COPYWRITING ENGAGEMENTS
View these samples of my copywriting work, which ranges from web copy to catalogs and online magazines.
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CLIENT
ORANGE22, an LA-based industrial design firm.
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WEBSITE RELAUNCH (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
Dario Antonioni, founder of Orange22, asked me to overhaul his website to highlight his prolific output and communicate a sense of his personality. Another missing element: His background as a student of aerospace engineering, a discipline that informs every aspect his design. In addition to providing a portrait of the firm and its founder, I wrote profiles of Orange22 designs, including retail environments, architectural concepts, products and furniture. My aim was to engage clients and buyers through a magazine-like tone, leveraging my experience as a feature writer for design publications.
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CLIENT
CRESCENDO APPAREL
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SPRING 2010 CATALOG (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
Crescendo Apparel — a wearable, “off the runway” collection of pants, skirts and dresses — is designed to fit and flatter women with small waists and full hips. For women who have their tailor on speed dial, Crescendo Apparel solves “dressing room angst” by addressing the most common fit issues women encounter. This catalog for Spring/Summer 2010 is part of my ongoing work to position the company, for which I’ve been writing web copy and collateral materials since its 2009 launch. In keeping with the voice I developed for Crescendo overall, the tone in this catalog is “kicky” to keep the brand down-to-earth and accessible.
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CLIENT
CRESCENDO APPAREL
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FALL 2010 CATALOG (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
For the Fall/Winter collection, Crescendo’s designer used architecture as her point of departure, particularly art deco architecture and the “less is more” wisdom of Mies Van der Rohe. In naming the garments, I payed homage to Mr. Van der Rohe’s famed Barcelona Pavilion with a “Barcelona Skirt,” for instance. And I explored the idioms of 1930s Hollywood, where deco style was defined. Hence the “Callback Sweater” and the “Producer Pant.”
At this point in the company’s development, it was also important to introduce consumers to the founder, who launched Crescendo Apparel after a lifetime of dissatisfaction with the fashion industry’s disregard for women’s varied shapes and sizes. This and other collateral material weaves the founder’s personal story into the company’s branding, a strategy to connect more fully with consumers who have shared the same struggle to find clothes that fit without the need for expensive tailoring.
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CLIENT
CRESCENDO APPAREL
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MONTHLY E-ZINE
WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER
DESCRIPTION
As part of Crescendo’s post-launch communications plan, I wrote and edited the content for the company’s e-Zine through 2011. The lifestyle-oriented magazine — which avoids hard-sell tactics and instead focuses on being of service to the reader — provides Crescendo’s fashion-forward audience with practical information on beauty, fashion and style. Shown here is the Valentine’s Day issue.
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CLIENT
CRESCENDO APPAREL
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BROCHURE INSERT (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
For this women’s apparel company, details are opportunities. These garments flatter specifically because the designer cares for every detail. This brochure insert communicates the importance of the deets, not to mention style. In naming the garments in this collection, I used the tropes of early Hollywood (“Go-See Top,” “Callback Sweater” and a pair of pants named “The Marlene,” for Ms. Dietrich, of course). So when I stumbled on a stunningly appropriate Marlene Dietrich quote, I jumped.
Here’s how I used it in the insert copy: “We take our cues from Hollywood icon Marlene Dietrich, who once said about her famous legs: ‘Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful. I just know what to do with them.’ Naturally, we had to name a pair of pants for her.”
(Great find on that quote, right? It’s as if Marlene said it just for this.)
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CLIENT
DOMU.com
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DOMU.com NEIGHBORHOOD PROFILES (LINK)
DESCRIPTION
For this real estate website that connects Chicago landlords with prospective renters, I researched and wrote the meat of more than 30 profiles of Chicago neighborhoods, including Rogers Park, Wicker Park, Old Town, Wrigleyville, Bucktown and Ukranian Village. The research-intensive profiles needed to resonate with two very different audiences: Chicago natives on the one hand, and new imports to the city on the other. To connect with both groups, the profiles blend the basics with an “inside” point of view and little-known bits of neighborhood history.
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CLIENT
BATORY FOODS
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MARKET OVERVIEWS (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
Batory Foods, a leading distributor of high-quality food ingredients, has a tremendous amount of thought capital in its ranks. Working closely with Batory’s Marketing Director, I’ve created content to highlight that, including through its twitter stream, press releases and online market overviews. In the latter case, I interviewed subject-matter experts to craft a story about Batory’s value proposition in each of seven sectors, surrounding the overviews with up-to-the-minute market trends. For this client, every piece of communications (down to the tweets) aims to position Batory as a company that offers not just ingredients but industry expertise and insight.
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CLIENT
The Institute for Career Advancement Needs (ICAN)
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10-PAGE ADVERTISEMENT (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
To produce this 10-page advertorial for the Institute of Career Advancement (ICAN), a nonprofit leadership development organization, I interviewed women business leaders from the C-Suite across industries. The challenge was to draw “golden nuggets” of content — including great quotes and interesting anecdotes — from time-pressed interviewees. In this case, those stories also needed to outline the positive influence of ICAN. The advertorial ran as a 10-page spread in the women’s business magazine PINK.
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CLIENT
EPIC, a nonprofit that connects creative professionals with opportunities to make social change happen.
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PROGRAM FOR FUNDRAISING EVENT (PDF)
DESCRIPTION
EPIC helps nonprofits with small budgets and big missions market their missions to the world – on a probono basis. As the president of the board of EPIC, I work with founder Erin Huizenga and board members to do a little bit of everything – and a lot of writing. This event program needed to convey a great deal of information. But, really, how reasonable is it to expect people to pore over a program at a party with an open bar? Not very.
To get around that, the copy needed to be fast and fun. In this case, I told the story of EPIC in numbers – a quick way to communicate just how much heavy lifting was involved in getting EPIC off the ground. For instance, the board of directors considered 117 names before deciding on “EPIC,” wrote 998 words of meeting minutes, commenced 36 percent of board meetings at bars and had 0 fights in 11 months.
Interested in EPIC? Visit our site, where you can see more of my writing, and tweet with us at @iamepic. (Yes, that’s me tweeting.)
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CLIENT
CHAI MING, a line of upscale furniture from award-winning architecture firm Gary Lee Partners.
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BRAND NAMES (PDF) for 40-piece collection of bespoke furniture.
DESCRIPTION
Working with Gary Lee Partners, I developed the brand names and naming conventions for Chai Ming, a 40-piece collection of high-end furnishings. The names draw from the traditions of classical dance (the Glissade table and Pavlova chair, for instance), Greek mythology (the Juno chair and Daphne sofa) and celestial phenomenon (the Daybreak chair and Nova table). For those pieces that echo mid-century design, names like the Metropolis lounge and Gramercy sofa call to mind that period of history. These names reflect the collection’s lyrical lines, strong profiles and mid-century design provenance.
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CLIENT
MONETATE
PROJECT
A series of industry white papers.
DESCRIPTION
If learning the intricacies of a new industry were a marathon, I “trained” for many years as a journalist, where an ability to write with authority about topics ranging from technical to . . . inscrutable is the name of the game. In the case of this marathon — writing a series of white papers for the innovative website testing platform Monetate — I was lucky to have a wonderful client who kept my inbox full of background reading and allowed me to “interview” him, journalism-style, as if he were an article source. In the end, I lost count of how many white papers I wrote for Monetate, but I do know I can now explain the difference between an “A/B” and “multivariate” test in a way that makes sense to a third grader. Okay. Maybe a seventh grader.
