About

Hello. My name is Jake, nice to meet you.

I started my design career with a small Chicago firm called Folio. The owner, Bruce Vogele was the son of retired Chicago design icon Robert Vogele, a founding member of VSA Partners in Chicago. I was fortunate to have this as my first job, learning a lot from both individuals about hard work, the business of design and how to Design not just design.

While at STATS LLC i worked as a web and marketing designer. I spearheaded a new industry for them in data collection for mixed martial arts. This led to deals with the UFC and IFL for data collection and fantasy sports games. I led a team that traveled all over the country sitting ring side at MMA fights collecting data for the broadcasts.

Around the same time in 2006 my wife and I started Fight Chix Apparel. I have been a life long martial artist and as the UFC grew in popularity my wife joked about wanting to support the sport. So, we started a clothing line that grew in popularity through our grassroots promotion, connections within the fight community and the rise of social media. By 2010 our small company was nominated for “Best Mixed Martial Arts Lifestyle Brand” by the World MMA Awards. We had wholesale distribution in South Africa, Australia, Europe and the United States. We did charity fashion shows, UFC Fan Expos and even had dinner with Anthony Bourdain and his wife Ottavia. The brand still operates as a creative outlet for us and supports women in yoga, jiujitsu and MMA.

Fight Chix proved to be amazing case study to land more career defining jobs at Fans Edge, Sears/Kmart, Walgreens, closerlook and Footlocker. At these companies I dove into UX and product design. It excited me to see how the beauty of design could blend with analytics and user feedback to be more effective and beneficial to the end user. Highlights include:

  • NCAA and NFLPA automated print on demand clothing lines (Fans Edge)

  • A responsive denim shop, complete with art directed photoshoot that resulted in sales increases of Women’s Jeans +118% | Men’s Jeans +31%. | Kid’s Jeans +152% year over year (KMart)

  • User tested navigation for dress shop (Sears)

  • An sleep educational experience for mattress “Dreams Matter” shop (Sears)

  • Art direction, mentoring junior designers and client presentations (closerlook)

  • Improved conversion of sales in pharmacy checkout (Walgreens)

  • Created digital design systems over several brands (Footlocker)

Currently I am working as a Lead UX Product designer at CDK Global. CDK is the leader in automotive dealership solutions. I was brought in on a newer project called Fortellis—which is essentially a platform where developers and the automotive industry work together to create amazing solutions to help their businesses. In this role I work with several dev and product teams across 5 time zones, to enhance and refine the platform. We make agile incremental improvements that enhance the user experience and make the product better and more efficient. I have been fortunate enough to mentor several designers in my time so far at CDK and I love doing design workshops where all stake holders work together to solve a problem.

I make time to enjoy life as well. I love spending time with my wife, our boys and our dog, Ninja. Things that bring me joy include travel, coffee, steak, kettlebells, yoga and jiujitsu.