January 4, 2017No Comments

Visa

Scaling Visa's biggest product initiative and building the first design system for payments.

Visa Checkout is Visa’s ecommerce payment solution that allows cardholders to store their payment information and check out quickly and securely on merchants' sites. Introduced in 2013, it has since evolved into a family of four digital products that can be integrated into different environments to allow for payment ubiquity.

I managed a team of six designers, who worked across four product tracks. The products were developed in an agile environment, with full stack teams and product owners. As Creative Director, I also provided overall creative direction and managed design's relationship with product, development and marketing teams. 

As a payment network, Visa’s success hinges on its partnerships with merchants and banks. Providing due diligence to those partners added another level of complexity, but being able to maintain great relationships with those partners was a great source of pride for me.

During my time at Visa, I was also able to help create the Visa Design System for digital product experiences. The system is based on a set of four user experience principles, and is comprised of a library of reusable components that can scale across an endless variety of products. Along with the building blocks of the system, we created a set of guidelines and prototypes so other teams could utilize the system and build upon it.

May 5, 2014No Comments

Sony

Creating compelling product stories, for a global audience.

As an Associate Creative Director in the Global Content Creation group, I lead and support a team of strategists, designers, developers and copywriters in creating premium content for the new, fully responsive Sony Electronics global website, which has launched in Europe and Latin America.

www.sony.co.uk
www.sony.com.mx

The site is built from a design system that was created by Odopod/Nurun. It is smart, elegant, and extensible. As content creators, we are given a large library of "modules" that we use to build pages, literally stacking modules on top of each other. Each module offers something different - some are just words and images, and others are more interactive, with sliders or hotspots, or 360° product spins, etc. This allows us to mix & match interactions, creating a variety of experiences across different pages. We are also able to build new modules, with our internal team of UX & visual designers and developers, so the possibilities are endless.

Typically, my team is given the assignment to create a page, or pages, that will communicate the story of a product, technology, or category. In the case of products, they are generally new products (yet to be released on the market), so oftentimes we will work directly with the Tokyo office to understand the product and figure out how to market it to a global audience. This task can be challenging, given the language/cultural/time differences, but it can also be a rewarding experience, since we are given the opportunity to collaborate and learn from the experience of building something together. In terms of product understanding, it's also extremely beneficial to work directly with those who conceived, engineered, and marketed that product.

After we've processed the briefing materials, the team figures out how to tell the story. This is usually a multi-step process: strategy + wireframes > visual design + copy > development > delivery. We continue to work with our Tokyo counterparts during this entire process, making sure that the experience we're crafting stays aligned to marketing materials that they are creating (brochures, point of sale displays, conference materials, etc.) and their overall product vision. Oftentimes we receive visual assets (images & video) from Tokyo, but, if we're lucky, we are asked to make them. In those instances I will work with a team of photographers/videographers and create the necessary assets for both the website and other marketing channels. A good example of this was the shoot I led for the Action Cam video camera, which we did in Hawaii with HMX. For this particular shoot we needed to capture video footage (of the product being used and POV footage from the product itself) and stills, with several models in different locations across the island of Oahu. One of the pieces that came out of the shoot was the "concept movie" for the product:

Action Cam 2013 Concept Movie >

Here are some of the pages my team has created:

A visual sampling of some of the things I helped create:

Sony01

May 16, 2013No Comments

American Giant

Can a brand be as well-crafted as the greatest hoodie ever made?

American Giant was founded on the belief that if you made a quality product, available at a reasonable cost, people would buy it. Identifying the lack of well-made, domestically manufactured garments in the basics category, in February of 2012 American Giant set out to turn the apparel business on its head. From its initial release of mens heavyweight sweatshirts, to the recent launch of womens sweatshirts and tees, the company has seen such a huge demand that the BBC, NPR and Slate have called them the posterchild of "catastrophic success."

I joined the company a couple of months after its launch as an associate creative director. I designed and executed a complete redesign of their existing site, with the help of their development partner, Acadaca. I also overhauled the art direction of all photography assets, from product details to laydowns to studio and location photography.

The redesign launched in early October and immediately saw improvements in conversion, AOV and time spent on site. From a piece in the NYTimes:

The value of an average order increased by 34.5 percent. Before the photo refresh, the average visitor to the site spent $100. Post refresh, the average visitor spent  $134.50...

Visitors who left the site after viewing the home page declined by 5.2 percent. ... Updated, the site has been able to engage more of those potential customers.

The percentage of customers who actually buy something — the site’s conversion rate — grew by 13.9 percent.

 

At the beginning of 2013, I assumed the role of creative director and added content strategy/creation to my list of responsibilities, along with budget management, collaboration with two partner agencies, and leadership of a small internal creative team. As one of the primary protectors of the brand, I weighed in on everything from social/earned media initiatives to product development.

Although I was only with the company for a short time, I'm very proud of the foundation I was able to build for them.  Visit »

 

Website Design:

 

Giantisms: 

Giantisms

E-mail Design:

 

Briefs:

 

September 20, 2011Comments are off for this post.

Sears iAd: Horoscope

Sears asked us to concept an iAd which promoted the launch of the Kardashian Collection. We initially presented five concepts, and Sears chose the one we called "Horoscope."

September 20, 2011Comments are off for this post.

Pitches

I've had the opportunity to work on a varied set of pitches, both as a creative lead and as a supporting designer.

Here are some of the standouts. Note: Some of these projects are quite confidential in nature, please do not copy and use discretion when sharing these links, thank you.

Food for Good, website for a food delivery program run by PepsiCo
Lead brainstorms, developed ideas, formed the deck
View PDF > (PDF, 7.5mb)

Sears E-Circular, Re-inventing the printed newspaper insert for digital
Lead brainstorms, developed ideas, created visuals and directed design team
View PDF > (PDF, 5.4mb)

GOOD Magazine, Ideas for mobile and tablet apps
Lead brainstorms, developed ideas, created visuals
View PDF > (PDF, 909kb)

Lady Gaga for HBO, Augmented reality experience to promote her concert broadcast
Lead brainstorms, developed ideas, created visuals
View PDF > (PDF, 5mb)

Samsung, Campaign ideas that bring attention to Samsung's products throughout the year
Developed ideas, created visuals
View PDF > (PDF, 6.64mb)

September 20, 2011Comments are off for this post.

Kashi

During my time on the Kashi account I had the opportunity to make a lot of things other than comps. Some of these things were recommendation decks about revamping parts of the site, some were digital ideas that had to be folded into an overall 360 campaign.

Except when noted, I was responsible for creating all aspects of the work.

Facebook POV, Kashi asked us for our recommendation on which Facebook features to integrate into the website
View PDF > (PDF, 1.59mb)

Strategy for the "Recipes" section, Strategic recommendations
View PDF > (PDF, 26mb)

Cereal Trial Event Campaign Ideas, Digital ideas that were part of an overall campaign
(Deck created by Kashi's advertising agency, my work starts on p13)
View PDF > (PDF, 6.52mb)

Get Real Campaign Ideas, Digital ideas that were part of an overall campaign
(Deck created by Kashi's advertising agency, my work is on p10-13)
View PDF > (PDF, 6.52mb)

 

September 20, 2011Comments are off for this post.

Sears Style

Sears created an apparel division and asked The Barbarian Group to develop its identity, voice, content hub and social media strategy. I was involved at the beginning and helped develop the identity and look & feel for this new fashion destination.

Early look & feel studies:

June 30, 2011No Comments

Coolsculpting

Barbarian Group partnered with Cutwater to relaunch the Coolsculpting brand and website. Coolsculpting uses an innovative technique which freezes "stubborn" fat cells through a non-invasive process. Gaining ground in the media and opening more offices around the world, the company wanted to rebrand themselves to be more consumer-friendly.

As Art Director, I was responsible for setting the visual language of the site while concurrently working with Cutwater's creative team on photography and typographic styles. Visit »

June 30, 2011No Comments

Kashi, 2011 Cereal Trial Event

Every year Kashi launches initiatives called "trial events," which are multimedia campaigns that usually involve either product giveaways or discounts. The goal of these events is to gain new fans.

In spring 2011 we worked on a trial event that centered around their cereals. As their digital agency of record, The Barbarian Group collaborated closely with Kashi's broadcast, print, PR and packaging agencies in order to create a fully integrated campaign.

As Art Director and creative lead for the account, I led the creative work which not only involved visual design, but also strategy, concepting, IA/UX and content development.

Early concepts:

June 30, 2011No Comments

Kashi, Seven Whole Grains on a Mission

Kashi asked their team at The Barbarian Group to create a rich, interactive experience to tell their brand story, "Seven Whole Grains on a Mission." The key pieces of this story were: What are the seven grains? What makes them special? Where are they sourced from?

As Art Director and creative lead for the account, I led the creative work which not only involved visual design, but also strategy, concepting, IA/UX and content development.