Her creativeness, meticulous attention to detail, and reliability as to deadlines were unsurpassed, earning her my highest praise and recommendation."
Cover designs for Gillette, Wyoming; Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada; St. Croix and St. Thomas & St. John phone books.
See samples of government and community pages for:
Jackson Wyoming: Our Town Directory
St. Croix: Wave Power Media Directory
VARIOUS SERVICE ADS
RESTAURANT MENUS
My Yellow Page Days
2005-2010 –
2010-2013 –
My previous employment with a yellow page company in Hawaii involved a lot of things. Not only did I manage the whole Art Department, I was also in charge of the special sections that needed to be updated each year. I also did a complete overhaul of the website, all marketing collaterals and internal stuff. What’s so really cool about that job was that I had the opportunity to work with different projects… literally ALL (almost) of the businesses in Hawaii. Design briefs would sometimes consist of nothing to work on except for their business names, phone numbers, their services and a few information about their businesses. We would be lucky if our customers gave us information of what they wanted, design-wise. I found it very challenging to come up with a design that would actually make them look professional, credible and trustworthy even if they were just small shops, start ups or just simply offering services such as plumbing, towing, locks and key, repairs, house painting or roofers.
Yellow page directories or phone books seem to be an out-dated industry, but unknown to a lot of people… phone books are still alive and [was] a thriving business all over the world, despite 411 and the internet up to the late 2000s. The competition was strong among the utility companies and numerous independent publishers. In the state of Hawaii alone, there were 3 competing phone directories serving the 4 major islands (Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island). It is important to note that our phone books stood out from the rest, because we printed in full color magazine-quality paper that made our ads prettier, crispier and preferred by the community.
As the lead graphic designer (or art director and at one time, the creative services director) for these phone books for almost 5 years, it was my utmost duty and goal to make our phone books better than our competitors by providing agency quality print ads for all our clients, big or small.
The ad samples here were projects I was most proud of, as I had started from basically a few information or from an existing marketing effort, which I had to redesign to give them a unique representation in our books. Because of the volume of ads we get, my interaction with clients were very minimal and that means, I had to rely on our sales team to provide us with materials and information inscribed on their design briefs. I usually did my own research (if any) or relied on stockphotos if they can’t provide visuals or made the provided photos work. The real challenge, I think, in that scenario was that I had to treat each design as important as the next ad… make sure that each ad was unique to the other ad next to them offering the same service (which i designed myself).I took it upon myself to give each ad the attention they deserve, specially from small businesses who invested a lot hoping that their ad i was creating for them would give them more business. |