Influence Perception

Our Team

We are a close knit team of imaginative people that live, breathe and bask in the power of brand. We believe in stretching the creative limits of both business and design in order to create breathtaking, functional brands (and have a darn good time doing it).

Pete Wright
Peter Wright Principal

After years of working in corporate America, Pete realized that success in marketing means having no disparity between what you say you stand for and what you do. Pete changed course after nearly a decade in big corporations for this very reason.

Switching his focus to consult for small and medium sized companies, his years of experience helped clients define tangible values - the kind that not only looked good on paper, but truly affected the company culture. During this time, Pete realized the power of design to communicate these values in a marketplace where consumers reward authenticity and eschew the unconvincing.

Pete's idealisms ensure that everything created at Urban Influence is functional and truly reflects an authentic and affecting position. Pete truly believes in forming true partnerships with the clientele of UI, as projects only become great when both sides collaborate in lieu of a greater good. It's through this alignment that many clients have transformed into personal friends and what has given UI its distinguished track record for success.

Nate Miller
Nate Miller Interactive Director, Principal

As the son of a computer science professor, technology and programming have been close to Nate for as long as he can remember. Upon graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in Business and Information Systems, Nate entered the advertising world at Draft FCB - putting his talents for design and technology to work for clients like HP, Motorola and many others. As part of the Draft FCB global network, Nate was given the opportunity to collaborate with talent from across the country and progressed his skills as a rare hybrid of art director and interactive developer.

Nate later went on to work at Pop, getting a chance to work on brands like Nintendo, Ubisoft, and others. Not long after working with Pop, he was given the opportunity to lead interactive services at Urban Influence with friends Pete Wright and Mike Mates. Nate's role at UI is to help expression of client brands through technology. His design experience, coupled with a tenacious competency in many different programming languages and frameworks, allow Urban Influence to approach client problems with a broad perspective.

While technologies and acronyms may change year after year, the principles of good communication are always constant. Nate's passions for design and technology ensure that his clients don't have to choose between having something that works and something that looks great.

Mike Mates
Mike Mates Art Director, Principal

Mike graduated highschool early with a college degree in visual communications and has been working as a creative professional before he could legally buy cigarettes. His early start in design led to a fascination with how brands interact with their customers and shape the world, observing that the most successful brands stayed true to an authentic promise.

Several years into Mike's career, he crossed paths with Peter Wright, who was working as an independent brand and marketing consultant. After collaborating on several projects together at an east-side design studio, they realized their vision for better brands aligned perfectly, resulting in the birth of Urban Influence only months later. Over the last 8 years Mike has been a key leader in the growth of Urban Influence, seeing it from its humble beginnings into one of Seattle's most up and coming branding design studios.

Chaun Osburn
Chaun Osburn Designer

Chaun was born way out west in the Sonoran desert in 1977. He grew up a happy ol’ child – wandering down empty washes, getting stuck with jumping cholla and wrestling javelina with his bare hands. He would also be frequently found in his room creating custom trading cards for athletes and redesigning sports teams logos just for fun. By his teenage years, he would lead wayfinding signage crews at the World Cup and draft up plans for big events like the Olympics.

Nowadays, Chaun is thrilled to be doing what he loves here at Urban Influence and call it work. He enjoys spending time with his incredible family, listening to only the finest music on vinyl and long walks with the dog late at night. He holds a special place in his heart for both MC Escher and John Lennon and considers his brother to be his personal hero.

Andrew Saxton
Andrew Saxton Designer

Andrew grew up 45 minutes south of Seattle, in beautiful Gig Harbor. Most of his childhood was spent building a music collection which was based purely on album covers. He realized at a young age that he returned to the same bands and musicians for the image that had been associated with them – It clicked later in life that this was branding in the works. This fascination with album art eventually connected to a career in graphic design, realizing there was so much more to it than just composition or color, but the ability to shape the lives and decisions of the people it touches.

Having recently completed a degree in design and communications, Andrew first came into Urban Influence early 2009 as an eager wide-eyed intern. Since then he has learned the inner-workings of branding and design and flourished into a brilliant addition to UI's creative mindshare. When he's not at work he can usually be found in record shops, at shows, or at home working on personal design projects, often with his wonderful girlfriend Cassandra.

Todd Gehman
Todd Gehman Senior Developer

Todd has been hacking around on the web since the <blink> tag was en vogue, and he even confesses to having used it. Once. Over the years, he's written software for companies as large as Amazon.com and as small as the Robot Co-op (makers of 43Things.com), and built websites ranging in size from two pages to several million. As web development best practices have enabled more and more richly interactive experiences, he's grateful to ply the trade at a company where great design is the guiding principle of web projects, rather than an afterthought.

In his free time Todd travels as much as possible, shoots fine art and street photography, builds websites for fun, and revels in Seattle's music scene by catching and playing shows around town.