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.
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PPG Olympic: Open. Stain. Enjoy.

Trade School Custom Production for The Home Depot | March 2023

Trade School did three simultaneous productions and ad campaigns for PPG for The Home Depot: one each for Olympic (stain), Glidden (consumer paint) and PPG (professional paint). Our team concepted all three at once, then we divided up the work among us. My husband and I had moved into our house the previous February and stained the brand-new back deck ourselves, so I had learned all about prepping and staining a deck from that experience... turns out I was the ONLY person on the team who had done that, so the Olympic part of the project became mine! 

The Insight

The idea of staining a deck means, "Project with a capital 'P'" to most people. It's a pain in the a** but the end result is so worth the effort when you can sit back and enjoy it.

The Idea

When you're really into a project, you can zen out and lose track of time. We took that kernel of an idea and pitched making ASMR-like content for all of our video units, only bringing in the iconic "Home Depot Beat" music in at the very end.

For our static visuals needed for the digital campaign, we wanted everything to fit the Oddly Satisfying vibe: individual items knolled and arranged not just neatly, but precisely. Beautiful blocks of color accenting the capabilities of the products.

The Details

Olympic had four products we needed to feature: Olympic Maximum, Olympic Elite, Olympic Waterguard and Olympic Wood Protector. Maximum and Elite would each get their own 00:06 and 00:15 digital videos in different aspect ratios; and all four product groups would be getting a series of stills.

One of the featured stain colors across all four products was Cedar; so, I made the suggestion we stain as much as we could with Cedar and use it in all of our close-up brush shots so those videos and stills could be used across all four groups.

The Execution

Video

Olympic Maximum

Olympic Elite

Stills

Olympic Maximum Doing Shot
Olympic Maximum Family Overhead
Olympic Maximum Finished Shot
Olympic Maximum Overhead Flat Lay
Olympic Elite Doing Shot
Olympic Elite Family Overhead
Olympic Elite Finished Shot
Olympic Elite Overhead Flat Lay
Olympic Waterguard Product Family
Olympic Waterguard Family Overhead
Olympic Waterguard Finished Shot
Olympic Waterguard Overhead Flat Lay
Olympic Wood Protector Doing Shot
Olympic Wood Protector Family Overhead
Olympic Wood Protector Finished Shot
Olympic Wood Protector Overhead Flat Lay

My Role

Our full team did the initial pass at concepts for the three brands; and the one that Jen, Nathan and I were most excited about—and put the most thought into—for Olympic was, "Open. Stain. Enjoy." To help sell in the idea, I shot several macro videos at home with my phone. Almost all of the close-ups and tracking shots that made it into the final storyboards originated from my iPhone shots.

As the Art Director, I was able to select the color palette and every product that would appear onscreen... and you'd be surprised how many products that ended up being all together. I did a few different comps and layouts of the both the overhead flat lay / knolled shots and the product shots showing their stained color sections beneath them. My absolute favorite pieces were the Adirondack chairs; Olympic Elite is tintable and I wanted to show that off. The color-striping on the backs of the chairs started with one of the comps I did early on that our clients fell in love with, and the final chairs look spectacular against the gray chipped slate of the firepit area.

After our on-set production wrapped, John McDonald spent a day at Trade School Studios doing pickup stills—and that included every overhead shot for Olympic. I knew we had that day reserved, so I was a one-man Art Department meticulously setting up every shot. John did 95% of the final post-production on the stills, but there were a few that Jen and I helped with as well. One of the products was not available when we were shooting, so I took the packaging art file for that can and digitally wrapped it over one of the cans of Olympic Maximum we'd shot on-set.

The. Coolest. Thing. Ever. was getting to attend the foley session with Tunewelders and watch them recreate the sounds for our spots. (It was also The. Grossest. Thing. Ever... I will never be able to look at macaroni and cheese the same way again)

In addition to overseeing the post-production editing, Nathan and I had the additional roles of developing ALL the final digital content. This included units for META, Nextdoor, Pinterest, YouTube, online display banners, digital audio, and rich media interscroller and superscape units via Padsquad. In all, we ended up producing 159 unique deliverables for the campaign out of the assets we'd shot. 

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159

Location

Shoot Days (1 outdoors, 1 in-studio)

Talented Performers

Product Families

Unique Videos

Still Shots

Ad Units

Unique Deliverables

The Team

Sanders Hearne, Head of Creative

Jennifer Barclay, Group Creative Director

Olympic
  • Scott Hunt, Creative Director - Art
  • Nathan Burns, Creative Director - Copy
Glidden
PPG Pro
  • Caty Coplin, Creative Director - Art
  • Nathan Burns, Creative Director - Copy

Aaron Platt, Director/Director of Photography

John McDonald, Photographer

Judith Hoffman, Executive Producer

Pooja Pasari, Senior Producer/Post Producer

Vivian Zingleman, Editor

Ryan Harrington, Editor

Kris Boban, Lead Motion Designer/VFX

Jason Todd Shannon & Harper Harris from Tunewelders, Foley & Sound Design

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