August 04, 2017 @ 5:00 PM
event
Our Cosmology.
Culture. Concepts. Crew.
Our Style
Our friendly, engaged, and professional culture leads to an exceptional client experience. We’re constantly looking for ways to add value to our work and achieve better results for you.
Our crew consists of highly-skilled creatives with a broad range of complementary skills. We’re a bunch of collaborative self-starters who challenge each other to constantly think beyond the norm. We have a flat hierarchy, and value contributions from everyone in our studio equally. We remain humble, knowing that there's always more to learn and room for improvement.
Our weekly sprint approach allow us to be nimble and responsive, adjusting design and flow as we go. Through our unique design process, content and visuals are created in parallel, each informing the other. This lets everyone see all of the elements in context as things take shape, rather than a big reveal at the end of the project.
Life/work balance is more than a buzzword for us. We work 4 x 10 hour days, staggered so that there's always someone in the studio to help you. This gives us time to recharge and keep the creative juices flowing. We make sure our team remains rested, motivated, and fulfilled, so that you always get our best work and full creativity.
Clients By Industry
Technology
Entertainment
Health/Lifestyle
Other
Inspiration
- Elephant Mag
- Siteinspire
- Dribbble
- Behance
- Offscreen
- Print Magazine
- Because the Internet
- 24 Ways
Playlist
- Superheaven
- Dark, Dark, Dark
- Sufjan Stevens
- Nas
- Sneaky Creekans
- The Heavy
- Lord Huron
- Radiation City
Santa Cruz, CA
Weather
Receiving data...
San Francisco
Oakland
Palo Alto
San Jose
Santa Cruz
Monterey
Unique To Our System
-
1. We are nimble.
An intentionally small studio with big ideas and a broad skill set, we deliver quality creativity on a smaller budget, iterate and pivot quickly, while focusing on personal interactions.
-
2. We are strategy-based.
Our primary task is to help our clients define and develop grounded, actionable strategies for communicating their core competencies, values, and personality.
-
3. We are communicative.
Every client works directly with the Creative Director, Designers, and Developers on the project. We are free from layers of bureaucracy, so concepts and feedback aren't lost in translation.
-
4. We are thinkers and doers.
Top-level strategy all the way to detailed implementation is delivered in-house. Designers, developers, and strategists work side-by-side in our studio.
-
5. We are current.
We live on the outer fringe of modern design principals and technological best practices. We stay current with the latest in design, development and strategy.
-
6. We are practical.
Striking an effective balance of form and function, our strategies and designs translate directly to real-word value for our clients' business objectives.
-
7. We are collaborative.
This approach allows our clients to give us feedback along the way, and lets us iterate and improve elements as we go, making the process free from surprises.
Featured Journal
January 18, 2016
article
Hosting Static Files with S3 & CloudFront
The modern web is rich with photography, iconography, and video, but image-heavy sites can result in poor performance for the end user.
Eric Ressler
Founder & Creative Director
Interests:
Design, Branding, Typography, Digital Strategy, Photography, Video & Film, Music, Technology, Outdoor Exploration, Plus Bacon.
Background:
Hailing from San Diego State University, Eric launched Cosmic in 2007 and has been helping organizations launch, pivot and re-invent themselves ever since. He's led the strategic growth of Cosmic - keeping it small, responsive, professional and fun. In addition to his personal contributions to each project, Eric keeps an eye on overall strategy while ensuring that Cosmic consistently provides high creative value and achieves our clients' goals.
Experience:
As our Creative Director, Eric has extensive expertise in brand development, strategy, extension, and maintenance. Over the years, he has delivered complex web and brand projects for local Santa Cruz organizations through international brands. These projects have given him in-depth experience with both minimal and large, content heavy websites.
A self-taught photographer and cinematographer, he's the man operating the camera on our photo and video shoots. He's also one of our primary video editors and colorists. His musical background frequently comes into play during post-production.
Lisa Benson
Business Strategist & Development
Interests:
Zen of Modern Business Strategy in the new economy, Exceptional Communication, Vampire Hunters, Kick-Ass Heroines, Cool Hunting, Classic Blues.
Background:
Born into a business family, Lisa's been an entrepreneur since she could pronounce it. She followed up stints in the UCSC Theater and Art Center College of Design Film departments with 15 years in finance and business consulting in multiple industries.
Experience:
Lisa leads our business strategy and new business development. She's helped Cosmic grow from a solopreneur studio at Santa Cruz coworking hub NextSpace, to an 8-person full-service creative agency. She combines her decade of financial management with the aesthetic sensibilities she honed at the Art Center College of Design to provide a unique perspective on business strategy.
Brian Jensen
Designer
Interests:
Design, Branding, Travel, Cooking, Typography, Homebrew, Simplicity, Coffee, This American Life, Sweaters.
Background:
Growing up in San Jose, Brian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Design Studies from San Jose State University. Brian focuses on how design influences and shapes all forms of culture.
Experience:
Brian's the designer we turn to for brand extension and evolution. He's excellent at envisioning brand usage and application in new ways. A fan of impactful design, Brian produces work that is clean, elegant, and consistently on-brand. Brian has worked on a diverse array of web projects, and has helped extend brands into digital applications for a variety of industries and demographics. He even pitches in on video projects, providing us with motion graphics.
Matt Steele
Web Content Strategist
Interests:
Copywriting, Brand Messaging, Video Direction & Production, Black Tea, NPR, Vintage Trouble, Semi-pro Tabletop Gaming.
Background:
A film geek out of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Matt's career began in Hollywood. Over the past two decades, his writing branched into marketing, brand messaging and web content development.
Experience:
Matt brings 20+ years of experience as a writer and photo & video producer/director to the table. A natural storyteller, he delves deep into companies and organizations, learning their industries, markets, competitors, and differentiators in order to tell their stories in words and pictures. He works tirelessly to define and refine brand messaging and establish voice across web and marketing collateral. A strong advocate of short and long-term content strategy, he clearly defines the goal of each piece of content, either written or visual.
Zack Spear
Developer
Interests:
Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e.V. Dortmund and Orlando City Soccer Club, Top Gear, Game of Thrones, Pop-punk & Hardcore, Foreign & Domestic Film from Tarantino to Wes Anderson, Travel, Schwarzbier.
Background:
Born and raised in Florida, Zack's quickly acclimated to California living. Front-end developer by day. Front-end developer by night. More than just a dev pro, he works some After Effects magic on the side.
Experience:
Zack's our Front-end Development expert. He geeks out on creating pixel-perfect implementations of our team's designs. With extensive knowledge in modern web technologies, he builds sites on Craft CMS, and uses HTML, Twig, Sass (SCSS), JS, and other modern scripting languages to create a responsive front-end for our websites. Zack is also our in-house source for tasteful interaction design, animations, and delightful details that result in unique web experiences.
Jon McIntosh
Developer
Interests:
Modern Design, Fixie Bikes, Classic Film, New & Emerging Tech, Gaming, Travel, Hoppy Beer, Object Singletons, Cat Photography.
Background:
A true product of Silicon Valley, Jon grew up playing with HTML instead of Legos. His whole life has been dedicated to building innovative web products and he's grown alongside some of the top developers in the Bay Area. From 3-man startups to Fortune 500 companies, Jon has brought his skills to Santa Cruz with a mission to breathe life into new ideas and ventures. With a passion for the Santa Cruz tech scene, his dedication to developing sleek, intuitive user interfaces for modern web applications is infectious.
Experience:
Jon is a rare developer with design chops as well. His primary focus at Cosmic is building powerful and flexible websites using Craft CMS. He's built dynamic Frontend interfaces using a large variety of modern toolkits such as Backbone and React with a tasteful combination of semantic HTML5 & CSS3. Jon has also architected numerous web-scale applications on top of Rails, Laravel, Express and Sinatra.
Tiffany Jones
Producer
Tiffany picked up her Bachelor of Arts degree in Film Production from Biola University. Her career began in film, working up from lowly PA to Editor, Production Manager, and Line Producer.
A friend convinced her to move out of film to co-found a coworking space, serving as both Community Manager and a Project Manager for a graphic design firm. She leveraged that experience to become the Tech & Ops Manager of a growing coworking company, overseeing employees in 8 different locations while managing special projects. She’s a champion of efficiency and streamlining processes. A diehard about branding, user experience, and telling compelling stories, she brings a combo of a techie and creative, compassionate brainpower to our team.
Brett Johnson
Designer
Interests:
Design, Mountain Biking, Skating, Family, Travel, Games, Coffee, Photography, TV Binge Watching
Background:
A Santa Cruz native, Brett holds a BA in Media Studies with a minor in Computer Science. He enjoys all aspects of a design project from brand to UI/UX, and really digs creating icons and illustrations that support brands.
Experience:
A flexible designer with a clean, modern aesthetic, Brett’s also able to design in a more playful and humorous style when appropriate. With an eye for details, he’s guided by the broader concept and strategy of every project, aiming to empower users to accomplish their goals with digital products.He’s passionate about executing impactful designs that help people, and improving communication between a brand and its audience.
Ryan Hall
Developer/Designer
Interests:
Great typography, Film, Photography, Pushing design boundaries, Fixing old motorcycles, Skateboarding, Playing guitar, Woody Guthrie, Expensive Coffee, Cheap beer
Background:
Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, Ryan moved to the creative enclave of Madison, WI to pursue a degree in Digital Art and Design at the Madison Media Institute. While there, he learned to live between design and front-end web development. He’s been freelancing and working with design studios ever since.
Experience:
With a foot in both the development and design worlds, Ryan loves to take a project from concept to finished product. His varied skill set applies to everything from modest sites for local businesses to large scale applications for fortune 500 companies. Like the rest of the Cosmic team, he geeks out on reiterating and improving the process every time