Design is the most visible part. The practice runs deeper.

A chemiluminescent light stick works by keeping two reactive chemicals physically separated inside a sealed tube. Between them is a glass ampoule — a small, precisely manufactured capsule that holds one chemical until the moment of activation, when a controlled flex breaks it and the reaction begins. OmniGlow was, among other things, the world’s foremost manufacturer of those ampoules: the component that made chemical light possible at scale.

Smelling salts, in their simplest form, are a glass ampoule containing an ammonia solution — the same break-to-activate mechanism, applied to a different problem entirely. When two graduate students from BYU arrived with a reformulated, aromatherapy-infused athletic smelling salt, the connection to OmniGlow’s core manufacturing capability was immediate. The ampoule expertise was already in house. It needed everything else: a brand, a retail presence, a market-ready execution.

They had seen something the market had missed — that ammonia content could be reduced without sacrificing effectiveness, and the ampoules infused with aromatherapy scents thought to further enhance alertness. A consumer-grade smelling salt, engineered for performance and positioned as premium. They came to us to build the brand and establish a position in the athletic supplements industry. The product needed an identity that could hold its own next to the established players — and look like it had always been there.

The logo is built around a lithe typeface with fluid letterforms — athletic in character without the aggressive clichés of sports branding. The key detail: I modified the “i” in GoTime™ so its dot and stem form a runner, chest-first, breaking the finish-line tape. It’s a detail that rewards a second look — the kind that registers before a buyer knows why.

For the packaging and collateral: athletic imagery at full intensity, strong fluorescent color pulls, and spot-varnishes that give it tactile confidence in-hand. The shelf presence reads kinetic and purposeful — a brand that earns its place next to established players rather than deferring to them.

The glow business is an intensely seasonal affair. July 4th moves volume, but Halloween is the year — and the shelf for Halloween glow is as competitive and commodity-driven as retail gets. Overseas suppliers flood the channel with cheap, visually interchangeable product, and standing out requires more than a price point.

OmniGlow needed a brand that could compete on impact — something that stopped the impulse purchaser scanning the aisle and registered with the shopper who already had glow on their list. The parent is usually the actual buyer. Monster Glow™ had to work for both.

Bold color, prominent product imagery, a brand character that fits the Halloween retail context without dissolving into it. The goal was a product that didn’t look like it came off the same press as everything else on that peg.

Before Super Glow™, Amscan’s glow offerings were sourced from multiple vendors with entirely disparate packaging. Each product looked like it came from a different company — because it did. There was no shelf coherence, no brand story, and no way to planogram a section that made sense to a buyer or a customer.

Consolidating Amscan’s fragmented glow line meant building an identity from nothing, designing a package for every item, and delivering a Style Guide their teams could maintain after launch.

I created the Super Glow™ brand and product architecture. Two constraints shaped the design system: shelf impact at a distance, and modular package sizing that would let retailers planogram entire store sections cleanly. The line ran to nearly 50 glow items — each with its own package design — with custom-photographed kids and prominent product imagery that communicated clearly to the parent who was usually holding the wallet.

Beyond the base line, I created seasonal variants — Halloween, 4th of July, New Year’s — and program-specific packaging for different channels and audiences. The brand architecture held across all of it.

The Style Guide became Amscan’s internal reference for everything after launch: color systems, typography, photography direction, and package architecture. The brand was built to be handed off.

EGlow™ extended OmniGlow’s retail packaging family into a new product category and channel — the same shelf presence and safety communication applied where those things had to work in a different retail context.

The packaging had to read as part of the OmniGlow family while standing on its own in a hardware or emergency supply aisle. Strong color and direct typography carried the work — a different shelf, the same brief.

A consulting firm’s identity often speaks before the principal does. The mark has to establish credibility in a single glance — in a context where the client already has other options and the conversation hasn’t started yet.

For Peak Performance Consulting, the brief was authority without the trappings of corporate consulting: precision and clarity that reads as earned, not performed. The mark holds across every context it appears in without requiring explanation.

A logo has to carry the whole brief in a single glance — no supporting context, no second chance to clarify. These seven marks span industries and scales, from early-stage ventures to established organizations, each requiring a solution built for where the client actually is, not a house style applied to their name.

Every mark here started with a problem: an undefined identity, a dated visual system, a brand that had outgrown its original expression. Each solution is distinct because each problem was distinct — no templating, no house style imposed on the client. The common thread is the willingness to work past the first solution that works.

These marks don’t announce themselves as design — they announce their clients.

In medical packaging, the brief and the compliance requirements are the same document. What a clinician needs to find in an emergency is also what the labeling standard requires you to put there — the design challenge is making that information work at the speed a clinical moment demands.

StyLite was an intubation stylet with a chemiluminescent tip — a medical device designed to illuminate a patient’s airway and vocal cords during emergency intubation when conventional visualization fails. Its inventor was a working paramedic, and we developed every aspect of the product together: form, materials, mechanism, packaging structure, and the full marketing and documentation system, all developed against FDA and international medical device labeling standards where ambiguity is not an option. Vizilite was a chemiluminescent lightstick for oral cancer screening: the specific wavelength of its chemical reaction makes dysplastic tissue visible to the examining clinician in ways natural light does not. For that product, the design challenge was documentation — clinical literature precise enough to support a dentist or oral surgeon using it as a diagnostic tool, and patient-facing materials that translated the screening procedure into language that was accurate and reassuring without understating what was being looked for.

Zila Pharmaceuticals was the same brief in a different category: hierarchy that directs the eye, labeling that satisfies regulatory requirements without reading like a legal document.

In medical packaging, restraint is the skill. Every element earns its place, or it doesn’t appear.