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.
Contract work for The Home Depot via Aquent / Vitamin T | 2012
While I was under contract with Aquent working for The Home Depot, there was a massive change to The Home Depot's private label business. They were collapsing 52 private label brands down to only 18, which meant a number of their existing products would need to be repackaged under different labels.
CE Tech was a different case. It was still a fairly new brand when I came on board, having been made an extension of the Commercial Electric brand (what the "CE" originally stood for); and you'd think it would be one of the first of the many brands going onto the chopping block... but it not only made the cut, it was set to get a complete overhaul and product assortment expansion.
And I got put in charge of the brand overhaul.
There were very few products at the time in the original CE Tech packaging, so there was almost no brand equity in that look. For sake of argument I had to start with the existing logo for CE Tech (which clearly borrowed from Commercial Electric) and make it a completely unique brand that could encompass all of the new products that would fall under the new lineup.
Look at the date when I did this work: 2012.
The first Amazon Alexa didn't come out until 2014.
"Smart Homes," "App-controlled home devices" or "Connected Homes" were still widely unknown in 2012. Maybe you knew someone who had a Nest thermostat or some (very expensive) HUE bulbs if they were super-techy, but that's the extent of where most people's IOT knowledge went at the time.
That meant it was a HUGE risk for The Home Depot to devote not one, but two bays in every store to a store-brand product line most people wouldn't know they needed (yet).
As a new, private label brand, we had to keep the packaging costs as low as possible. Ideally, using only two inks unless it was for a more premium product.
The original CE Tech packaging was solid Cyan and Black on White stock, so I decided to keep those colors and push what could be done with gradients and screens of each to make them look more interesting than the original flat colors.
The merchandised mock wall bays after we got the first round of dielines with art applied.
The Commercial Electric logo (top) that inspired the original CE Tech logo (bottom).
The original logo wasn't going away quickly, so my first order of business was cleaning it up.
Most of the packages on shelves already were polybags with a cardboard header... and the CE Tech logo on the packages was TINY. Which meant the already-small "Commercial Electric" in the logo was unreadable.
So "Commercial Electric" had to go.
Then I had to convince everyone the logo would look better if all elements (the "CE Ball" and "TECH") were vertically center-aligned.
(Yes, that was genuinely an argument we had)
Someone got the idea in their head that the "ball" from the original logo should stay... so I half-heartedly tried to make it work with some new fonts.
"CE" also started moving away from standing for "Commercial Electric" and became "Connected Experience" in all of our internal marketing materials.
At the same time the CE Tech brand was in development, the Glacier Bay brand was getting a complete facelift. Because of Glacier Bay's inclusion of a "logo mark" icon, our team decided I should develop one for CE Tech.
I developed a LOT of them.
We narrowed it down to three and took those before a focus group to help us either hone in on a favorite or go completely back to the drawing board. The three favorites each used the Bank Gothic font in different weights and had slightly different icons separating "CE" and "TECH."
My personal favorite icon combined the "C" and "E" like a computer power button fitted into a rounded-corner shape that resembled a phone app icon. The "C" in the Bank Gothic font has little indents that made a perfect space for the the center bar of the "E" to extend out into; and I loved the way that looked.
That was the focus group's favorite as well.
By a LANDSLIDE.
Even though the focus group had already chosen the "app power button" version, I was requested to take that style and make ONE MORE PASS at additional "app-like" icons.
...
We went back to the one the focus groups liked best and that became the official CE Tech logo.
The next piece of brand devleopment was extending the icon set to fit the six main component groups the brand would launch with: Data Cables, HDMI Cables, COAX Cables, Sound Cables and Accessories, Computer Cables and Accessories, and Mobile Cables and Accessories.
The initial set of Component Icons
The first set was close, but then we decided all six needed descriptor copy and "Data" should also include phone lines.
(Yes. It was 2012 and people still had land-line phones and dial-up internet service.)
CE Tech was a <very> icon-heavy brand. Explaining all the features of the technology meant a LOT of icons on the packaging.
Like.. over 100. Below is an excerpt from the first set of Brand & Packaging Guidelines I made for the brand - you can tell it's an early release version because not all of the Spanish was translated yet.
And now... a packaging system.
I can safely say I'm a big nerd for design systems.
It's essential when you're designing as robust a system as CE Tech was going to be. Over 120 products at launch in 16 different types of packaging from polybags with hangtags to plastic clamshell cases.
I had to make such a tight system that any new products would automatically be able to be designed even if I wasn't around to direct the look.
Four products had to be designed almost six months ahead of the rest of the line because they were going to be special products for Black Friday.
And, of course, they couldn't be easy products to package.
I had to make several sets of full-size mockups for in-house roadshows showing off the assortment.
Please excuse the really crappy photos... I usually had about a minute to shoot pitcures of all of them (with an iPhone 2!) before someone would come collect them all for the next roadshow.
With the icons, fonts, Leader SKUs and Black Friday packages done, it was time to shift gears and get everything that was in my head down on paper.
Like I said... being a nerd about design systems comes in handy.
The first draft was over 120 pages long.
Stacey Kadrmas - Sr. Manager, Brand Development (The Home Depot)
Julie S. Foster - Brand Development Manager (The Home Depot)
Scott Hunt - Creative Lead, Sr. Packaging Designer (Aquent / Vitamin T)
Dustin Smith - Sr. Packaging Engineer (The Home Depot)
Charlotte Hanks - Industrial & Packaging Designer (MeadWestvaco / MWV)
Carol Cornelius - Program Director (Big Red Rooster)
You'll get bored quickly... it's a lot of photos of my adorable husband, our kids and our rescue dog, Porter.