ABOUT PIXELER
Building beautiful sites since 1994.
Pixeler Interactive Group is the work of Gino Whitaker and Steve Tolin — collaborators since the CD-ROM era, partners in this studio since 2017, and hands-on through every shift in interactive media in between. Here's how three decades of it added up to one studio.
Our story
Youtopia
Gino and Steve founded Youtopia to build CD-ROM games. To stay afloat between titles, they took on a web design project for Chicago's KEY Magazine — and taught themselves HTML to do it. The web, it turned out, was the whole future.
Electric Sky
A typography studio acquired Youtopia to carry it into the digital age, renaming the venture Electric Sky. For three breakneck years, the pair built websites and motion graphics while the medium was still being invented.
Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago
Both were brought on to lead the interactive studio at Ogilvy & Mather's Chicago office. Two years later, O&M consolidated its interactive work to New York — and the partners went their separate ways.
Separate Ways
Gino joined Pressley Jacobs Design (now Pressley Johnson Design). Steve worked across several agencies — Signcast, Abelson-Taylor, Starfarm — before landing at KCI in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Pixeler
Tiring of city life, Gino relocated to the Driftless region of Wisconsin and ran a solo freelance practice under the name Pixeler.
Pixeler Interactive Group
When KCI downsized in 2017, Gino convinced Steve to team up again. More than two decades after Youtopia, the partnership was back — this time as Pixeler Interactive Group.
Coast to coast
A decade on, Pixeler is going strong — building websites and motion graphics for clients from coast to coast, backed by a network of design firms and copywriters assembled to fit each project.
The principals
Gino Whitaker
PRINCIPAL
Web development, design, web app, and interactive development — and the through-line of Pixeler since the freelance days in the Driftless.
Steve Tolin
PRINCIPAL
Web development, web app, and design leadership
honed across agency work from Chicago to Grand Rapids before rejoining forces in 2017.
Partners
Pixeler keeps standing affiliations with design firms and copywriters, and assembles the right team for each project — so you get senior people who fit the work, without the overhead of a big shop.
Pressley Johnson Design
Proof Design Studio
Lotsa Luck Studio
Grit, Outdoor Creative Agency
Joe Boney Design
Tim Zuellig Design Studio