SC250 — Sestercentennial of the American Revolution in South Carolina
Chernoff Newman · 2023 · Concept, Art Direction
SC250 is the state commission chartered by the South Carolina General Assembly to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, with a mandate to include the role of African Americans in the war.
The Challenge
Most Americans place the Revolution in Massachusetts and Virginia. Lexington, Valley Forge, Yorktown. South Carolina hosted more battles and skirmishes than any other state and almost nobody knows it. So the campaign wasn't fighting indifference, it was fighting a version of the story people were already confident about. And it had to reach an audience that reflexively tunes out anything that looks like a history lesson.
The Truth
The problem was believability, not awareness. "The Revolutionary War was won in South Carolina" sounds like state pride talking. Any campaign that simply asserted it would get filed next to every other tourism claim. The line needed something that made people stop and check rather than nod and move on.
The Work
The concept borrowed the most familiar phrase in film marketing and broke it.
Based On A True Story, with "Based On" struck through. What's left is A True Story.
Three words doing the work of a paragraph. The strikethrough signals that this isn't dramatization or heritage myth-making, it's documented history, and it does it in a visual language the audience already reads fluently from movie posters. Bold typography against period imagery, treated with the confidence of contemporary film campaigns rather than the reverence usually applied to Revolutionary War material.
The device also solves the mandate. A campaign built on "what you were told isn't the whole story" makes room for the parts of South Carolina's Revolution that get left out, including the role of African Americans the commission was specifically chartered to include. The correction isn't a separate message. It's the whole idea.
MT COMPLETE CAMPAIGN AND PRODUCT LAUNCH
A New Era of Custom Arrangements for Modern Worship
Role: Creative Team Lead - Creative Direction, Art Direction, Branding
The Challenge
Worship leaders have long been constrained by rigid arrangements, locked into a single genre, key, or instrumentation. But real-world worship contexts aren’t one-size-fits-all. They’re dynamic, diverse, and constantly evolving.
The challenge was clear: How do we create a product that gives users full creative control while maintaining musical integrity and cohesion?
The Truth
One song. Four distinct genres. Matching arrangements, chord progressions, and keys; engineered to work together seamlessly.
That’s the promise of MT Complete. A revolutionary platform that empowers worship leaders to mix and match parts from Gospel, Orchestral, Acoustic, and Core arrangements to create a truly custom sound tailored to their team, their context, and their congregation.
This was a new creative language for worship.
SOCIAL
The Work
As Creative and Art Director, I led the full creative vision for one of the most ambitious launches in our company’s history.
The campaign needed to match the product’s complexity with clarity, energy, and inspiration. We set out to build a visual and storytelling experience that made the concept immediately tangible—and deeply compelling.
Highlights included:
A bold, modular visual identity inspired by musical layering and arrangement flexibility
Cinematic video storytelling to show the platform in action across genres
Clean, intuitive UX/UI integration to support the product’s interactive nature
Messaging and branding that spoke directly to the creative and practical challenges worship leaders face each week
The campaign extended across web, email, video, and in-platform content; each piece working together to position MT Complete as both a tool and a creative unlock.
The Results
The launch of MT Complete redefined expectation; delivering not just a product, but a new way to approach worship music. It quickly became a conversation starter across our community, setting a new creative and strategic benchmark for future product storytelling.
Credits:
Creative & Art Direction – James Windham
Concept – James Windham, Jesse Schaffer, Mitch Obach
Videography – Mitch Obach, Merit Productions
Email Marketing – Wayne Yaun
Web Development – Jonathan Puckett
UI/UX – Marc Bonaaso
WEB
Playback Remote – Product Launch Campaign
Feature Launch: Remote Control Functionality for Playback
Role: Creative Team Lead - Art Direction, Branding
The Challenge
Our users have always relied on Playback for live performance precision, but until now, control had a limitation: proximity. The launch of Playback Remote introduced a powerful new paradigm, run the player from anywhere in the room. It was a product-defining feature that deserved a story just as expansive.
The Truth
This wasn’t just a feature; it was a shift in how our users engage with our ecosystem. We needed to communicate not just what it did, but what it felt like to use it.
The message was simple: freedom of movement, total control. But the story needed to capture both intimacy and scale—showing users the distance they could travel, while staying connected to the core.
The Work
As Art Director, I led the creative development of the campaign—building a visual identity and narrative that matched the power of the product.
The concept centered around contrast: ultra-wide shots to express scale and independence, paired with tight, detailed close-ups to ground the story in tactile, emotional moments. This visual language created a sense of distance—and control across that distance.
We combined this storytelling with:
Cinematic videography by Mitch Obach and Merit Productions
Emotionally resonant photography from Joshua Taliaferro
A custom voiceover performance from Baylee Lang
Music supervision and sync with Phil Wickham’s “The Battle Belongs,” giving the piece emotional weight and worship energy
The campaign extended across email, web, and video, and was designed to live beyond launch as a long-term brand asset.
The Results
The Playback Remote campaign marked a creative and strategic high point—delivering both clarity and emotion around a feature that redefined the product experience. The response was strong, the adoption immediate, and the storytelling became a new benchmark for how we launch future innovations.
Credits:
Art Direction – James Windham
Concept – James Windham, Jesse Schaffer, Mitch Obach
Videography – Mitch Obach, Merit Productions
Photography – Joshua Taliaferro
Email Marketing – Wayne Yaun
Leadership – Kristian Ponsford
Voiceover – Baylee Lang
Music Supervision – Jesse Schaffer
Music – Phil Wickham, “The Battle Belongs”
