I'm Aaron May, an award-winning, creative, self-motivated, efficient, detail-focused, knowledgeable, funny, outgoing, and modest designer with over 25 years of combined freelance, agency, and corporate experience in print and online creative for higher education institutions, organizations, local and national businesses.
Graduating in 1998 from LSU's graphic design program, I started out in print for the early part of my career. I taught myself HTML and CSS and gradually became a full-fledged web designer. For the past 16 years, I've been at EAB, a company with 1,100+ partners in the higher education industry as a Senior Web Designer where I designed and developed online applications, landing pages, and graphic emails to support their enrollment campaigns.
Throughout my experience, I've had the privilege of creating work for clients like Accenture, The Memphis Zoo, Circuit City, Blue Heron Executive Search, and more. Below are just some examples of work that I've done.
Due to company policy, I'm unable to post my current work. But, if you're interested to see what I've been doing, please send me an email and I can send you a pdf of some eamples.
Because of my knowledge of the brand and that my designs were chosen most often, I became creative lead at Good Advertising on the Accenture account. I enjoyed working on the account because the strict brand made it a welcomed challenge to come up with different ways to create pieces that stood out while also fit within the brand.
The Automotive brochure was the first time we were able to change the format from what we usually created for Accenture. The smaller format was well-recieved because it was something that agents could easily distribute and still looked clean and impressive.
This is the stationary for Blue Heron, a Virginia-based executive search & consulting company. As a start-up, they had a very limited budget. Keeping that in mind, I created a system that used heavy stock, a lot of white space and limited color to keep the costs down, which allowed for a crisp clean look.
This is an announcement card for Blue Heron Executive Search & Consulting. Again, keeping in mind, the limited budget, I built up the brand by using a duotone and a lot of white space. The card also included a diecut to allow for a business card to be inserted, without detracting from the design or covering up any information.
This is a brochure for Blue Heron Executive Search & Consulting. Using few images, limited color and a lot of white space allows for a clean look. This brochure is ideal for a leave-behind because it's designed for constant updates. A pocket is diecut in the back cover to allow for supplement cards for updated information to be inserted.
This is the website for Blue Heron Executive Search & Consulting. This was the last piece I created for this company. I kept the look consistent throughout all pieces by keeping colors and layouts similar. This was created before I got back into the web, so I created the layout and oversaw the coding by a third-party. (Visit the site)
This is the poster for the 2000 Zoo Rendezvous. An annual fundraising event for the Memphis Zoo with the support of local bars and restaurants. Because this is an event centered around food, the idea is to use food to create the scene for the featured animal or idea. In 2000, the zoo was raising money to help fund a panda habitat.
This is the comp for the 2001 Zoo Rendezvous poster. The idea was to raise money for the new China exhibit, so I decided to change how the food was used over previous years. In past years, the food was used merely for color and texture. With this design, I wanted to create the image with very few ingredients, and have those ingredients work together as something that could also be appetizing, using pickled ginger and oranges.
After my first contract with Circuit City ended, I was brought on to create the logo and business materials for a new venture. Trading Circuit was a subcompany of Circuit City which took advantage of the boom of people wanting to eBay, but either didn't have the time or the experience. Trading Circuit was rolled out in a few markets to help people sell items through eBay.
Because Trading Circuit was set up to be housed within current Circuit City stores, I created a look that both worked with the Circuit City brand, but also stood out from it, using a similar palette and font treatment.
The brochure was created as a handout within area Circuit City stores to spark awareness of this new service. I used a simple 1, 2, 3 approach to show potential customers how easy it was to use Trading Circuit to sell their items on eBay.
This was my first self-promotion piece when I moved to Richmond. The card came with a branded yo-yo to help get my name out to the RIchmond Advertising community. A lot of my self-promo pieces involve fun and playful ideas. Since most toys nowadays involve using batteries and have become very complex, I liked the idea of going back to a simple toy that nearly everyone has experienced at some point in their life.
This self-promo piece expanded on the idea that even though we're all grown up and working, we're still able to play while at work. This card came with a small bag of marshmallows and gave instructions on how people could bring outdoor fun with snow into the office. It was geared toward the advertising community by incorporating office scenarios into the fun.
This was an announcement card for the birth of my first website, which offically launched on my birthday. I decided it would be an interesting and different idea to actually give away a birthday card on my own birthday instead of receiving one.
This is a viral card for Valentine's Day. The idea was that one would recieve the card, originally signed by me. They would then sign the card and pass it along to someone else. That way, by the end of the day, everyone in the office would have recieved a Valentine's Day card.
I'm glad you came and checked out my stuff. If you like what you see and want to learn more about me and my work, you can reach me at either aaron@aaronmay.com or give me a call at 804.426.1499. I look forward to hearing from you.