[project]
wmse rockabilly chili, an annual fundraiser for an independent community radio station in milwaukee.
[deliverables]
posters, magazine ads, billboards, website, motion piece.
[date]
spring 2022.
[about]
wmse 91.7 fm is an independent community radio station in milwaukee — actually independent. no corporate owner, no playlist algorithm, no sponsor dictating what gets airtime. it survives on listener donations and an annual fundraiser called rockabilly chili, which is exactly what it sounds like: a chili cook-off and live rockabilly bands.
the concept started with research of past campaigns, the radio station's visual history, and the rockabilly subculture itself. moodboards came next: vintage diner signage, 50s pulp illustration, hand-painted band posters, men's adventure magazine covers. the goal was something that felt handmade and a little unhinged. wmse isn't slick. the design shouldn't be either.
the centerpiece was an original illustration: a guy eating the hottest chili of his life, sweat pouring down his face, eyes watering, mouth open. funny and a little absurd. exactly right for what this was. color shifted across placements — white background on some, green on others — but the illustration and the vintage rockabilly type held everything together. posters, magazine ads, billboards, website, motion piece, all working off the same central idea: this is going to hurt, and you're going to enjoy it.
[next]
[project]
the hop, a guerrilla marketing campaign for milwaukee's free downtown streetcar.
[deliverables]
logo, transit ads, magazine pages, sidewalk decals, illustration system.
[date]
spring 2023.
[about]
the hop is milwaukee's downtown streetcar — built to connect the city center and the third ward, free for anyone to ride. it had a problem: it existed, but ridership numbers weren't where they needed to be. this campaign was made to fix that.
the name was the starting point. the hop. so what hops? a bunny. enter cecil — a blue line-drawn rabbit who became the visual core of the campaign. cecil could sit, leap, sprint, and talk: "hi. i'm cecil." the tagline carried the wordplay forward — hop to it — and the identity ran on a seasonal color palette designed to rotate through the year. pale yellow and blue for spring, brighter tones waiting for summer. one rabbit, four seasons, a system designed not to wear out.
cecil showed up everywhere — on the logo, across transit ads, in magazine pages, on circular sidewalk decals that traced a path to the nearest streetcar stop. follow cecil, find the hop. each surface said the same thing in its own way: the streetcar runs, it's free, get on it. the goal was to make a free streetcar feel like something worth showing up for. cecil pulled most of that weight.
[next]
[project]
makebelievefun, a weekly radio show on amp and stationhead.
[deliverables]
instagram carousels, posters, promotional material.
[date]
winter 2022 – winter 2024.
[about]
makebelievefun started christmas 2022 on amp, an experimental radio app from amazon. when amp shut down, i moved the show over to stationhead and kept going. two years, mostly weekly, with the occasional break. there were also marathon spots — long-format events where each dj got an hour to spin a specific genre. souvlaki space station was one of those. twenty-four hours of shoegaze, post-punk, and classic alternative.
every show needed promotional material — usually a carousel for instagram, sometimes a standalone poster. the look was early 90s emo and hardcore punk: high-contrast photo treatments, type that wobbled and glowed, single-color overlays on black, distortion that read like it came off a photocopier. handmade in spirit, even when it wasn't. some of it leaned ironic. some of it leaned silly. most of it was made fast, in the day or two before the show went live.
the early amp shows had a specific ritual — no talking between songs. for one week in january 2023, i performed daily and built a poster live during each broadcast. eight posters, eight days, made from whatever the set put in front of me. that practice ended with the week. when amp died later that year, the rest of the carousels kept going. my last show was december 22, 2024.
[promotions & campaigns]
a poster on a telephone pole has about two seconds to catch someone walking past. an ad in a feed has less. these projects were made for small organizations and events that needed to get noticed — a community radio fundraiser, a streetcar campaign, a radio show. the trick was getting loud enough to land without losing the message. the work isn't subtle. it isn't supposed to be.
[projects]