Projects · Proof of Craft

Built in public.
Running right now.

Two brands, both Searchlight's own. One sells to a real audience and has the numbers to prove the read was right. The other exists to prove direction — the decision layer that separates a piece that lands from a piece that just looks expensive. Neither was written up after the fact.

01 · Active, Selling

EdRebel HQ

Bold merch, loud voice.

EdRebel apparel worn by an educator in a school hallway

A teacher-facing brand selling apparel and digital tools to educators on Etsy. Designed, written, art-directed, and fulfilled here. Every line of copy, every product photograph, every listing.

It stays on this page for one reason: it is a live market test that runs every week. The audience read either works or it doesn't, and the sales say which. That is a different kind of credential than a case study.

See the shop →
Undismissed apparel design honoring James Baldwin
Inside EdRebel

Undismissed

Apparel for the equity icons teachers actually teach. Baldwin. Butler. Itliong. The names that carry a classroom and rarely make it onto a shirt.

The copy assumes the buyer already holds this politics. It is not making a case, it is handing them the shirt. That distinction is the entire voice, and it is why the line converts with the teachers it was built for instead of a general audience that likes the idea of it.

02 · Proof of Direction

Roly & Mabel

Two pugs, cast properly.

Character IP built from real footage of two real pugs, then directed into a small set of spec commercials. A product, a concept, a one-line brief, a cut, a brand. Fifteen to thirty seconds each.

The pugs are the joke. Direction is the point. Casting, tone, pacing, where the light sits, when the cut lands, what the last frame leaves you holding. That work is invisible when it goes right and unmistakable when it doesn't, which is exactly why it belongs on this page instead of in a paragraph claiming I can do it.

PugTech Noir fragrance spec campaign
Noir · Pour ElleFragrance · Spec Campaign
Prestige Properties spec campaign
Prestige PropertiesReal Estate · Spec Campaign
PugTech spec campaign
PugTechProduct · Spec Campaign

Brands shown are invented for the spot. The direction is not.

Dare to act

This is what direction looks like
pointed at your brand.

Ninety minutes is enough to find out. Story Sprint is the front door, and everything on this page started as one.

Built to win