Creative Director — Agency 689

Thirty years making ideas look inevitable.

A logo isn't decoration. A system isn't a rulebook. Done right, they're the quiet thing that makes someone trust a brand before they know why. That's the job. Clarity, dressed up as taste.

Somewhere in there I also wrote a book of poems, drew the pictures for it, and put my name on the cover — which was either brave or foolish. Probably both.

I still believe the best ideas are the simplest ones, argued for the longest.

Zander Vera, Creative Director

—Other Writing

down hill
(from here)

Some of it happened. Some of it didn't. They're poems. You were warned.

A hundred-plus pages of poems, sketches, and observations about love, family, music, growing older, questionable choices, and finding humor where it probably shouldn't exist. Independently published, July 2026 — because apparently thirty years of branding other people wasn't enough. He wanted a cover of his own.

Read it on Amazon →

down
hill

—About

Thirty years turning other people's ambitions into things people recognize on sight.

2001 – Present

Agency 689, Partner + Creative Director

Founded the studio. Fifty-plus brand systems since, from a travel-guitar startup to a rock 'n' roll hotel. Still does the work himself.

1997 – 2001

DGWB, Interactive Creative Director

Landed in advertising right as it was discovering the internet existed. Spent four years figuring out what a website was supposed to do.

1993 – 1997

firstsource.com, Creative Director

Started here. Back when "creative director" didn't mean much of anything at a dot-com nobody remembers.

Along the way: a handful of ADDYs, a Netty Award, and a keynote at the Art Institute of Orange County, where he presumably told twenty-year-olds that AI would either end their career or make it — still isn't sure which. Lives in California. Writes poems on the side. Recently found out that counts as "other writing."

—Contact

Let's talk.