Guided by Context.

Design on strategic foundations

I’ve been doing this since the late 80s starting in art school in Philadelphia, then working consistently ever since. Not theory. Not dabbling. Just decades of doing the work.

In the mid-90s, I was working on what most people didn’t even understand yet—the early internet. We were building websites before it was mainstream, running servers off our own machines. My studio at the time, Attention Design, was part of that first wave.

Moved into high-tech in Austin, working at a startup-focused agency where brand strategy wasn’t optional, it was survival. That’s where I learned how positioning actually works in-market, not just on paper.

That thinking came with me, to my first in-house position, global creative director for O’Neill Wetsuits & Outerwear. Global brand. Real scale. I had the chance to work and think alongside brand strategy agencies like Prophet Group and applying frameworks influenced by people like David Aaker. That’s where strategy stopped being an exercise and became something that had to perform across product, marketing, and business.

Founded BXC in 2005. Design, product, and marketing content now in tune.

And what I did was mostly simple: I took everything I’d learned—from early digital, to startup pressure, to global in-house brand systems and turned it into a process founders and I could actually use.

Not a deck. Not theory.
A working discovery and guidance system. Helping me and clients see a direction to work from. Creating stronger ideas, products and creative that sells harder.

That’s Branding By Context.
Strategy defines it. Judgment builds it.