During my six years as a design generalist on an in-house marketing team, I had the opportunity to gain extensive experience on a wide range of projects while collaborating with cross-functional teams. The projects spanned many creative disciplines such as UX, CX strategy, web design, animation, graphic design, print, and more.
I played a key role in improving the consumer onboarding process by transforming our annual price list, which was frequently the first point of contact between the company and a potential lead.
The most compelling selling point of any skylight product is the way it improves the natural lighting of the room in which it's installed, but our price lists had been focused more heavily on product specifications and sizing information.
We found that presenting potential customers with so many charts and tables of product specs (and so few application photos) at the initial point of contact often had the adverse effect of overwhelming them, resulting in untold numbers of lost leads.
By shifting from a data-centric design to a more visually-captivating approach, we consolidated product data and sizing charts into a single index in the back of the catalog, freeing up more space for impactful interior photography.
In 2017 we began to modernize the company's print-focused marketing strategy by working to establish a more robust web presence. The website had a dated aesthetic, and numerous pages with content that search engines considered less informative, resulting in lower online search visibility.
The old version of the company site was overloaded with redundancies and inconsistencies, negatively impacting the site's SEO performance. To address this issue, we conducted a comprehensive content audit and implemented a streamlined sitemap that reduced the number of pages by 80%, resulting in a more focused and cohesive website architecture.
By collaborating with developers to improve the site's navigation and design, and working with consultants to improve SEO, the team and I were able to increase web traffic by 50% in the first year after the redesign, which was monitored via Google Analytics.
As previously mentioned, the most compelling selling point of a skylight product is its transformative impact on spaces, making interior photos a compelling sales tool. Our sales team—particularly those targeting custom home builders handling multiple projects simultaneously—found before-and-after photos to be invaluable.
To add a personal touch, reps could showcase products in a specific builder's plan with renderings created from their actual floor plans.
The process prior to 2018 involved a lengthy and cumbersome workflow. Plans were sent to the company's Poland office, where modeling and rendering was outsourced to a third party using the requestor's regional sales budget. On average, it took three months or more, causing delays in decision-making for builders.
Recognizing the opportunity for improvement, I leveraged my 3D expertise to fulfill these image requests in-house for the US reps, using 3DS Max and V-Ray. This enabled US reps to bypass the congested queue shared with 35 other countries, reducing the turnaround time from 3-6 months to just 2-4 weeks.
When the COVID pandemic reached the US and restricted our ability to conduct in-person photoshoots, I also began to create 3D product renderings during a time when we were unable to update our existing catalog.
Sometimes my animation expertise was needed to showcase product functionality, or simplify complex concepts for easy understanding. Using tools like After Effects, Blender, and 3DS Max, I brought our products to life by demonstrating their features and benefits in captivating visuals.
These animations became valuable assets for sales, marketing, and customer education, distilling complex ideas into visually compelling narratives.
When needed, I undertook diverse illustration projects, ranging from technical illustrations for product literature to creating marketing photos that aligned with the corporate style.
I had the opportunity to work on many illustration projects, including more light-hearted endeavors such as designing company holiday cards. Through these projects, I showcased my versatility as an illustrator, adapting my style and approach to meet the specific requirements of each assignment.