Hi, I’m Josh Merriam, founder and creative director of Merriam Creative, a digital creative studio in the Atlanta area. I’ve been designing for web and print for over 15 years now and am always on a quest for continuing to feed my passion for good design, creative thinking and most importantly making the world a better place.
I started Merriam Creative as an outlet from the 9 to 5 back in 2003 while working as a production designer at Young Life in Colorado Springs. Starting off humbly taking on a few projects in the evenings for friends, I’ve continued to develop Merriam Creative into a solid, results-driven digital agency. I was previously full-time employed as creative director at an innovative telecom/software development company in Atlanta but now am actively creating solutions for non-profits, ministries, small businesses and enterprises.
I have previously worked as a video graphics designer for a CBS affiliate, headed up design for a local newspaper, directed marketing for a high-end retail boutique, developed/designed websites for dozens of ministries, non-profits and international small businesses. If you’ve got a digital marketing need, I’ve got the skills to take your project to the next level — B2B, B2C and more.
Feel free to contact me to discuss a project and we can kickstart your idea into a real-life marketing success story.
My Philosophy
I believe that at the end of the day, to make a product or business successful, you have to not only meet the need of your customer, internal or external, but make it easy to use and hopefully aesthetically appealing in the process. My goal is to take the complicated and boil it down to the core problem it’s trying to solve and create the pathway to a solid solution. I accomplish this by getting into the mind of the user to think like they do, finding ways to simplify, speed up and guide users to the solution your product offers.
My Vision
My vision is to help those that don’t have the time, resources or skills to increase sales, leads and create new business or donor relationships so they can grow their organizations.
My Process
Every client that comes my way and starts a project can expect to have a unique experience where we start with an interview about the vision of the organization, including who they serve, what problem they’re trying to solve and what their brand personality is. I take this preliminary information and use that as a starting point for an intense research process where I analyze the competition, figure out who the end-user is and what their motives are, and get to know the unique story behind the solution you’re trying to sell.
From those studies, I begin my sketching process, which is one of my favorite phases where pen meets paper and I can map out a design organically, letting the process unfold as I draw. Whether it’s a logo or a website structure flow, I always take pen to paper before I do anything.
Then I move to my MacBook to start digging in to digital designs, comps and prototypes, utilizing my skills with the Adobe Creative Cloud and other tools like Sketch, Adobe XD and InVision to turn that sketched idea into a working prototype. Lastly, the process moves to final production, whether that is HTML/CSS coding, custom WordPress theming, creating vector art in Illustrator or crafting a layered press-ready print piece.
From sketch to digital prototypes to final deliverable product, the goal stays the same — bring success to the client by meeting the needs of the user first.