Jon May · Ventura, CA · Designing since 2002

One person on
the file.

One senior operator, more than two decades, five disciplines that most businesses have to buy from five different vendors.

Start a Snapshot
A three screen desk in a dark room, mid-job on one client's brand: the logo open in Illustrator on the left monitor, a contact sheet of that logo applied to signage, packaging and merchandise on the right, and an email campaign being built on the laptop between them. Studio speakers, an audio interface, a phone in a stand and a CMY color cube sit on the desk.

The arrangement

Not a studio. Not a freelancer. An operator.

Nondescripts is one person. That is the offer, not a limitation to apologize for, the reason a project loses coherence is almost always that it passed through too many hands, each solving their own slice without seeing the rest.

I have spent more than two decades across brand, print, web, imagery and the operational systems underneath. Not sequentially, and not as a generalist who does each of them adequately, as a practice where knowing how the email system works changes how the website gets built, and knowing how the printer will handle it changes how the mark gets drawn.

The work is fixed in scope and priced in a written proposal after we talk. No published rate card, because the useful question is never what a logo costs; it is what the whole front of your business is currently costing you in trust you never find out you lost.

Based in Ventura, California. Most work is remote, and a good amount of it is not: signage, print and packaging benefit from someone standing in the room.

Jon May at his desk in a dark studio, seated, arms folded, wearing glasses and a black long-sleeve shirt with tattooed forearms, studio monitors and a screen behind him.

How the work gets decided

Four rules that survive every project.

Built to still be right in five years
Trend-led work has a shelf life and you pay for it twice. The second invoice is the expensive one.
The reason, not just the rule
Every guideline document states why, because a rule without a reason gets broken the first time it is inconvenient.
Accessible by construction
Contrast and focus and keyboard order are decided at the start. Retrofitting accessibility means rebuilding.
It has to run after I leave
A deliverable nobody can maintain is a liability with a nice cover.

The shape of it

No account manager in between.

24
Years designing
5
Disciplines under one roof
1
Senior operator on your file
0
Account managers in between

Ready when you are

Send me something
to look at.

The site, the deck, or whatever is bothering you. You get back a one-page read on what your surfaces are signaling and the three things worth fixing first. No charge, no call.

Start a Snapshot

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