John Avery
Creative Director/Designer
Forever, I’ve been told to keep work on my site fresh.
“Old work dates you. Old work is stale. Old work makes it look like you’re not active.”
That’s all really good advice - until you retire. Now that I have, I thought it would be fun to go back. Way back to my portfolio in high school, right through to my last full-time job. Sometimes I was the designer or art director, other times the creative director. Every role had its own challenges and experiences, all fulfilling.
Hope you enjoy my ERAs portfolio. And if you don’t, just shake it off.
The 70s
High School
College Portfolio
Just tap on any thumbnail to see what a pre-computer design portfolio looked like.
The 80s
First Job
Learned a lot. Some of it was about design and a lot of it was about people and business. Welcome to art for commerce!
Hill, Holliday
My first ad agency and I loved it. Big ideas, big egos and ridiculous parties. First time working with a writer and it changed how I saw design.
The 90s
Chiat/Day
I had no idea how lucky I was to be hired by Lee Clow. Just a knucklehead from Boston who got fired and then picked up a freelance gig at Chiat.
The 2000s
San Francisco .com madness
Back in L.A.
The Home Stretch
You can see my more recent work elsewhere on my site - but I had to end this with Covered California. Launching Obama Care in California was the most fulfilling campaign I worked on. I also had some fun, especially making videos for ResMed, a cpap company not known for being entertaining.
And that’s it. Unlike that other eras thing happening now, my eras come to an end with no bad blood. It’s been great.