the five years the Comet had been in business.
I was an undergrad at CCSU when I developed this invitation and corresponding advertising and marketing collateral. I still love the simple, bold and elegant design of this piece.
I started a blog on the Comet a couple years ago after coming across tons of pictures, ads and promotional pieces from my Comet years in my Provincetown attic. I’m in the process of moving that blog to a WordPress site. It will relaunch soon.
I created the ad above to promote Fog World Congress, the world’s first event focused entirely on fog computing. The piece follows my best practices for content development and marketing where messages are easy to read and stand out on any social media feed. I used this widely circulated piece in several extremely successful digital ad campaigns to help populate and boost the visibility of this very unique international event.
I developed the image above to firmly position RTI and RTI management and leadership in the IIoT space during my time consulting with this international IoT connectivity company. I’m a fan of incorporating simple and powerful messages that stand out in any social media feed into a great deal of the content I create. This widely shared image with a bold and simple message went a long way in meeting a wide range of RTI positioning goals.
It was fun to see Scott McNealy – the former CEO of Sun Microsystems, who I crossed paths with numerous times during my time working on the IBM communications team – retweet this image and related content. This tweet stayed on top of his Twitter feed for quite some time after he shared it on May 24, 2019.
I created the image above for the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), a global member driven organization promoting PC power management and the development and deployment of energy efficient technologies. CSCI leadership has included sustainability experts from Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and World Wildlife Fund.
I’ve managed a wide range of events and message development, editorial and social media programs for CSCI. This banner was developed in 2011, shortly after Twitter allowed images to be included in tweets. Barring a tweak or two, the piece still works well for me today.
This image was developed to promote CSCI’s Retweet for Earth Hour campaign, an incredibly fun to manage and extremely successful global contest designed to expand CSCI communities and up the visibility of the benefits of using power management.
I’ve developed and managed numerous social media contests for clients positioning in a wide range of consumer and business markets. Check out some of my best practices for managing social media contests here.
The IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year) Awards are a great example of an extremely successful content development and marketing proactive campaign. I launched the concept of the IDDYs in Vancouver back in 2005 and managed all aspects of the global program for just about five years.
The IDDY was the first award to recognize excellence in digital identity management and, once the program was launched, soon became the award many in the global digital identity, security and privacy sectors wanted to win.
On the branding front, the IDDYs were about shining a spotlight on how digital identity management was being deployed across vertical market segments. On the communications front, the IDDYs were about managing multiple proactive media and social media campaigns to establish and continuously expand brand awareness and to build a high degree of prestige into every aspect of the program.
Winners of the IDDY during my years managing the program included Deutsche Telekom, Aetna, Citi, the U.S. Department of Defense, Gemalto, Google, Oracle, New York State Education Agencies, the New Zealand Government, NTT and Vodafone.
I have loved the IDDY logo since it was created in 2006. The highly effective use of color and simple design stands out well on every social media channel and in wide range of marketing collateral.
Check out my IDDY case study here for a look at some of the communication strategies and tactics that made this program such an international success.
The mailer above is from my days in marketing and special events at Hartford College for Women. My team and I produced and managed a series of highly successful public events to complement fundraising, recruitment and facilities marketing initiatives. These events often generated significant media coverage and brought a wide range of new and diverse audiences to the historic HCW campus.
I designed this invitation on one of two relatively new Macs HCW had recently acquired for faculty and staff. I am still a fan of the design and layout of this simple piece including the white background, interesting layout and bold use of type.
I enjoy blogging casually about my days at HCW here.
The image above went through many revisions based on a few different campaigns and proactive marketing programs I was working on at the time. I used a version as key content for Fog World Congress, another version to regularly showcase women working within the OpenFog Consortium and a third version to tie women working in technology to the IoT space. This widely circulated image has frequently been at the top of the #womenintech and #womeniniot feeds.
The robotics image above is part of a campaign I created to drive client visibility in IoT and edge and fog computing. This widely shared and hugely successful series focused on leveraging logos, hashtags and images to tie my client to some of the most important trends and stories in the Industry 4.0 space.
The picture above is a fun branded image with a powerful and easy to read message. I created this image as part of a campaign to demonstrate how important fog computing is to the success of commercialized drones. The message was repeated over and over again on edge and fogcomputing feeds around the world.
Social media images can often be overused and frequently miss opportunities to communicate messages and increase brand awareness.
This is largely because photo sharing sites – where content creators can either pay to use images or download them for free – have become incredibly popular among designers, bloggers, journalists, marketing, social media and web teams. Many of these teams work at companies that compete with each other and frequently use the same stock images to position and promote a wide range of competing initiatives, products and services.
I’ve seen the same IoT banners and images posted on countless websites and social media channels since IoT became an important industry trend several years ago. The same is often true when it comes to a great deal of the Industry 4.0 content created over the last few years, and certainly true when it comes to much of the content marketing teams in edge and fog computing are creating today.
I’ve had the opportunity to work on proactive positioning programs for many early stage edge and fog computing initiatives. This is when images of fog – including fog over cities, fog over bridges, fog in the forest and fog on roads – were becoming common on the websites and social media feeds of many of the vendors positioning in the edge and fog computing space.
The fog image above is an image my content and social media colleagues at Cisco IoT used to promote an important fog computing blog. The image – just like every other image attempting to visually tie fog scenes to fog computing – is nice enough. But the image frequently got lost on social feeds the few times it was shared and didn’t offer communities and influencers a compelling reason to click on the content and like and share the post.
The image above is the Cisco IoT fog image after I added some messaging and incorporated hashtags into the content. The branded post was retweeted and shared many times by the tech community in markets around the world and was responsible for driving a wide range of new traffic to the Cisco blog.
Stock images are a valuable part of the content creator’s toolbox. But these images can often be even more valuable when designers and social media teams add messages and differentiators that stand out in social media feeds and on platforms such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck. This is especially true if marketing goals include driving visibility, placing messages and building community.
I created the image above as part of an extensive ongoing proactive campaign I managed to tie fog computing to some of the world’s hottest Industry 4.0 trends. The robot was a licensed image I used in multiple edge and fog computing campaigns. I’m generally not a fan of capitalizing hashtags. But I recognize how important easily read messages are to the success of many of today’s fast-moving social media campaigns and will use capital letters when I know doing so will generate specific results.
I am a big fan of the simple bold text used in the image above. I started to use this style in 2017 when I was managing messages and content development and marketing for Fog World Congress and the OpenFog Consortium.
Garter began using this style shortly after in some of the content and brief videos the research firm was creating for social media at the time. Verizon is doing a great job using this style in some of the brief – and often fun to watch – video ads the company is producing today.
This simple style is becoming increasingly popular in banner, social media and video ads largely because content teams recognize key messages often need to be front and center in order to stand out on busy social channels and on mobile devices that vary in size.
I created this image in conjunction with an article I wrote on Intel’s moves into IoT and based on a few of my best practices for creating and communicating highly effective key messages. Check out the article here.
Events – and award programs such as the IDDY Awards – often provide unlimited opportunities for creating top-notch content. I’ve had the opportunity to develop and promote content for some of the world’s top technology events including HP World, Oracle World, RSA Conference and SAPPHIRE.
I’ve also produced and promoted a wide range of fun and incredibly successful in-person and virtual events designed to position companies, initiatives and people in markets around the world. I write about some of my tech event experience in the post, What’s your favorite tech event? and showcase some of my nonprofit event experience, which includes coordinating and promoting events with the Hispanic Health Council and the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, here.
I created the image above as part of an ongoing series of content designed to brand and promote the tech industry’s first Fog Tank at Fog World Congress 2017. The Fog Tank was a global – and incredibly fun – competition that recognized some of the start-ups and movers and shakers in edge and fog computing. Nebbiolo Technologies was the first company to win the Fog World Congress Fog Tank competition.
The image is one of several I created to promote the Fog Tank. I like the balance and clean lines in this somewhat fun and elegant piece. I wasn’t a huge fan of the existing Fog World Congress logo, but made the rather dated image work in hundreds of pieces of content I developed for Fog World Congress and the OpenFog Consortium.
The banner above was part of a series of content I created to promote the OpenFog Consortium’s Reddit AMA. While I was never a big fan of the existing OpenFog logo, I like the way it looks in this layout and on a white background.
This piece was a follow-up to the Stump a Fogger Reddit AMA campaign I managed for the consortium. This banner was designed to leverage Twitter’s weekly #followfriday hashtag and features the edge and fog computing experts who participated in the session. The proactive campaign significantly boosted the number of quality followers on the OpenFog Twitter account and raised the visibility and followers of the experts who participated in the event.
The fun Stump a Fogger banners like the one above appeared on every social media channel. These pieces were designed to raise awareness about fog computing and to help populate the AMA session. These pieces were widely shared among the tech community and regularly appeared at the top of the IoT and fog computing social feeds.
The image above is another in the series of content I created to drive client visibility in IoT and edge and fog computing. This widely shared and hugely successful series focused on leveraging logos, hashtags and images to tie RTI to some of the most important trends and stories in the Industry 4.0 space.
Working in Industry 4.0 market research and positioning has provided me with the opportunity to develop, manage and promote proactive campaigns and programs focused on some of the latest and most exciting technology trends.
I created the piece above as part a campaign to position edge and fog computing applications in space. I like the simple and fun fog message and how the NASA logo stands out in this image. This widely shared content helped keep Fog World Congress at the top of the IoT social media feeds for many consecutive weeks.
I like the underlying image above very much. It was created by the talented folks at IoT For All as part of a 2019 industry trend and predictions story. The piece was shared extensively on the IoT for All social channels.
With a hat-tip to IoT For All, I added the white easy to read “what’s ahead for IoT?” message – using one of my favorite social media fonts – and recirculated the image on my feeds where it received another round of significant attention from several of my highly engaged followers.
New year trend stories and industry predictions news can be a very powerful tool for driving a wide range of traditional and social media coverage all year long. Check out a couple interesting strategies for leveraging predictions and forecast news in my data center predictions post here.
I created the image above as part of the incredibly successful #thisisfog multimedia positioning campaign I managed for the OpenFog Consortium. I like the powerful and easy to read hashtag used to tie fog to the vertical market segments on the left of the image. The thisisfog hashtag was frequently at the top of almost every one of these vertical market social media feeds during my time managing content, events and messaging for OpenFog.
I created the image above during a time when #machinelearning was trending in the U.S. on Twitter. I designed the piece to leverage the Twitter trend, position my clients as edge and fog computing experts and to showcase Fog World Congress 2018 as the premier event for discussing this important topic. This piece was liked and retweeted extensively by the tech community and was visible on the machine learning feed during the entire time the topic was trending.
This is the first time I used text and only black and white – barring the existing client logos in this piece – in any social media content. I found the technique to be highly effective in helping to ensure messages stand out in any social media feed.
I’ve used the simple black and white style on my blog and social media sites where these well messaged images and banners have received a good deal of attention from the tech community and influencers.
I developed the image above for my article on how content creators can use machine learning today. It’s in an interesting read for understanding how content curation – a technology I have used for well over a decade – can deliver a wide range of exceptional curation results based on machine learning. Read about how I use content curation to enhance communications programs here.
I used the image above on my Twitter feed and on my blog to talk about Samsung releasing the industry’s first 5G phone. I like the way these simple black and white images stand out on a wide range of social media feeds and on the web.
Speaking of black and white images…
Here’s another blast from the past image from my Comet and undergrad days. The Comet was an incredibly unique upscale restaurant and dance club that was located at 267 Farmington Avenue in Hartford, CT. The dance club played alternative and new music and was frequently compared to Studio 54 in New York City.
I managed advertising and promotion during my years working at the Comet. This is one of an ongoing series of ads I created for local and regional newspapers and for a wide range of arts, dining and theater publications.
These ads still look fresh and modern to me even though I created them nearly thirty years ago. I like graphics and layout I used in this design and still use the dot-dot-dot in a great deal of the content I create today.
I started a blog on the Comet a couple years ago after coming across tons of pictures, ads and promotional pieces from my Comet years in my Provincetown attic. I’m in the process of moving that blog to a WordPress site. It will relaunch soon.
I like the banner above very much. This is one of several pieces of content I created to promote a brief educational video that explained fog computing and some of the benefits fog can deliver. The images showing a few of the applications where fog can play a role and the #thisisfog hashtag begin to tell a powerful story and provide a compelling reason to click on and watch the YouTube video
I point to the successes I’ve had in populating events whenever I discuss some of the benefits and ROI associated with social media. I’ve produced and driven attendance at a wide range of virtual, social media and in-person events, filled workshops at RSA Conferences, and driven standing room only crowds at JavaOne industry analyst and media events by leveraging smart social media strategies and tactics.
My first event success story on Twitter took place over a decade ago when I was promoting an obscure security and privacy breakfast seminar at HIMSS. The event went from zero registrations a couple weeks prior to the event to a room filled to capacity the day of the session, by using Twitter as the primary communications channel. That was when tweets contained a maximum of 140 characters and well before Twitter allowed users to incorporate images and video into content.
Since then I have become an expert at leveraging social media to drive a wide range of event successes in markets around the world. I’ve learned that quality content loaded with key messages and differentiators matter when it comes to meeting a wide range of event marketing goals and objectives.
From introducing speakers and regularly promoting key messages and stories, industry analyst firms, large technology and global media companies were among the early leaders in leveraging social media and content to market and populate events. Today, almost any organization producing events can benefit from a marketing strategy based on high quality content.
Event content is continuously evolving and video – increasingly, video that runs anywhere from six to 15 seconds in length – is playing a larger and larger role in some of today’s most captivating and well messaged social media ads and strategic content.
I like the fact that there can be an incredible amount of creative freedom involved in the development of event content – and that nothing is ever set in stone. It’s often fun for me to experiment to see what design and strategy may work best for meeting a particular goal, and what may not work at all. Tweaking content to meet event goals can be a fun part of the content development and marketing process.
I created the content above for one of hundreds of events I have promoted in markets around the world. I like the layout and use of the RTI logo in this piece and the simple use of the squares and color. The image is sized for perfect display from any device on LinkedIn and Twitter feeds. I’ve used this piece as a template for promoting a wide range of executives and events.
I designed the banner above as part of a series of content I developed for introducing spokespersons and speakers at Fog World Congress. It’s a nice use of space on a white background and a great use of hashtags and simple but effective colors.
I was among the first designers to use gray in text for social media content and banners. I like the elegant look of the gray and how the text stands out on any social media feed. Many companies including Gartner, Google and Microsoft began using this content style shortly after.
I created the image above to announce Hilton Romanski as a keynote speaker at Fog World Congress. I like the balance and layout of this design where simple gray text is used to tie two of the hottest technology trends – IoT and fog computing – together. This piece was shared widely by technology influencers and by Cisco and technology teams worldwide.
The image above is another in the series of content I created to drive client visibility in IoT and edge and fog computing. This widely shared and hugely successful series focused on leveraging logos, hashtags and images to tie RTI to some of the most important trends and stories in the Industry 4.0 space.
I designed the banner above to announce speakers and keynotes at Fog World Congress 2018. Speaker alerts can be a powerful tool for generating a wide range of traditional and social media coverage.
Speaking of coverage…I designed the fun image above to promote some incredible top tier client coverage in Fast Company. The story was published based on content I developed and promoted on social media and is a great example of how proactive social media campaigns can drive coverage in a wide range of media outlets. The banner above was published on all social media channel and opened the door for additional rounds of coverage in publications worldwide.
The image above is another design I’ve used extensively to promote speakers at events around the world. I like how the bold hashtags dominate and stand out on social media feeds. Blockchain and fog computing are among some of the technology industries most important trends. I’ve had a lot of fun and a great deal of success in helping to develop and tell the blockchain and fog story in markets around the world.
I created the banner above to reinforce blockchain and fog computing visibility on social media. The image with the chain links is a stock image that I grabbed shortly after it became available. I like the way the black hashtags stand out and how the banner helped integrate fog into the blockchain story on tech feeds and channels.
Another Hartford College for Women blast from the past…
The image above is a picture of the invitation to the first Laura A. Johnson Woman of the Year Award. This was a development, membership and marketing program I helped launch during my days working in special events at HCW. The award recognized exceptional women leaders in the Hartford area and was produced by HCW and the Hartford Club.
Laura Johnson was HCW’s first president. She was also the first woman member of the Hartford Club. The award was a tribute to Johnson’s remarkable accomplishments in education and beyond.
I co-produced the first two years of this highly successful program with my colleague and friend, Sandy Bursey, who was membership director at the Hartford Club at the time.
The program provided me with some invaluable experience when it came to launching and managing the IDDYs, the world’s first awards to recognize excellence in digital identity management.
I enjoy blogging casually about my time working at HCW here.
I like the image above very much. It’s one of several pieces of content I created to mark the OpenFog Consortium’s two year anniversary. The existing OpenFog logo can be a bit tough to work with given it’s a bit too busy for my liking. But I like the way it looks in this layout and with complementary colors and a white background.
I created the image above as part of a series to promote this industry leading webinar on social media channels. The piece follows the content style I launched in 2017 where messages stand out on any social media feed and on any device. This was an extremely successful event – over 300 attendees – with GE Healthcare and GE executives posting this content regularly on a wide range of social media feeds.
The image above is another from my days working in marketing and special events at Hartford College for Women. The piece shows the front and back of a mailer designed to serve as an invitation to an exhibition I curated at the HCW art gallery. I served as director of the gallery and as the creative lead for all promotional and media content related to gallery programs and exhibitions. I liked the design and layout of of this glossy mailer when it was created to announce the event, and remain a fan of how the invitation incorporates interesting images from the exhibition with gray tones and black and white to add a modern, elegant and almost timeless look to the piece.
I enjoy blogging casually about my days at HCW here.
The image above is a fun snapshot of the some of the content and copy I wrote and edited for a series of Sony and Time Warner consumer catalogs I worked on when I first moved to the New York City area. This is when I was finishing my graduate degree at Parsons School of Design and a research project at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had a lot of fun working on the layout and design of these print magazines with a team of creative Mac professionals, writers and graphic designers, and I learned a lot about the development of successful key messages and consumer facing copy and content. I continue to incorporate many of the strategies and tactics I learned during my days in catalog layout, design and production into many of the proactive campaigns and programs I manage today.
The picture above is of a billboard that was part of the trendsetting and incredibly successful multimedia #thisisfog proactive positioning campaign I managed during my time leading community building and message development programs for the OpenFog Consortium. I wrote the copy for this fun series of billboards that were designed to drive awareness of fog computing and up the visibility of Fog World Congress among target markets in Silicon Valley.
I’ve recently posted a content development and marketing case study, which includes a few best practices and a discussion on the importance of analytics, on my Driving the Fog Conversation blog. Read the case study here and check out the often fun to click through content portfolio here. – Russ DeVeau