A career Graphic Designer/Director (and occasional music producer), I've had the good fortune of working with some of the best and most reputable companies in the world — leaving each one in better, more profitable shape than it was when I arrived.

My first artistic achievement came at the age of 10, winning a government-sponsored illustrating competition called Operation Eau Propre. The ensuing media exposure helped open the door to regular illustrating assignments with popular consumer protection magazine Protect Yourself (Protégez-Vous). By age 16, I was authoring a weekly comic strip in local paper Le Point; while representing my school, city and province at various artistic & marketing competitions. This was also the year I accepted a Montreal Board of Trade Academic Achievement Award  for the body of my academic & artistic work; an honor presented to me by representatives of Bombardier, my sponsors at the corporate event.

I went on to study both Graphic Design and Fine Arts at the College level, while moonlighting as a part-time educator at Montreal’s CISM — a special ed school for teenagers — as well as composing theme music for both CFCF and RDS television. After a brief stint at the head office of Château Stores of Canada, I joined software designers Vircom Inc as Lead Graphic Artist in 1996. For the next couple of years, I was responsible for the company’s visual identity and graphic collateral needs — as well as scoring the logo & soundtrack to « The 4th Coming » video game, a MMORPG that continues to run on several servers in Europe to this day. This period was marked by unprecedented growth for the company; which jumped from 5 to 25 employees, and relocated to larger offices to accommodate.

In the years that followed, I went on to work alongside such brands as Virgin Music (France), Suzy Shier Fashion Stores, Glaxo SmithKline (Aquafresh™, Nicorette™), Rona, Mondoux (VetDiet™), Procaps Inc (Diablo™), Strategy First (Disciples: Sacred Lands™), Golden Palace Online Casino, and EasyClip Eyewear (Cartier). I’ve also had the chance to create movie posters as well as soundtrack music for American films like Kevin Kangas' « Fear of Clowns », distributed domestically by Lion’s Gate Home Entertainment; and his most recent release, « Bounty ».

In July of 2003, I devised and launched a viral marketing strategy aimed at giving music project Unfaith a little exposure. Dubbed « The Metallica Hoax », the initiative consisted of exploiting online media's irresponsibility and reckless rush-to-publish mentality, by literally giving them the story they were looking to print — in this case, an absurd account of Metallica copyrighting the "E" chord, and suing Unfaith for using it — in order to both prove a point, as well as give the band the exposure it was looking for.

	Related Links: YAHOO! article (USA) GUARDIAN article (UK) ROCKSTAR article (ITALY) NET.NANA article (ISRAEL) DAGBLADET article (NORWAY) NETZEITUNG article (GERMANY) etc.

Soon, both CNN and Rolling Stone came calling, while Jimmy Kimmel had already referenced the story twice on two consecutive nights; turning the whole thing into one of the biggest internet hoaxes to date. Covered (and praised) by virtually every industrialized country on the planet in a host of languages (see links above), even the members of Metallica themselves hailed it as both brilliant and hilarious, while American institutions like M.I.T. made the subject mandatory reading in their on-campus contemporary media curriculum. A few months later, Unfaith won the ISC Songwriting Competition's People's Voice award, due in no small part to the exposure brought on by the previous year’s viral campaign.

 In 2004, I joined a small upstart web design company called Belmont Web Services as Senior Graphic Artist, before being promoted to Art Director — answering and overseeing the company's graphic needs for the next three years — while helping to build what Nielsen eventually dubbed the fastest growing internet dating site in the world. During my tenure, the company prospered from only 6 to over 50 employees, traded cramped quarters in the red-light district of town for luxurious new accommodations in the heart of the city, and watched membership on its main site jump from 1 million to over 22 million subscribers.

In 2008, I joined CDRP Advertising as Art Director,and immediately put an end to months of back-and-forth between the company and its most important client, Mevotech; by establishing said client's new logo and corporate image on very first draft. I also ran the design studio, and was responsible for the schedules and output of 3 senior designers and 2 intermediates.

I am currently working in the Ville St-Laurent area.

Erik Ashley