Oct 2013 — Apr 2014
Amazon
Visual Designer · Creative Technologist · Amazon Advertising (via Aquent)
Among the early movers in shipping major HTML5-based brand advertising at scale. Moved Amazon's brand-advertising stack off Flash in late 2013 / early 2014 while the rest of the industry was still SWF-heavy — Cover Girl × Hunger Games: Catching Fire was Amazon's first major HTML5-based ad takeover. Designed and shipped IAB-compliant rich-media for Pepsi, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Clorox, Kimberly Clark, and Beiersdorf.
A Flash-to-HTML5 inflection point
In late 2013, brand advertising on the web was still overwhelmingly Flash. The IAB had published HTML5 ad specs, mobile was already forcing the issue — iOS shipped without Flash and Android was about to follow — but the tentpole brand campaigns on every major retailer were still SWFs rendered by the Flash plugin. Amazon was one of the early movers off that legacy stack, and the Cover Girl × Hunger Games: Catching Fire campaign was the moment that shift became visible to the industry from outside.
I designed and built the hero takeover — an HTML5 / CSS / JavaScript unit that ran across desktop and tablet placements on amazon.com. The unit replaced what would previously have been a Flash SWF and proved that the new pipeline could carry tentpole brand campaigns at scale, on a hard launch date tied to the film's release.
- Amazon's first major HTML5-based ad takeover. Pioneered the Flash → HTML5 migration internally by shipping the campaign on the new stack against a non-negotiable theatrical-release date.
- Worked across the desktop home page takeover, skyscraper, and showcase placements as a single visual system.
- Made the case in production — not in spec — that HTML5 ads could carry the brand fidelity, motion language, and rich-media interactivity advertisers expected from Flash, while gaining mobile/tablet reach and accessibility that Flash could never deliver.
Brand campaigns at scale
Worked end-to-end as both visual designer and front-end developer for campaigns across Amazon's brand-advertising surfaces. Each unit had to honor brand guidelines from the agency side, meet IAB and Amazon's own technical constraints, and render reliably across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
- Procter & Gamble — Pantene showcase + skyscraper, Febreze showcase
- Kimberly Clark — Cottonelle / Fabricare portrait, landscape, and showcase placements
- Johnson & Johnson — Neutrogena portrait and landscape variants
- Coty — Cover Girl × Hunger Games hero takeover
How I worked
- Sat at the seam between agency creative and Amazon's rich-media platform — translating brand-guideline PSDs into production HTML/CSS/JS that passed Amazon's IAB-compliance review.
- Iterated on copy, layout, and motion under campaign-launch deadlines that didn't move.
- Documented patterns that future Amazon Advertising design technologists could lift from when bootstrapping similar campaigns.
Amazon Advertising
As a design technologist embedded with Amazon Advertising, I owned the production of brand campaigns end-to-end — visual design in Photoshop and Illustrator, then HTML/CSS/JavaScript implementation against the rich-media platform. Campaigns spanned home page takeovers, showcase units, portrait and landscape detail-page placements, skyscrapers, and mobile.
Amazon Advertising