public portfolio and archive

debtor-in-chief: ahmed khalil

The Vancouver Moon

Volume 01, Issue 01

Fall 2024

Table of Contents

Oct 1, 2024: My design partner Frederick Brummer and I just redesigned Emily Carr University's homepage.

FRONT PAGE

My last nine-to-five was a Creative Director position, managing a great team of designers, content strategists and UX strategists at an agency focused exclusively on the public sector.

I’ve got opinions and I’ve got ideas. I read books. I can write. You know what, I can even spell.

Clients whose projects launched under my creative direction at Yellow Pencil
2018 – 2023
  • Alberta Digital Innovation Office (DIO)
  • Alberta Foundation for the Arts
  • Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis
  • Alberta Heritage Historic Sites, Museums and Archives
  • Alberta Human Rights Council
  • Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan (ASEBP)
  • Alberta Teachers Association
  • Alberta Union of Provincial Employees
  • Alberta University of the Arts
  • Camosun College
  • Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre
  • Capilano University
  • City of Edmonton
  • City of Surrey
  • City of Toronto
  • Concentra Bank (Wyth)
  • EPCOR
  • Edmonton John Howard Society
  • Edmonton Public Libraries
  • FISERV
  • Fitness Alberta
  • Global Transportation Hub
  • Government of Alberta
  • Government of Manitoba
  • Government of Yukon
  • Home Depot
  • Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT)
  • Norquest College
  • Ontario Trillium Fundation
  • Public Guardian & Trustee of British Columbia
  • Red Deer Local Immigration Partnership
  • Royal Roads University
  • Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board
  • Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)
  • Trimac Transportation
  • Toronto Community Housing Corporation
  • Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

(Therefore, hire me. Here's a resume.)

RESUME ULTRACOMPRESSED
  • Freelance Designer/Creative Consultant, 2023 – present
  • Creative Director, Yellow Pencil Inc, 2018 – 2023
  • Art Director, Yellow Pencil Inc, 2017 – 2018
  • Senior Designer, Redstamp Agency, 2016 – 2017
  • Senior Web Producer/Designer, CBC Music, 2011 – 2015
  • Web Producer/Designer, CBC Radio 3, 2005 – 2011
  • Interface Designer, Electronic Arts, 2004
  • Associate Producer, CBC Radio 3, 2003 – 2004
  • Senior Communications Designer, Tribal DDB Canada, 2002 – 2003
  • Communications Designer, Palmer Jarvis DDB, 1999 – 2002

SONG IN THE KEY OF ME

Whose fault is this? Your humble editor's, ma'am. Yours truly's, sir. Direct your texts of praise or scorn westwards. It's all my fault.

But who is this "humble", "truly"? Well: I trained as a “multimedia designer” at Vancouver Film School back when people still said "multimedia" without smirking. Broadband was imminent. Convergence was coming soon. Agencies were slowly, skeptically setting up their nascent "Digital" departments. The VFS course was highly instructive but wildly insufficient — HTML and CSS, 3D animation, Photoshop, digital audio and MIDI, digital video and editing made up the broad but shallow curriculum. Anyway it was enough to get me hired by an alumnus of the same program, who'd become Creative Director of Palmer Jarvis DDB (PJDDB) Interactive. Two of us got hired on Grad/Portfolio day, which doubled the number of designers in the digital room at PJDDB.

Need I mention that my first assigned project was a website for Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing? No, I need not. What of the three separate kitty-litter websites I got to work on? Nay, player. These were commercial web design's freshly-dug trenches. You designed a site, referring to the "real" campaign in print and on TV. You built it yourself, in between bouts of banner ad production. Then you moved on to the next assignment.

Four years was enough. I sent out an all-agency email titled "Death of a Salesman", and emerged from the sequestered calculation of the private sector into the green, green fields of our national public broadcaster's — you guessed it — nascent digital department, CBC Radio 3. This was where "whiz kids" were disruptively exploring new media paradigms promoting the rock, hip hop and electronic music and culture which the larger corporation preferred to ignore. We recorded visiting bands live in concert or in studio. We interviewed photographers, poets, painters, weirdos and talented nerds of many stripes, wearing sweaters of every description. And we set up a site where bands and artists could upload their music, promoting themselves while supplying the rotation for Radio 3's broadcast.

Ten years later, after several massive layoff debacles at the CBC, the axe swang round to me. But I did a LOT of work over that decade and got very comfortable with copyright-agnostic image mashups, high-velocity, high-attitude editorial design, and generally being a cheeky young swine online. Needless to say, it had to end. Now look at me...

Music

I've been involved in music one way or another for most of my life. My thing these days is to be portable, so I mostly use iPhone music apps and hardware grooveboxes to produce and play music. I've been fortunate to be part of a few contemporary dance pieces lately, as composer/musician. Currently mid-process on a piece called Bolt, by Jeanette Kotowich with Kate Franklin and Deanna Peters.

"POCKETRAXX-01"
I made these tracks on an old iPod Touch, mostly sitting on one of the benches at the top of the Alder Crossing stairs down to the seawall, in False Creek, Vancouver. The music was used in Mutable Subject's live online dance performance When I look at the camera, I'm looking at you.

Download a .zip file of this playlist (50.9 MB)