Experience

Advertising & Brand Strategy: 

• Ideation and conceptualization of creative work for existing clients and new business pitches (including TV, print, digital, etc.) for major brands like Toshiba, Fiat, Carvana, Denver Zoo, Keystone Resort, Spectrum Reach, Coastal Mississippi, Visit Jackson, etc. as an Art/Creative Director at advertising agencies like Cactus & MWB

• Audience definition & brand strategy for clients like Denver Zoo, Coastal Mississippi, Visit Jackson, etc. as an advertising Art/Creative Director. 

• Product line development for home décor brands like Kalalou, which helped to define brand audience & trajectory

• Business development, including creating a business plan and securing $100,000 in grant funding) for a student agency startup within the MSU College of Architecture, Art + Design, and then developing the brand strategy, target audience, etc. 

Graphic Design & Packaging Design: 

• Advertising design and illustration, using Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Procreate, etc., creating logos, print ads, murals, billboards, digital, social, and other activations for brands like Denver Zoo, Keystone Resort, Coastal Mississippi, etc.

• Product and packaging design, including sketching, gathering reference materials, building files in Illustrator with measurements and specifications for vendors, etc., for brands like Amazon, Capri Blue, Madewell, Kalalou, and Altar’d State

Copywriting: 

• Ideation and conceptualization of creative work for existing clients and new business pitches (including TV, print, digital, etc.) for major brands like Toshiba, Fiat, Carvana, Denver Zoo, Keystone Resort, Spectrum Reach, Coastal Mississippi, Visit Jackson, etc. as an Art/Creative Director at advertising agencies like Cactus & MWB

• Copywriting, writing everything from TV commercials to print and digital ads to product descriptions for catalogs and e-commerce

Product Design & Development: 

• Product development, including ideating and designing retail objects, with measurements and specifications for vendors, and going through rounds of changes to get to a marketable final product for brands like Capri Blue, Kalalou, Francesca’s, etc.

• Vendor management, including communicating feedback and changes with vendors as they create product samples, working with vendors to modify existing products to create unique SKUs, etc.

• Buying and product selection, including placing orders for samples from multiple vendors all over the world, traveling to places like the Canton fair in Guangzhou, China, to choose samples for the product line, inspecting those samples, and then making decisions about what should go into the product line, for Kalalou

• Product photography of all new Kalalou products for e-commerce and catalog usage

Creative Leadership: 

• Team management, including communicating with copywriters, production artists, web designers, photographers, illustrators, directors, actors, video editors, motion designers, sound engineers, etc. to execute final assets for agency brands as an Art/Creative Director at advertising agencies like Cactus & MWB

• Creative feedback, assessing creative work and guiding designers to meet the client’s needs

• Creative guidance for students throughout the process of brainstorming, conceptualizing, and designing branded elements, print ads, commercials, and social media ads for exhibition in their portfolios; including providing motivation and constructive feedback throughout the project

• Creative team development, including searching for, interviewing, hiring, and mentoring employees to build a design team from scratch for the student agency I created within the MSU College of Architecture, Art + Design

Project Management & Design Education: 

• Creative project management, including assigning briefs, clients, and objectives and providing project structure to students in advertising and branding classes; with some of the bigger 360° projects lasting entire semesters as an Associate Professor of graphic design at Mississippi State University

• Client management, including interpreting briefs, translating requests, pitching design directions, etc., for brands like Altar’d State, Capri Blue, Madewell, Thymes, Coastal Mississippi, etc. 

• Creative critique, including assessing creative work and pushing students to improve their work and to develop their conceptualization skills, software skills, design theory, color theory, typography, copywriting, and presentation skills

• Working on multiple expansive projects with tight deadlines