I’m a hands-on Creative Director, Art Director, Illustrator and Maker with over twenty years of professional experience and a track record for creating thumb-stopping social creative and developing high-performing teams. So yes… I’ve been around the block a few times; and starting my career post-grad in a small town and exhausting all the creative roles there meant that I learned a lot—but the job titles I had never matched what I did. I led all Creative for Dippin’ Dots, Inc. for over five years—and helped develop “Minion Madness Cookie Dough” as a co-branded tie-in with Illumination Entertainment when the first “Despicable Me” came out—but my title there was only ever “Designer.” I’ve driven initiatives for scalable digital creative solutions in addition to leading custom social content and video productions that resulted in double-digit sales increases. My career began in print design and gave me a strong grounding in production specs and “doing work right the first time” to avoid costly reprints. I’ve championed the power of social and new media; leading the launch of Facebook for Dippin’ Dots, Inc. (2007) and TikTok for Arby’s (2018) and The Home Depot (2022). I empower and challenge my teams to think strategically—not just creatively—as we work to elevate the brands we touch and make content that resonates with our audiences. I enjoy passing along what I’ve learned and teach new shooting, editing and software techniques to my teams on a regular basis to help everyone develop new skills. I’ve worked freelance, long-term contract, in-house and agency-side as a single contributor on a larger Marketing team as well as a Creative team leader and mentor—hence the number of titles that don’t accurately reflect the job I was hired to do. I identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and proudly bring my whole self to every role. I’ve won awards for my work, including a Cannes Silver Lion and a Shorty Award for Art Direction; but the one that means the most to me is the HOW Design award for the wedding invitations I created for my husband and me in 2014.
Semplice
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Coach Outlet - April 2024 Content Refresh

Trade School + Shophouse for Tapestry / Coach Outlet | March-April 2024

This is one of the most complex projects I've ever worked on.

In total, the combined teams of ShopHouse and Trade School created over 1,200 unique pieces of content in a five-week sprint.

WITHOUT the use of AI or a DCO platform.

In a Nutshell...

We made social ads. And emails. And online banners. And website graphics.

LOTS of them.

Ads for the Digital Age

When I was in college, it was "revolutionary" to make art on a computer. 

I got a lot of flak from my non-digital professors in college for taking so many electives that involved "pushing pixels around" in Photoshop 4.

Fast-forward to 2024, and my team and I making "pixel pushing" content that can fill over 180 different unit types across more than 30 social, digital and other rich media channels. That's thanks to a huge cross-functional partnership with our Comms Strategy team, who maintain a massive spreadsheet of specs for all those units. For example, every time Instagram or Pinterest changes their ad specs, our Comms team adds the updates to the spreadsheet.

We maintain a robust library of templates for static images, videos, interactive ad unit experiences... in every size and spec. When the Comms team updates their specs spreadsheet, we update all the affected templates with the latest-and-greatest new specs.

I know... "template" is a bad word to a lot of people; but without templates, we couldn't do our jobs at the scale we do. Having repeatable, recognizable frameworks maintains brand consistency across every touchpoint.

So although this was a LOT of work, "content at scale" is what we do every day.

The Details

Shophouse had done a brand refresh for both Coach and Coach Outlet (both in the Tapestry family of brands), and Shophouse brought on Trade School for content production when Tapestry approached them about creating all of the refreshed content for the month of April. It was going to represent a "hard reset" of the brand at every consumer touchpoint simultaneously.

The team also learned the basics of Figma OVER A WEEKEND and we've been rocking-and-rolling with the platform ever since.

The Results

If you've been following advertsinig news, Coach's rebrand has resurrected them for Gen Z.

They were written up in Business of Fashion (BoF), Business Insider and British Vogue as well as AdAge for being a brand who "gets" Gen Z. And most of these articles came out within the first two weeks after our content went live.

HOWEVER...

The first week our content was live, the clients informed us of strong increases to benchmark within key KPIs including CTR (click-through rate), ROAS (return on ad spend) and CVR (conversion rate).

So not only was the content resonating with the Gen Z audience, it was moving the sales needle.

The Execution

But first... a little hype!

Video by Dan Brown.

Some of My Favorites
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Social-Display_WK42_Creatures_1080x1080
VCTBR_Floral_Camila_GR4A_1080x1080_Cami-in-Bloom
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VCTBR_Floral_T2_GR2D_1080x1080_Spring-Florals
Social-Display_WK40_Signature_1080X1080

My Role

If it's not obvious, I created a lot of videos.

In triplicate.

For each concepted video, there were ten-second 1x1 and 9x16 videos for META and a separate fifteen-second 9x16 video for TikTok. And when we started, there were no templates.

Needless to say, my originally-planned role of being "project oversight" went sideways quickly as the scope of work grew exponentially each week. We had originally been told our part of the content creation was only going to be social assets, but the volume of emails, email banners and site graphics quickly overwhelmed the Shophouse team. 

The Trade School design team works VERY fast and very efficiently because we're used to volume content creation, so Jasmine and LaNorris took on the bulk of "everything that wasn't social assets" while I took on all-things-social. I needed Kris back on our Home Depot work, so he was only able to help the first week of the five. This meant in addition to OLA banners and static social assets, I inherited all of the animated ads as well.

Needless to say, I lived in Figma and After Effects for 70+ hours a week three weeks in a row.

By the time we delivered our final batch of assets at the end of the fifth week, it felt like we'd been through a battle together. We learned a lot, and it brought us closer as a team.

Would I do it again?

Oh, HELL no.

At least, not without some AI help to streamline things.

The Trade School Team Created & Delivered...

25

28

57

123

130

143

519

1,025

MMS/SMS

Site Graphics

Email Banners

OLA Banners

Website Content Spots

Emails

Social Ads

Unique Deliverables

The Team
Trade School
Shophouse
← First Watch “Purple Haze” Brand Awareness Campaign
→ Arby’s Social Media

Wanna find me elsewhere?

Take a look at my cut paper artwork that has moved its way over to Instagram, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Instagram
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LinkedIn
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