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Associate Creative Director / Sr. UX Designer

2009 – 2010

In Brief

Starlight Enterprises is the largest international arts, entertainment and activist company specializing in tattoo products and services. The company sought not only to serve customers but also to promote tattoo culture at a time when tattoos still carried a considerable stigma. I empowered the company to achieve this vision through my work on an unprecedented tattoo convention, several ad campaigns, an online marketplace and a unique nightclub.

WHAT MY TEAM ACCOMPLISHED

The Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth

In 2009, Starlight Enterprises hosted “Mario Barth’s Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth” at the Mandalay Bay In Las Vegas, Nevada. The unprecedented convention united tattoo lovers of all stripes and treated them to the best tattoo culture has to offer, from live music to sculptures inspired by tattoo designs to presentations by luminaries in the field.

My team drove ticket sales by creating a digital presence and designing marketing and advertising materials. We also designed event collateral, which included print and websites; merchandise, such as hats and T-shirts; and the layout of the conference itself. For all of these design projects, we kept an overriding stylistic ethos in mind: to capture the strident, rebellious spirit of tattoo culture and balance it with the understanding that the rebellion was on the cusp of going mainstream.

Advertising Campaigns for Starlight Shops

Is a tattoo simply body art, or does it represent more than that? “It’s not just a tattoo, it’s a lifestyle” was an idea we conceived and emphasized in print and digital advertising campaigns to promote Starlight tattoo shops. We featured people of all ages and from all walks of life proudly flashing their tattoos as well as legendary tattoo artists, all to demonstrate the richness of tattoo culture and bust taboos left and right.

Advertising Campaigns for Intenze Ink

Intenze is a premium tattoo ink sold by Starlight to tattoo artists seeking the highest quality material. Starlight partnered with some of the most renowned tattoo artists in the world to develop pigments under the “Mario Barth Gold Label” brand, while also developing a signature brand for tattoo industry legend “Bowery” Stan Moskowitz.

In advertising these ink lines, we emphasized not only our famous partners but also the science and best practices behind making high-quality pigments, including lab testing and safety measures. In doing so, we presented Intenze as a stand-out in the ink business, offering tattoo artists and customers a degree of comfort and confidence that other ink lines couldn’t.

King Ink

Drawing on the tattoo lifestyle theme, King Ink at Las Vegas’ Mirage Hotel was created to be a night club and tattoo salon all in one. My team designed the space, the branding and the marketing collateral leading up to the club’s 2010 grand opening. As with The Biggest Tattoo Show on earth, we sought to capture the rebellious spirit of tattoo culture with our designs, this time featuring provocative decor and a rock-star-chic feel that impressed both everyday patrons and the real-life rock stars who visited the club.

Reinventing TattooSuperstore.Com

To sell Starlight’s ink lines and other products around the world, we engineered a total reinvention of its marketplace website, refining the user experience by making the site cleaner and easier to use, with simplified buying and reordering processes.

The Results

 

My team successfully completed design and ad campaign work for the tattoo show, Starlight shops, Intenze ink, and the King Ink club in less than a year. In that short time, Starlight saw its brand recognition surge. We succeeded in positioning the company as a leader in the movement to transform tattoos from a niche, stigmatized product to a celebrated art form and lifestyle choice for the public at large.