When New World Viking asked me to help them develop a line of Norse-themed shirts, I was quick to say “yes!” Viking lore was a passion of mine as a kid, so I was excited to have the opportunity to get creative with the myths, legends and historical figures I had spent so much time reading about.

New World Viking’s goal was to create a product line that they could use to differentiate themselves from other Viking shops, so I did quite a bit of research and came up with a variety of designs.

For example, there are three different types of Viking beast warrior: the berserker (bearpelt warrior), the ulfednar (wolfskin warrior), and the svinfylking (boarhead warrior). Since Viking fans and pagans feel a strong desire to be independent and different, I decided not to focus solely on the well-known berserkers and instead create designs for all three types of beast warriors:

By using the same color scheme for each shirt, I created a sense of unity while still giving NWV’s customers the ability to choose the type of warrior they identified with.

Norse fans also share a feeling of general superiority to those who follow societal norms and conventions, so I created designs that catered to that belief, like this play on the classic “evolution of man” diagram.

Here, rather than evolving from monkeys like the rest of humanity, Viking ulfednar evolve from wolves to become something better and more ferocious.

In addition, it became clear from my research that there was a strong, positive potential customer base of women who wanted to feel like empowered Viking warriors. Norse history and mythology is full of powerful female characters, so I also created a variety of designs for women like this one:

In total, I put together over a dozen different designs, all of which were very well received—both by the good folks over at New World Viking and their target audience. In fact, New World Viking loved them so much that they actually used them as the basis of most of their marketing material.

As with many of the favorite projects outlined here, these designs highlight how using market research to produce something compelling and creative can generate great results. Do it right, and the product or campaign is simply magical.

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When Medic.Life first approached me, their request was deceptively simple: “We want to make a smart toilet—one that will track people’s health every time they used the restroom.”

With my background in pharmacy and biotech, the request was right up my alley, but that also meant that I knew just how big of a challenge this project would be. Even so, though, I was intrigued. Could it be done? I had a feeling that the answer was “yes.”

Over the next year, I threw myself into developing a meaningful way to measure personal health data using bodily excretions. After exploring and testing a variety of options, I finally settled on infrared spectroscopy as our most viable option. Working with Medic.Life’s team of engineers, we built a functional prototype and I set about creating a multivariate algorithm that could be used to extrapolate health information from urine.

Eventually, I created an algorithm that assessed millions of points of data. After testing countless examples (don’t ask for details, you don’t want to know), I finally created a working model. The toilet was officially “smart”.

I helped Medic.Life identify and work with partners, brand their product, take it to shows and enter initial funding discussions. I wrote their patents for them and helped them get the product into a position where they were able to hire a team of healthcare professionals and researchers to take the product to the next level and prepare it for FDA approval.

At this point, the project is still in research and development mode, but I look forward to seeing it reach completion. It was certainly one of the most interesting—and odd—projects that I’ve ever worked on.

That being said, working on massive R&D projects like this is something that I relish. It’s an opportunity to find unusual ways to solve complex problems and create products that can change the world.

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With my background in pharmacy and R&D, I’ve been brought in to help out on a lot of biotech projects. Helping RiverRock Bioscience get up and off the ground was perhaps one of the most interesting.

When they first approached me, RiverRock had recently acquired licensing rights to a new antimicrobial technology invented by Paul B. Savage. Called “ceragenins”, these unique molecules imitated the shape and activity of the body’s antimicrobial peptides.

Ceragenins

Antimicrobial peptides are part of our immune system. In a nutshell, they are little protein chains that float around in our bodies and bore holes in the cell walls of bacteria and fungi.

Under normal circumstances, antimicrobial peptides are hard to manufacture and don’t last very long. That isn’t a problem in the body—which is constantly manufacturing them—but it’s made them hard to use for medical purposes.

Ceragenins, however, changed all of that. They’re relatively easy to produce and chemically stable, which means that they can last for weeks or even years. As a result, they have the potential to change how we approach sanitization.

The Problem

While this was all very exciting, RiverRock had a few challenges ahead of them. First, since most people don’t know much about antimicrobial peptides or how they work, it was hard to explain why ceragenins were so exciting. Second, ceragenins had so much untapped and untested potential that it was hard to identify which opportunities to focus on.

Finally, because of the previous two problems, they were having a hard time getting the investors they needed. Getting into biotech isn’t cheap or easy, so if you want to succeed, you need investors. My job was to help RiverRock solve all of these problems.

Figuring Things Out

To help RiverRock clearly communicate what the ceragenins were and how they worked, I created countless assets for the company: pitch decks, research articles, reviews, opinion pieces, and many other pitch and marketing materials. I compiled data from well over a thousand scientific papers and resources, made it easy to understand and compelling for potential investors and buyers.

To help them prioritize their product opportunities, I ran in-depth scientific studies with different ceragenins to validate their efficacy and see how well they worked in different scenarios. Between these studies and a ton of research into how antimicrobial peptides work, I discovered something interesting: the biggest opportunity for RiverRock lay not in the antimicrobial properties of the ceragenins, but in their wound-healing properties.

This was a major breakthrough for the company and changed the entire direction of the business. Eventually, between the marketing materials and this new discovery, RiverRock was able to win millions in investor dollars.

The best part of the story? My original assessment of the product was correct. While ceragenins were originally viewed as an antimicrobial agent, their true power lay in their ability to promote wound healing. In clinical studies, ceragenins have been shown to increase the rate of wound healing by 33x.

Helping a company get started with a product that has literally changed (and saved) lives was incredibly fulfilling. While it was ultimately up to RiverRock and their team of internal scientists to bring the product to market, I love being a part of the research and development process that helps these kinds of business get off the ground.

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One of my first projects for New World Viking was to help them come up with several novel phone case designs. They were looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the competition and so we experimented with several different product ideas.

After diving deep into Norse mythology, I decided to try mixing modern word art and ancient text (Elder Futhark, one of the oldest written languages—originally created by the Nords). Pulling heavily from the symbolism and legends of Norse gods and figures, I created a series of word art tributes.

For example, this case depicts Fenrir, the wolf destined to kill Odin and usher in Ragnarok:

In addition, I also created a variety of other designs. Here’s one featuring everyone’s favorite god of thunder, Thor:

And another depicting the Valkyries who dictate the fate of battles and the warriors who fight them:

Each of these designs took significant research and time to put together and embodies the Viking legends they represent in a new and unique way. These designs have received a massively positive response and helped set New World Viking’s products apart from the competition.

Most marketing and products do very little to push the envelope, but when you take the time to really get to know your target audience and find a new way to do things, the results almost always speak for themselves. Often, the best way to reach your market is to take a new spin on something classic—which is exactly what made this project so much fun.

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