John Donahue

Direct: 919.827.0836
Fax: 919.876.5737

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Designing isn’t just a job for me, it’s my passion! While in college, in my senior year I was awarded Graphic & Commercial Art Student of the Year and was hired directly with a young Detroit exhibit company named Display Producers. That is when I started to be infatuated with the exhibit business. It always thrills me to see things that I create becoming a reality in a short period of time. After one year of designing for Display Producers, I was involved in a promotional television advertising and traveling exhibit project, working with CBS/TV2, which won an Emmy Award for “30 Years of Television”. This exhibit traveled to several places throughout Michigan. In 1991 I went forward with my career and was hired by the H.B. Stubbs Company, which was at that time one of the largest exhibit companies in the metropolitan Detroit area. I advanced to Senior Industrial Designer and worked with them for 16 years on many large projects. In 2008, I was hired by EWI Worldwide, a global exhibit company that did 100 million dollars of business the year I was with them.

While designing with EWI, I worked in the “Studio Creative” department and my title was Senior Designer. In the year that I was with them, I worked on over 30 design projects and with 20 different EWI accounts. In 2009 I started worked as an independent freelance designer in the Michigan area. Then in 2012 I decided that it was a good time for a change and I accepted a senior designer position with Zig Zibit, a growing company in Raleigh, NC, where I moved and am happily utilizing my creativity. My goal is to exceed the clients’ expectations and to make memorable experiences come to life by using brand strategies that tell a story. My design philosophy is sensory perception that stimulates human curiosity. I am always looking for design solutions that make an impact that is memorable and unexpected.