who we are

An award-winning designer and writer, Ken Mays brings over 40 years in communications, graphic design, Internet marketing and publishing to the Mays Team. As an entrepreneur, Internet & digital marketing innovator and successful business owner, Ken is a proven leader in today’s most advanced digital communications technologies. His company, Mays & Associates, was a web development pioneer, developing its first website in 1995 in the early days of the Internet. Since then, Mays has taken a leadership role in digital communications, introducing businesses in a wide variety of industries to the power of Internet marketing.  Mays is a Google Partner with an in depth knowledge of all the major Google platforms. In fact, Ken’s collaboration with Google goes back to 2004, when he started managing Google AdWords for his clients.
 
As a Creative Director, Ken has built brands from the ground up as well as giving old brands new life in a wide variety of industries including real estate, law, computer technology, IT, biotechnology, science, medicine, arts & entertainment, food retail, men’s clothing, skin care, foot care, communications, publishing, government, manufacturing, automotive, healthcare and education. His extensive skill set includes corporate branding, corporate logo design and slogan development, corporate collateral design, and the development of creative strategies for products and services.
 
Ken’s early career as a journalist was spent in the Baltimore/Washington market where he served as editor of the Towson Times at the age of 24 and then as managing editor of a daily newspaper in Arlington, Virginia, The Northern Virginia Sun. Mays left the Sun in 1974 to join an ambitious publishing startup, The Columbia Flier. He was hired by the Flier for both his writing and design skills. In addition to covering the Maryland State Legislature, he became the first design director for the publication, separating it from the other newspapers in the market by giving it a unique magazine style look and feel. Ken spent over 15 years at the Flier which later became Patuxent Publishing Company (PPC), one of the largest publishers of newspapers, magazines, and community telephone directories in Maryland. He served on the executive management team as director of marketing and promotions.
 
While at PPC, Ken started and ran A.D. Adverting Associates, an in-house advertising agency. Major clients included Whitney Communications in New York City and the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Celebration Committee. The agency created the print collateral announcing the first Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on January 20, 1986. He left PPC in 1988 to take Mays & Associates full time, first as a traditional advertising agency and finally as a digital communications firm, specializing in corporate branding, website development and online marketing.
 
Community involvement has been an important part of Ken’s life. He has taken an active role in a long list of non-profit organizations including board positions on the Howard County Chamber of Commerce, The Howard County Sesquicentennial Committee, The American Marketing Association (Baltimore Chapter), YMCA, American Heart Association, and the Patapsco Valley Heritage Greenway. His non-profit work includes over 30 years with The Columbia Festival of the Arts and design projects for The Columbia Foundation and Howard County Special Olympics. He also spent 15 years as a Boy Scout leader. Ken received a HOWIE award from the Howard County Arts Council in 2011 for his work with The Columbia Festival of the Arts. Ken holds a B.S. in Journalism from The Pennsylvania State University.

As the lead UX Designer and head of operations at Mays, K.C. Mays brings much more than a high level of website development and design skills to the research and development table.  He brings a passion for researching and discovering the newest Internet and website technologies, and then leveraging the power of these new ideas to give Mays clients a competitive advantage in their industry.   As a designer, K.C. is also a visionary, a big picture person among a mass of detail conscious, left brain driven programming minds.  It is this “big picture” approach to website development that separates K.C. and the Mays Development Team from their colleagues in the industry.
 
As COO, K.C. oversees the day-to-day operations of the company, ensuring its overall success. To that end, he has developed and manages a web development and support process unique to Mays that focuses on customer communication and successful project completion. He is responsible for making sure that all work successfully aligns with client target audiences and marketing goals.
 
K.C. leads a team of highly motivated, experienced, and talented website developers, Internet marketers, and designers by fostering a positive and productive work environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and innovation.
 
In the early 2000’s, K.C. was one of only a handful of website developers in the country to begin building mobile-friendly “responsive” website designs that automatically scaled and adapt to different devices from widescreen desktop monitors to smart phones.  A revolutionary approach at its inception, this mobile-first approach to website development is now an essential part of web development.  A prolific video and presentation designer, KC has transformed the ho-hum website home page slide show into pure “wow,” introducing each client’s product or service with engaging animated stories that also include precision brand messaging.