Story / Object / Enterprise
Story has weight.
In television, story lived in time. In a venture, it had weight: the feel of a tin, the promise on a label, the distance between the front door and the case, the sentence a customer heard before tasting anything. Design stopped being what happened after the idea. It became part of whether the idea worked.
At m cacao and & Maple, the work looked similar from the outside. It was not. At m cacao, I learned the chocolatier's craft so I could tell the company's story with an honest understanding of the work. At & Maple, I developed the seasonings themselves as well as the identity and production system around them. Those were different jobs. They taught me different things.
01 / m cacao / 2018-2020
I learned the craft so the story would be true.
I co-founded m cacao and served as its president. I was not the production chocolatier. I was the storyteller: responsible for how the company explained itself through identity, packaging, retail build-out, display, events, and the language used with customers.
To do that honestly, I learned the chocolatier's craft. Time, temperature, ingredients, equipment, labor, and repetition could not remain background facts if I was going to help lead the company. The company's chocolatiers made the chocolates sold in the case. My responsibility was to understand their work well enough to help the company speak truthfully about it.
The retail room was the largest piece of packaging: dark millwork, marble, light, case, signs, staff, and product meeting the customer at once. m cacao did not become the durable company we intended, and I will not turn that into a tidy founder fable. It taught me where story stops being enough. Capital, labor, ownership, and the daily cost of keeping a beautiful room alive still have their say.
02 / Stories customers could hold
The chocolate already had its makers. My job was to give it a public life.
Film / Campaign / Event
Thank You Honey Bee
The bonbon was made by m cacao's chocolatiers for a Newburyport screening of The Pollinators. I developed its public story around honey, pollination, place, and attention, then carried that story through a poster, product card, table signs, packaging, and event presentation.
When the filmmakers asked m cacao to bring the piece to the Napa Valley Film Festival, the story had to travel with it. A local occasion became a portable encounter. The campaign carried the chocolatiers' work into a new room.
Music / Limited edition / Packaging
Elderflower Caramel Violin
For the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, m cacao's chocolatiers made an elderflower caramel chocolate in the form of a violin. I worked on the story and packaging around it: a small edible keepsake that let music, flavor, and a local occasion meet.
The joke was part of the work. So was knowing when to stop explaining it.
03 / & Maple
Here, the story began in the blend.
& Maple was different. I developed the products themselves: salt-free seasonings built around Vermont maple sugar. The line included Applewood Smoked Dry Rub, All Purpose Savory Seasoning, and a seasonal Vermont Maple Turkey Brine.
Then I built the name, identity, label system, packaging language, photography, sell sheets, vendor relationships, retail materials, and production workflow around them. There was no separate brand phase. A phrase on the tin could change how someone expected the flavor; a package size could change the production day; a vendor limit could send me back to the product.
Consumer sales are paused. Wholesale, licensing, and serious project inquiries belong at the independent & Maple site.
Visit & Maple
04 / Other forms
Some ideas need paper. Some need a screen.
Editorial / Rights review
Savor the Smoke
An & Maple food-writing and editorial project about smoke, maple, fire, restraint, and practical cooking. Recipes, typography, pacing, and white space could carry knowledge that would never fit on a label. The co-produced PDF and imagery remain held for rights review.
Book / Complete object
The FR Book
A 24-page illustrated book I wrote, drew, laid out, and printed. It let me work at the scale of a hand: page turns, white space, type, visual rhythm, and the small pause before the next image arrives.
Sequence / Working studies
Storyboards
A storyboard makes timing visible before production makes it expensive. These studies decide what comes first, what gets air, and where the eye needs to arrive. The complete screen-production record lives on Film & Television.
05 / IDIDIT / Internal recovery
Sometimes the product is the rule.
IDIDIT ("I Did It!") begins with a household disagreement familiar to almost everyone: saying a job is done is not the same as agreeing it is done. The application turns assignment, completion, proof, objection, decision, and history into an explicit product flow.
It is an internal recovery build, not a public demo or launch-ready service. It appears here because designing responsibility into an interface is product work, even when the product has no package or retail shelf.
06 / Ways in
Tell me what the customer actually meets.
If you are making something people will hold, enter, buy, read, or use, tell me what it is, who makes it, and how it currently reaches them. The work may be the story, the package, the room, the editorial object, or the operating sequence behind all four.
If the real problem is not design, say that too.