About
Hi, I'm Travis.
I've spent 25 years making complex things clear, and I've never managed to stay in one lane. On purpose.
I started in Washington, DC at the turn of the millennium, designing fliers for club nights and hand-coding websites for anyone who'd let me. The canvas has kept changing ever since: bookstore dot-coms, a mobile video startup that skinned its site for Spider-Man 3, internal tools at Riot Games, a gaming platform with twenty million players, the biggest 50+ audience on the web, and an AI governance company that needed a new name and a new face in eight weeks.
The throughline never changed: take something complicated and make people get it. That has meant a brand system with 144 pages of rules, a booking flow with exactly two questions, and a rendered walkthrough that let a global team tour a building in Davos months before the paint arrived.
Most of what I make is really about getting people to agree on something. A style guide keeps 50,000 pages coherent, a render replaces a red-eye flight, a kit of parts lets two people work like twenty. That's the part of the job I like, and most of what this site is about.
These days I'm Creative Director at Prove AI, working remotely, leading brand and creative across everything the company touches. I mentor designers, product-manage our web presence, and still open the 3D software myself more weeks than not.
What I do
- Brand strategy & identity systems
- External agency direction & brand stewardship
- Product UI & UX
- Environmental & event design
- 3D visualization & virtual walkthroughs
- Motion graphics & AV production
- Sound design, music production & mastering
- Creative team leadership & mentoring
Where I stand
AI belongs on the tedium, not the taste. Brand rules work best enforced at generation, not caught in review. The moment a brand automates its conversations it stops being one. And a system that makes the team smaller was built wrong.
The whole arc, 1999 to today
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Oct 2024–Present
Prove AI · Creative Director
Led the rebrand from Casper Labs to Prove AI, strategy through rollout. Now stewarding the brand across every platform and mentoring the design team. Case study →
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2019–2024
Casper Labs · Creative Director
All design and creative direction: web, social, motion, advertising, research reports, three straight years of Davos venues, and directing the JKR rebrand from the client side with our CMO. Creative lead for the March 2021 mainnet launch and its CoinList token sale: $33.5M raised, nearly 100K registrants, one of the platform's largest distributions ever. JKR rebrand → · Davos →
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2016–2018
Riot Games · AV Tech / Graphic Designer, Media Systems
Supported 200+ live events on the Riot campus: camera, audio, technical direction, lighting, motion graphics, and secure streams to 2,000+ Rioters worldwide.
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2014–2016
Riot Games · Graphic Designer, "Product Riot"
A startup title doesn't convert at Riot's scale. Trading the title for the room was the point. Lead designer on internal products: the MiniMap wayfinding app, the intranet redesign, an employee directory, and a teams database. Case study →
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2014
Lyynks · UI/UX Design Consultant
User stories, acceptance criteria, layouts, and visual style guides for an iOS music platform, bridging remote engineering and business stakeholders.
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2011–2013
Xfire · Creative Director
Set the brand tone, redesigned the website, and designed the desktop client for a 20M-member gaming community. Case study →
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2008–2011
AARP · Product Designer
The AARP.org relaunch, the games channel, the style guide behind 50,000 CMS pages, and an iPad app designed in the platform's first year. Case study →
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2008
American Chemical Society · Contract Web Designer
Designed and shipped the ACS Learning Management System site and the Center for Professional Development, integrated with learn.com.
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2007–2008
buySAFE · Web Designer
Site design and marketing campaigns, including co-branded work with TRUSTe and PriceRunner.
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2006–2007
Veeker · Web Designer / Artist
Designed and hand-coded veeker.com from concept to CSS production, including a site takeover for the Spider-Man 3 premiere.
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2006
ThumbJive · Artist / Design Lead
UI and all 2D art for the mobile game "Call the Play Football." ThumbJive was acquired by Veeker.
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2005
United Communications Group · Web Graphic Designer
Conference promo sites at a sprint pace. Up to seven websites concept-to-deploy in a single week.
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2002–2004
DC Life Media · Media Director
Company identity, event promotion, and all web development: fliers, posters, HTML emails, and international CD covers.
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2001–2002
Buzzlife Productions · Art Director / Bookings
Promo design for the legendary Friday-night Buzz events, with placements alongside URB, BPM, WHFS, and the Washington Post. Also booked breakbeat DJs from around the world.
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2001
Hi-Res Studios · Graphic Designer
Flier and web design for DC-area events, working directly with clients.
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1999–2000
VarsityBooks.com · Graphic Designer
Where it started: HTML and design for one of the first online textbook retailers, on a team of three.
Before all this: DC club fliers
Buzzlife work, mostly: Cübik on Friday nights at Nation, the Firecracker parties every July, a pre-launch for a dance-music cruise. A flier is hierarchy with the volume up. The headliner has to read across a dark room, twelve support acts have to survive being read at arm's length, and the whole thing ships to press on Tuesday whether or not the bill is locked. Same problem as a 50,000-page style guide, with considerably more chrome. My own DJ name is in the small type on a couple of them.
Planet of the Drums, cut as a web banner. AK1200, Dara, Dieselboy, Messinian.
Firecracker 4, July 2004. Independence weekend, front and back on one card.
The same party three years on, at Fur. Four rooms, sixteen names, one bill.
A month on one card. Deep Dish one Friday, Astral Projection the next.
The pre-launch for a dance-music cruise, at the Paradox in Baltimore. Bad Boy Bill headlining.
June 2004: Tiësto, Richie Hawtin, Planet of the Drums, and a foam party.
April 2004: Bad Boy Bill, Charles Feelgood, Dieselboy vs Scott Henry.
Deep Dish at Glow, Club Insomnia. A different room, the same city, the same Saturday habit.
Vision at Up: house on one Friday, breaks on the next, December both nights.
After hours: Friskie Business
The design career started in club promotion, and the music never stopped. As Friskie Business I produce, remix, and master funk-leaning dance music. It keeps my ears as trained as my eyes, and it comes in handy every time a project needs sound design, an event needs a system tuned, or a brand wants to know what it sounds like.
Say hello
Whether it's a senior creative role, a brand system that needs an owner, or a space that needs to exist in 3D before it exists in Switzerland, I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a note and I'll get back to you.