Creative Director · Brand & Content Leader · Designer
I build creative teams and systems that help organizations move faster without lowering the bar.
I shape the vision and stay close enough to the work to help make it real.
01 / CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
I founded and scaled an embedded creative agency from one design role into an eight-person specialized team. Today it supports seven departments, handles just under 4,000 annual tasks, and brings capabilities once sent to outside vendors directly into the business.
Expand creative support beyond Marketing without losing quality, speed, or the close partnership that made the work effective.
Seven departments, senior leadership, international partners, authors, retailers, and ultimately the readers each title needed to reach.
Creative demand was growing. To earn investment, I tied it to stronger launches, book sales, bestseller recognition, faster delivery, and avoided outside spend.
Build an embedded agency with specialists who understand the business and can move from strategy to execution without an outside handoff.
I founded the function and built it from one role into an eight-person team, defining each specialty, hiring and developing talent, setting quality standards, and coaching through real creative problems. I also embed accessibility practices into everyday design direction and review, helping the team consider contrast, legibility, and descriptive content across its work.
I built trust one department at a time. Their changing needs shaped the next capability we added.
A detailed request form and transparent queue replaced scattered emails and notes. Clear routing now matches each assignment to the right specialist.
Brand identity, digital campaigns, motion, video, catalogs, large-format print, retail displays, trade-show environments, and author-facing creative.
Trackable demand grew from roughly 75–100 tasks annually in its first few years to just under 4,000 today. The team now has eight members, supports seven departments, and has reduced reliance on outside vendors by bringing specialized capabilities in-house.
Data built the business case, outcomes built trust, and trust created room for the next specialist and the next level of work.
I turned a workload the organization could feel, but could not quantify, into a clear capacity and investment story. The resulting system improved briefs, exposed capability gaps, and secured three additional design hires.
Replace informal requests with a system that could reveal workload, skill gaps, delivery pressure, and the headcount required to keep pace.
Senior management, seven requesting departments, and the designers whose capacity needed protection.
The team could feel the strain, but leadership needed more than “we are busy.” They needed to see where demand lived and what kind of help would solve it.
Pair a company-wide request experience with a GPT-assisted dashboard that translates every ask into usable demand and capacity signals.
I designed the intake, defined meaningful categories, established a shared queue, and turned the data into a story leaders could act on.
Requesters supplied better briefs, designers kept the workflow current, and management helped refine the evidence needed for staffing decisions.
The dashboard organizes volume, work type, completion, cost, capacity, missing skill sets, and early stress signals.
Request architecture, queue, categorization logic, workload views, efficiency charts, capacity forecasting, and leadership reporting.
The system made previously invisible demand measurable, improved briefing and workload visibility, and revealed missing capabilities before they became critical gaps. That evidence secured one designer last year and two more hires this year.
Operational clarity protects creative quality and gives leadership time to invest before strain becomes failure.
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Create a recognizable identity for selected thrillers and mysteries within Sourcebooks Fire, then turn it into a repeatable consumer campaign platform.
Teen readers ages 14 to 17, plus adult crossover readers drawn to suspense with less graphic violence than many adult thrillers.
Prepublication positioning research and audience testing helped us identify the language, imagery, and reader promise most likely to resonate. The identity also needed to register face-out, spine-out, and at ecommerce thumbnail size.
A bright red Midnight Reads treatment wraps from back cover across the spine and onto the front, linking individual titles with a recognizable shelf-wide promise.
I directed the identity from the ground up, leading several creatives through concepting, audience and social testing, leadership presentations, critique, and refinement.
I partnered with Ecommerce, Marketing, Editorial, Sales, and creative teams to translate tested positioning and audience insights into a consistent brand experience. Leadership, authors, and retailers helped refine the system for consumer and commercial use.
The identity became a toolkit for covers, ecommerce, paid social, retailer media, seasonal groupings, trade advertising, displays, events, and merchandise.
Meta assets, Amazon and Barnes & Noble ecommerce creative, email and banner ads, Halloween campaigns, trade-show graphics, displays, totes, bookmarks, keychains, and author programming.
About 50 titles a year have carried the identity for three years. Retailers expanded initial orders. Target approved a larger display than proposed, and BookCon featured a panel with four to five Midnight Reads authors.
The system became part of selected new launches, with periodic testing informing positioning, language, and imagery. It now connects roughly 150 title placements with coordinated consumer and retailer campaigns.
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Produce six different 100-plus-page catalogs each year, often in overlapping pairs, while protecting deadlines and the rest of the design schedule.
Sales, Editorial, printers, manufacturing partners, proofreaders, retail buyers, and booksellers using the finished catalogs.
Design judgment was not the bottleneck. Title-list collection, data flow, asset hunting, and first-pass proofing were consuming the time.
Build a human-led catalog assistant that automates assembly while keeping hierarchy, storytelling, exceptions, and final quality in a designer’s hands.
I mapped the workflow, created the GPT and scripts, established templates and checkpoints, and introduced automation as support for craft.
Sales and Editorial confirm seasonal lists and content. Designers direct the pages. Printers guide production requirements. The system coordinates handoffs.
The assistant queries stakeholders, flows title data into templates, finds approved assets, and completes a first copyedit and proof.
Seasonal catalogs with flexible templates, information hierarchy, editorial storytelling, asset management, proofing, and print-ready production.
Weeks of bandwidth return to the team. Bottlenecks shrink, print deadlines are safer, and Copy and Proof can focus on higher-value work.
The best AI workflow removes repeatable friction and leaves people with the decisions that need taste, context, and accountability.
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Give a major bookseller a compelling reason to place larger orders, support exclusive editions, and commit premium space to five to ten priority titles.
The retailer’s buying and merchandising teams, with our Sales team as the presenting partner and internal advocate.
A cover and sales copy are not enough. The retailer also needs to see the reader hook and how the title could sell in a real store.
Build each preview as a modular retail campaign: a sharp title story, an audience-specific hook, and a visual concept scaled from endcap to immersive environment.
I set the visual direction, select where custom concepting will matter most, brief and coach designers, and balance ambition with what can succeed in stores.
Editorial sharpens positioning. Cover Design supplies final and exclusive-edition details. Marketing builds the plan. Sales brings retailer history and leads the presentation.
A seasonal framework organizes the priority list, hook, marketing support, retailer fit, exclusive features, display concept, and speaking flow.
Presentation decks, title narratives, endcaps, table displays, environmental concepts, signage, special-edition callouts, and presenter-ready assets.
Retailers expanded initial orders, supported exclusive editions, and committed premium placement. In one activation, Target approved a larger branded display than the original proposal.
Retailer feedback shapes the next preview. We simplify when a pitch does too much, revisit positioning when it misses, and retain what consistently earns buy-in.
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Shorten the approval cycle for displays, events, and environments that depended on outside vendors for every visualization.
Marketing, Sales, authors, retail partners, event teams, senior approvers, printers, fabricators, and environmental vendors.
Stakeholders make better decisions when they can react to a believable experience. Waiting weeks for each rendering discouraged iteration.
Bring rapid 3D visualization in-house so teams can explore ambitious ideas early, then hand vendors a clearer production direction.
I built GPT-assisted workflows, defined realistic use cases and review standards, and taught where speed helps and where production expertise still matters.
Designers, marketers, sales partners, authors, and vendors align around the same visual before fabrication costs are committed.
Reusable workflows create displays, promotional objects, trade-show booths, and author-event environments from an approved brand direction.
Display mockups, die-cut posters, standees, tote bags, pens, promotional pieces, event spaces, booth graphics, and environmental concepts.
The team can remove as much as four weeks of vendor review, test bolder options without paying for every iteration, and begin production with stronger alignment.
Visualization became a decision-making tool that improves the idea, the brief, and the final build.
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02 / DESIGN WORK
Deep craft is the foundation of how I lead. These selected applications show the range behind the direction, critique, and quality standards I bring to a creative team.
brands with a heartbeat
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Bloom Books I helped build Bloom from the ground up, translating E. L. James’s author-empowerment vision and Sourcebooks’ business goals into a refined identity and collaborative creative process. That foundation supported Bloom’s Joint-Venture Authors and Bespoke Publishing Model, helping the imprint scale quickly while keeping authors actively involved in editing, design, and marketing.
Stonefruit Studio I built this identity by aligning creative teams serving audiences from toddlers through adults, then distilling many competing perspectives into one flexible imprint mark. The result is a single cohesive system broad enough to unify an unusually wide publishing program without losing its playful energy.
a new world for an established series
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SOURCEBOOKS · 2023–2025
I led the visual refresh of How to Catch and designed and developed its new web experience ahead of the series’ tenth anniversary. Working closely with Ecommerce and Marketing, I shaped page names, headings, copy, and imagery around search behavior, audience questions, and tested positioning.
The experience helps families, teachers, and booksellers explore beyond the best-known titles and find useful information. Page descriptions and image alt text supported discoverability and accessibility, while established publishing metadata informed the content. I applied extensive website accessibility training to decisions about color contrast, type sizing, and descriptive content for people using screen readers.
Business context Sourcebooks describes How to Catch as a New York Times and USA Today bestselling series with multiple bestselling titles. The brand work supported a broader publishing and marketing program; bestseller performance cannot be attributed to the redesign alone.
ILLUSTRATIVE MOTION MOCKUP
turning discovery into a platform
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SOURCEBOOKS · 2015–2016
In a market crowded with one-off hits and bestseller callouts, we gave readers and buyers a different way in: the creators behind the books. Authors Are My Rock Stars used a bold, repeatable visual idea to bring attention to authors’ full catalogs and make backlist discovery a seasonal priority.
The campaign traveled through trade-show environments, trade and gift catalog covers, bookstore and mass-retail displays, and seasonal digital advertising for industry, indie bookseller, and consumer audiences. The same voice and graphic system connected each touchpoint while leaving room for individual authors and titles.
Reported result Sourcebooks’ internal BookScan comparison showed backlist sales up 23% across the title list in the following year, 2016. That is a year-over-year observation, not an isolated measure of campaign impact.
ILLUSTRATIVE PLACEMENT MOCKUP
attention-grabbing campaigns that move the needle
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by Freida McFadden · Paperback · Kindle · Audiobook
Discover new books and stories worth sharing.
making the intangible, tangible
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03 / ABOUT
I build creative teams, set the vision for their work, and create systems that help ambitious ideas move through an organization. I connect people, craft, and business priorities by aligning cross-functional partners, developing creative talent, and improving what the team can deliver together.
Design experience is the foundation of how I lead. I understand the decisions behind the work, know when to challenge an idea, and can step into the details when the moment truly calls for it. My goal is not to make everything myself. It is to give talented people the clarity, trust, and support they need to do excellent work.
My approach combines creative judgment with audience research, search-informed content, and accessible design. I work closely with Marketing and Ecommerce to turn tested positioning and audience questions into useful digital experiences, and carry accessibility practices into my team’s everyday work.
EXPERIENCE
