Accent was the first company in the world to create disk-based animated product dem­on­stra­tions. Built on a proprietary development tool for DOS, the software was capable of creating high performance animations in CGA, VGA and even text-based graphics.

We built demos for just about every significant software and computer hardware man­ufac­turer of the mid to late 80's. For example, we did the first demo for Aldus Software's Page­Maker for Windows. We also did demos for most of the 286 and 386 based Compaq Com­pu­ters, for Microsoft Word for Windows, for Hewlett-Packard HP LaserJet IIP and IID printers, and National Car Rental's first interactive airport kiosk.

Sadly, as is the case for most computer-based design work, none of these demos run effectively anymore. They tend to either not play or play at a rate 100 times faster than they were originally intended.

Accent no longer exists; they sold their business in 1998.

ad-hoc was a great multimedia design company founded by Megan Wheeler and Aaron Singer. They were most well know for their award-winning design for Rick Smolan's "Passage to Vietnam." They were eventually bought out by Proxicom, who was then acquired by Di­men­sion Data.

I had the pleasure of working with them on an Apple Pippin project for Jostens Inc. Un­for­tun­ately, the project, like the Pippin, never saw the light of day.

The ADCNY is one of the most respected graphic design organizations in the world. Their ranks have included such design luminaries as Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paul Davis and R.O. Blechman.

I was honored when I was invited to join their judging for the 2001 New Media Division Awards. A dozen or so of us reviewed more than 300 excellent submissions before selecting the two Gold Awards and 6 Silver Awards. Tough job, but lots of fun!

Macromedia was the leading provider of Web and Multimedia Tools. Macromedia and MacroMind, its antecedent, and I go back a long way. I've been a fan of their tools ever since I first saw Marc Canter, the founder, give a presentation of VideoWorks at the West Coast Computer Fair in 1984. Marc hired me as Art Director when MacroMind moved from Chicago (all 6 of them) in 1990. The day I started, he was replaced with a new CEO, Tim Mott, who built the company up to take it public.

I was laid off in a mass downsizing of all marketing and creative personnel to cut expenses before going public, but I came back 5 years later to Macromedia, where I remained for 4 years in various capacities, when I was again part of a massive downsizing of marketing and creative personnel – spot a trend here?

They were acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005 . Wikipedia has a pretty thorough write up of their history.

Broadvision was founded by some of the chief scientists of Sybase Corporation. They created artificial intelligence and database-driven web systems that customize user ex­per­iences based on their interests and past interactions.

I worked with their web-mistress to create a branding identity animation for "The Edge" pro­gram to help promote their new technology.

Gray Matter Studios was a leading CD-ROM development studio that specialized in very high-level programmatic functionality for Macromedia Director titles.

With them I art directed and designed the entire look and feel and UI for the award-winning Team SAT CD for Zelos Digital Learning. I'm especially proud of this award, as we worked long and hard with Zelos to design a piece that would meet the objectives of being friendly and easy to work with for young people just out of High School who were frightened at the prospect of taking their SAT.

Interscope is a major record label that had the distribution and production rights to most of Primus's albums. It's a fascinating business, the recording industry, but not recommended for the weak of heart...

Ion was the premier Enhanced CD production studio in the mid 90's. Working with their creative director, Roger Jones, I art directed "Primus: Tales from the Punchbowl", animated parts of Todd Rundgren's "The Individualist" and designed a speculative piece for Ray Zone's 3D image collection.

The Invision Awards was started in the early 90's to honor the growing interactive multimedia industry. For many years they were the only group to recognize design and innovation in CD-ROMs, museum and point-of-sale kiosks, and private network interactive media.

We would judge between 100 and 1000 titles, depending on the category we were assigned to. Each category was awarded a Gold, Silver and Bronze Award, and each year a Best of Show was awarded. I had the privilege and honor to serve as a judge with the awards from 1993 until the magazine closed its doors in 2000.

I also had the honor of being the recipient of a Gold Award, Enhanced CD category for "Primus: Tales from the Punchbowl".

Oracle is one of the world's largest providers of enterprise relational database systems. They have the interesting problem that their sales are usually in the millions of dollars per site, and the sales cycle can be months long. They also have a very complex set of products, and need to differentiate themselves strongly from their competition.

I designed and built a series of seminars that used Apple Macintosh fx's with video boards that supported NTSC video in a window. We created video discs with customer testimonials that integrated into the Director-built multimedia. These seminars were presented by sales reps and played around the world. They generated hundreds of qualified sales leads.

Primus is a rock and roll band that could arguably be described as “weird” but very creative. They are best known for the theme song to Comedy Central's South Park. The Tales from the Punchbowl album was a massive undertaking to put animations to all of the song on the album. The only real way to see it is for me to bring you one of the extremely rare copies and show it to you on an old Macintosh computer (since it won't work in OS X or on Windows after 1996).

SoftAd was the first self-proclaimed "interactive ad agency" founded by Paula George in 1985. They had, and continue to have, an impressive client list that has included American Airlines, BMW, DEC, IBM, and US West. They focused on building interactive disc-based demos with games included to attract the viewer. Most discs were intended for direct mail fulfillment. They are now known as ChannelNet, and Paula is still at the helm.

Sybase was Oracle’s chief competition at the time I moved to them. I created a similar set of seminars for them, but used QuickTime playback rather than video disk integration. I also built a salesperson modifiable presentation that the presenter could tailor to the market he was pitching to. This seminar had a much wider distribution than the Oracle seminars, since it was CD based and could play back on most laptops.

Team SAT was an "edutainment " market CD ROM targeted at teenagers just about to graduate from High School and take their SAT tests. It was distributed by Zelos Learning, built by Gray Matter Studios and written by a pair of professors from San Francisco State University who had a seminar in improving SAT scores.

My job on the project was to build a comfortable, soft, relaxing environment. I did this by giving the entire UI the look of soft cotton jersey, like a sweatshirt. I also did all the animations for the tutorial sections.

The funny thing is, after designing all the tutorials I got quite peeved. If I had had the kind of help this CD gave back when I took my SAT's, I know I would have gotten a significantly higher score. On the other hand, as I look back over the years, I realize it wouldn't have made a single bit of difference.

Videodetics was the wholly owned subsidiary of Odetics Corporation. It was founded on a little box of technology that could control industrial video tape players to shuttle back and forth to specific points on the tape. It did this by listening to a specially embedded audio track on the video tape and counting the ticks as they went by at fast forward and rewind speeds. Videodetics wanted to create a market for the device by building interactive video kiosks for point of sale. We built several prototypes of my design and placed them in video tape rental stores and retail stores in Southern California.

To create an attract loop for the kiosk I used an Apple ][+ and a program called TGS to build animations. Videodetics folded after a short while, but the animation program was so much fun that I decided this is what I wanted to do with my life. Venturing up to Northern California, I ran across the company that made TGS, Accent Software, and ended up working for them for 5 years. Odetics eventually became Iteris Holdings in 1999.

Todd is another imaginative and creative musician, somewhat like Primus but weird in a different way. He's been playing with interactive media forever, in fact the first graphics tablet software I ever used was on my Apple ][+ and was written by him. He did an enhanced CD with Ion called "the individualist" that has some great animation on it by different animators from around the Bay Area. I'm proud to have done the title track animation.

Ray Zone is the worlds largest collector of all things to do with 3D printing. He publishes 3D comics and has a wealth of antique stereographic cards. Mr. Zone contracted Ion to create a prototype 3D CD ROM filled with his collection. I designed an interface that you could view with some included anaglyphic (red and green) lens glasses. The fun part was when you pushed a button, it really looked like it went in.