Donahue Advertising/Design

Our 3 daughters did competitive figure skating for several years. Peter played hockey.

We were very fortunate to have exceptional coaches and instructors. The girl’s teams consistently performed very well and were very successful. Skating entailed many years of early morning, before-school practices, lots of travel and not inexpensive. Skating helped to teach our kids discipline, teamwork, responsibility, sacrifice & leadership. Their team’s successes fostered confidence and positive self-esteem.

At the end of each year, there was a themed Park District Ice Show featuring the teams and other skating programs. My contribution was designing the program covers for many years. A few are pictured below.

I created this menu for the Markets of Meijer flagship store in Grand Rapids. I don’t believe the in-store, sit-down deli concept ever went regional.

I designed the logo, packaging and graphic treatment for the Scene-it game in 2001. My brother-in-law’s son, Craig Kinzer (my age) and his friend, Dave Long developed Scene-it in 2000 with the introduction of DVD technology. It hit the store shelves in 2002 and evolved into a successful series. The Scene-it franchise has been bought and sold, retired and revived, most recently made available by Imagination Games with streaming functionality. Please "like & follow"

In the retail space, YOU HAVE TO MAKE A LOT OF NOISE and we did a pretty good job of that.

If you are inclined, please follow my page. I will be posting new work and more often. And if you or someone you know is in need of a logo, package design, ad, billboard or promotion, I would appreciate it if you sent them my way. Thank you.

My first big account was EZ Por Corporation, a division of Packaging Corporation of America. I designed & illustrated my wife's 10 year high school reunion booklet and a woman on the committee worked in the EZ Por marketing department. Thus began a 13 year relationship of art direction, package design, sell sheets, point-of-purchase displays and a new logo for the company.

Meijer Private Label Packaging
I developed the package design, icon designs, hired the photographer and food stylists — art directed the photography, retouched photos and provided finished files to the printer for a total of 57 packages. Meijer was opening a flagship store in Grand Rapids, Michigan and needed it quickly. Start to finish - 14 weeks.

Recently enjoyed designing some cross promotion, social media logos, layouts & ads for a good client.

I designed the marketing support material for the inaugural "RingSide for Mercy's Sake" in 1993. A black tie, fundraising event featuring live music, a silent auction and 7 bouts of boxing. A unique event that has lasted 28 years and raised a lot of money for kids in the care of a wonderful organization!

In 1985 I worked at a small studio/agency in the old Stone Container building. Merlin Muffler & Brake was a client. My employer designed a logo for Merlin which they rejected saying the face resembled a crooked card shark. So he sketched a few different faces and gave them to me to package and send (pre-email) to the client. I wrote a short note on the cover page and sketched a “happy face” logo rendition…and that was the version they chose :) I drew the final art and it is still in use today.

My first big Donahue Advertising client was EZ Por Corporation in Wheeling, a division of Packaging Corporation of America. Laurie, my wife, volunteered me to design & Illustrate her 10 year high school reunion book. Another woman on the reunion committe worked for EZ Por. That began a 13 year working relationship of package designs, label design, art direction, sell sheets, point-of-purchase displays and a new logo for the company. I should have hired Laurie as my salesperson years ago!

I designed the AON logo freelancing for Hill & Knowlton, Chicago (owned by J. Walter Thompson) in 1987 before Patrick Ryan officially changed the company name from "Combined Insurance Company of America". It’s the logo design that impressed my kids the most because it was prominently displayed on the Manchester United football club’s shirt from 2010 to 2015.