Mad Creative Skills

Welcome to my hybrid portfolio page.

This is a bit of an experiment. My goal is to tell a bit of a story behind a few samples of my work.

If you’re more interested in my resume, In my quest to become the best creative director I can be, I’m always pushing myself to learn. After 20 years as a designer, writer and creative director, I recently added content marketing and web development to my skill set.

Magazine Design & Art Direction

Almost half my career has been in media & publishing, I’ve held full-time positions with publications like Bon Appétit magazine and Salt Lake magazine.

I’ve also published my own magazines and print products which were sold on newsstands.

And last, when I’ve worked as a consultant, offering creative and business development services to clients in the consumer and B2B space. In that role, I helped clients start up more than a dozen new magazines.

Here are a Few Magazine Design Samples

Freelance Design project for Chopper Build magazine — Salt Lake Magazine Comic-Con Cover

Marketing Communications

Living in L.A. as I did, I knew that opportunities in the magazine business were limited. Most of the big publishers were in New York with a few in the bay Area. So after a good run at Bon Appétit I took a position as Design Director for the in-house agency at Health Net in Woodland Hills, CA.

An Internet startup marketing opportunity took me to Idaho and, after that bubble burst, I was once again in the freelance market.

All told, been involved in print and digital marketing advertising across many industries:

Digital Media
Commercial Construction
SAAS
Politics
Healthcare

Here are a few recent samples

Screen capture of adplacementpartners.com, creative director Scott Cullins

Freelance Design project for Lehi-based SIRQ Construction

See that site in the gallery below or visit the live Ad Placement Partners site now.

Web Design

I have a decent grasp of CSS and can build fairly sophisticated websites using WordPress and my favorite theme, Generate Press.

To be clear, I’m not claiming to be a developer. And I havent design a lot of web sites. However, combined with my design and content marketing skills, I’ve put together some solid performing sites.

Here are a few samples of web projects I’ve taken the lead on:

Screen capture of Ad Placement Partners blog site, creative director Scott Cullins

Content Marketing

After running a handful of blogs over the past 10 years, I felt I had a good grasp on SEO. But I knew I was only nibbling at the edges of the discipline. So a few years ago, I decided to step up my content marketing skillset and became a Hubspot Certified Content Marketer.

With elevated content marketing skills, the agency I work for changed up my role a bit.

Now—in addition to the typical creative director responsibilities—I oversee SEO and content for all of the company’s internal web sites and several strategic partner sites, like our digital media buying partner Ad Placement Partners.

I’ve been able to vastly improve the SEO of the sites I’m involved with—attaining a handful number 1 SERP positions for primary keyword phrases.

Digital

When you’re used to gigabytes of data and cumbersome, sluggish application response times, working in digital is like a breath of fresh air.

Much of my digital advertising experience comes in the past 8 years working with Arena Communications as a contractor and eventually a FT employee.

The agency is political, sand I have to say that I didn’t care for some of the candidates and PACs we worked for, but I’m very competetive and I like to won. So I always found a reason to stay motivated and do my best work…make light of the mostly-serious subject matter by creating eye-catching social media graphics and programatic ads with copy that resonates with all.

Photography

I recall when I was with Bon Appétit magazone, one of my responsibilities was editing travel photography. Hours bent over a light table to pick three slides out of 1,500.

In my quest to be the best creative director possible, I’ve become quite a decent photographer. I’ve always had the eye to frame shots and the ability to clean them up in photodhopSometimes, there’s no time to waste and being able to get quality phoographcs can make or break a design.

Armed with his tiny Canon M6 mirrorless camera, an eye for balance and framing, and no small skill with Photoshop and Lightroom—I get some amazing results.

This shot (below) of a Moscow Mule was taken with my old Nikon DSLR in the alley behind Salt Lake City’s Bar X. I took the shot for a story Utah Style & Design magazine…just a few hours before the issue was sent to prepress. No pressure.

In my quest to be the best creative director I can be, I've become quite a decent photographer.

Illustration

Before I went architectural school, I was considering a career in technical illustration. Combined, the two disciplines helped me create some decent illustrations, like this architectural rendering for a Park City, Utah-based architectural client.

Packaging

I designed this cereal box for a Swedish television commercial. My packaging experience includes food product labeling for Trader Joe’s in Southern California.

More Samples

This is a small sampling of Scott’s work. If you’d like to see more samples and/or chat about an upcoming project, contact Scott here.