Inhale | Exhale

My first true in-house role was for a wholesale supplier and manufacturer in the Hookah Industry. This company comprised of the brands "Inhale" and "Exhale" as well as several smaller brands. Like many other companies in this industry, the design aesthetic favoured by the manager was designs on the more flashier side, such as Ed Hardy and Guy Fieri, and their existing marketing collateral was all built in 1997 when the company started. While I made a lot of design choices in this role that I might not make today, I loved working in this role because I really got to experiment with a lot of visuals trying to align with the vision of the owner, and I got to build a lot of projects of all varieties from the ground up.

I was with this company for approximately five years and during that time, my skills and techniques grew immensely. Over the course of my time with the company, I served as graphic designer, web developer, brand manager, ecommerce sales manager, and in general juggled many roles. The owner was often overseas so I would be left with an empty project queue, and used that time to fill the gaps of projects to assist with the large number of trade shows and events that the rest of the team would attend every month. I built the company's full catalog from scratch and took most of the product photos myself, developed a large pool of print and digital ads, as well as numerous product pamphets, brochures, sales flyers and packaging.