GRAPHIC DESIGN + ART DIRECTION

Q4 in 2021 marked the fifth holiday season on Shutterfly’s creative team. It was the second year as lead designer on the Holiday Gift Guide and fifth year playing a supportive role for catalog and campaign development. In 2021, my responsibilities included: Shutterfly Holiday Gift Guide direct mail, Catalog components: Blow-In & Carrier, Shutterfly “Holidays Are Here” drive time creative guidance, and Tiny Prints Holiday Gatefold direct mail and brand asset refresh. Throughout the years, my role and responsibilities have become unmatched. I have designed various direct mail pieces from 2017-present including Holiday Gift Guide, October Touch, Catalog Wrap, Carrier, Blow-Ins, and Sample Card.

Aside from my sharp design skillset, my print experience has become key to the contributions I’ve made to help improve efficiency opportunities in the 2021 direct mail process for creative reviews, photo preparation tasks and photo retouching timelines. This included my assistance in the development of the product matrix Excel spreadsheet for Gift Guide, which included over 50 products. This is an example of an improved process that I helped refine. It helped streamline the product ordering process, which included product art files and necessary ordering information and an in-product photography diversity tracker.

When I wasn’t independently working outside of Holiday Touchpoint meetings, Lead Catalog Designer and I met in person several times to combine and curate our swipe into concentrated mood boards in the initial phases of development. We worked well in tandem between the Catalog and Gift Guide and I assisted her to help build the entire 2021 Shutterfly Holiday campaign color palette and photo refresh together.

At the same time, I was partnering with Senior Manager of Merchandising early on to tell the story of our product through recipient-based spreads.

As my Gift Guide project progressed into the photoshoot stage, I sought the main responsibilities of art director for Gift Guide on set. Examples of these include (but are not limited to): building the pre-production document with detailed descriptions for each shot from initial sketching and camera angle to propping and lighting. I delivered the hand-off presentation expressing my vision and needs to the entire photo team in person, including external key players like the stylist and set builder.

I gathered talent needs, which included hand and pet models. In addition, it was my responsibility to ensure that all elements of talent diversity connected to the in-product photography on each product. This step involved a tight partnership with Photo Sourcing Image Editors to look at our sourced imagery from a more holistic perspective. There were instances that I helped curate what this imagery would be according to the story I was trying to tell in each spread layout.

Early results show that the Holiday creative shifts we implemented in direct mail and strategic design work contributed to a huge revenue performance. Initial catalog results suggest flat YOY combined with October Touch, despite strong headwinds on print given print shortages and competing with a highly favorable 2020 retail landscape.Here are the overall results for the year for DM. For Q1-Q3 revenue +16% YoY. For full year with Q4 estimate +1% YoY.

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