What’s happening behind the scenes at Northwest Creative?

More Fun Projects

I’m a huge fan of flexing my creative muscles and helping shape a new brand design or build a website that not only looks good, but performs at a high level. Take a look at a few of my favorites from over the last few years and how I can help with marketing strategy and planning.

Creating websites for small business owners is such a JOY! I love hearing about the dreams and objectives of my clients and then making something that will effectively set them up well to accomplish their goals.

With every web design, I seek to understand the purpose of the website, build wireframes to ensure page layouts and navigation are optimal, create assets and write copy that aligns with the brand and captures the attention of the audience, and build it all on a strong foundation, optimized for search.

I can also take an existing website and launch an effective and beautiful redesign!

Branding is so important. A good brand design builds credibility and trust between your business and your audience. It gives your business a visual standard and a voice. A unique personality to differentiate from the competition.

Helping businesses walk through the process of designing their branding — selecting color palettes and font combinations, creating patterns and textures, aligning with the values of the organization — is something I view as the utmost honor.

The brand is essential to the success of the business. And when it’s done well, it can stand the test of time. I’ve created several brand designs over the past several years. Take a look at some of my favorites below!

The moment when inspiration hits after you’ve let a vision incubate for a bit in your brain is such a thrill. Getting that vision down onto paper or into Illustrator is probably the best part of any day.

There are many reasons to incorporate graphic design in your marketing efforts, so it has been a skill that I have developed and refined over the years. I’ve created social graphics, covers, collateral, icons, logos, mockups, illustrations, patterns, and more.

Graphics are what bring the design to life. They add personality and visual interest, giving your design a unique look that sets yours apart from the rest!

Graphic design is baked into every ongoing partnership!

If you have a specific one-off graphic design need, consider The Project Sprint.

Some of the best moments of my career have been standing in a room with a whiteboard, envisioning the future and ideating ways to accomplish a goal. Marketing strategies are built with specific goals in mind, but the question is always, “How are we going to do this?”

I have spent many hours brainstorming, dreaming, and ideating, then prioritizing those ideas and putting them into a plan. Executing the plan is just as thrilling, because that is where the work gets done. Finally, seeing the results that we aimed for come to fruition is icing on the cake.

The entire process of building a marketing strategy takes a lot of vision, intentionality, skill, management, and analysis. And I love it all!

If you need strategy and/or planning done for your business…

(1) I can come alongside you in developing a customized plan and hand it over to your team for execution (I call this “The Long Game”), or (2) we can work together in an ongoing partnership.

When you work in marketing for as long as I have, you sometimes get to add incredibly special projects to your portfolio. Two of these come to mind for me.

I’ve had the privilege of being Executive Producer on two award-winning documentaries, which were part of a film series on high-performing teams and how they work. The second project was when we launched a newly published book into the world.

An Award-Winning Film Series

I remember very clearly the day this idea came into existence. I was sitting in the upstairs loft of Story First Creative Agency in Atlanta, located right on the belt line. We were trying to solve the problem of brand awareness by reaching audiences that had never heard of our brand. Video was the method for pioneering into new markets, and we knew storytelling was going to be key. (Because stories are captivating, emotional, moving.)

So, we thought, why not follow teams around the world that practice what we preach at WinShape Teams (my employer at the time)? Let’s share the stories of high-performing teams that we’ve never worked with. What started as an idea for making 10-12 minute episodes turned into making feature films, because we found that these teams were worth spending a little extra time and money on.

Episode 01: For The Team
featuring Team Avaya, a 7x World Championship Adventure Racing Team from New Zealand

This film was selected for two film festivals (AFIN Festival in Australia and RIFF Festival in Rome, GA) and won a Telly Award!

Episode 02: Chasing Faster
featuring the NASCAR pit crews at Joe Gibbs Racing

This film won 5 Telly Awards!

A Successful Book Launch Campaign

When I worked as the Marketing Manager for WinShape Teams, our directors co-authored a book titled Team Work and worked with a publisher to release it on Amazon and other book retailers. This was the first time our organization had ever published a book, and the first time I had ever done an official product launch. Most of my experience was in marketing services, so getting a tangible product out into the world was invigorating and such a fun project!

I met with several people who had successfully published books before and learned about best practices, what is worth the time and effort in a book release, and all about timelines. Once my research was complete, I mapped out a solid marketing campaign and tracked everything in an Asana project.

The plan included efforts for social campaigns, email marketing, additional resources as gated content, a video series, book trailer video, collateral, speaking engagements (breakouts, podcast interviews, etc.), and much more.

I collaborated with a large team of key stakeholders to pull it off, including photographers, designers, authors, public relations specialists, editors, accountants, the publisher, and more. The book released in December 2020.