Grand Bell Suites is a premier investment property in the city of Brantford, offering modern design choices, upscale amenities, and unprecedented convenience for residents and investors alike.
Agency: Unbound Productions
Role: Art Direction, Design
Astro Yogourt is a consumer packaged good owned by Parmalat and has been making yogourt in Canada for 30 years.
Agency: Isobar
Role: Art Director, UX and Visual Design
In August 2015, FreshBooks became a global sponsor of CreativeMornings. Within the coming year, FreshBooks would be the lead sponsor for three months. Here is what we did together with CreativeMornings:
April 2016 | Master Freelancer
While freelance creatives have the freedom to be their own boss, most don’t have the opportunity to enter their work in award shows because of budget or bandwidth.
CreativeMornings and FreshBooks made a new award that exclusively celebrates creative freelancers. From April- June 2016, we invited freelancers to enter their best and brightest work for a chance to be recognized as one of three Masters of Freelance. Winners will be chosen by a panel of creative tastemakers. The panel consisted of:
Master Freelancer judges include: Liz Danzico, NPR’s first-ever creative director; Tina Roth-Eisenberg, founder of CreativeMornings, Swissmiss and Tattly; Mike McDerment, founder and CEO of FreshBooks; Ingrid Fetell Lee, design director at IDEO; and Josh Hansen, creative director at FreshBooks and co-founder of the Toronto Flower Market.
Shannon Elizabeth Murphy (Copywriter) and I pitched the idea to CreativeMornings. We worked alongside Tina Roth-Eisenberg to develop the award, curate a judging panel and promote it through both the CreativeMornings and FreshBooks channels.
December 2015 | CreativeMornings Gif Channel
As rewarding as it can be to work for yourself, there are times when client interactions can be complicated and tough. Or chock-full of excitement and joy. And sometimes, when you’re trying to express yourself, words just don’t cut it. Sometimes all you need is the perfect animated gif.
Together with CreativeMornings, we launched a GIF channel! We curated awesome gifs, made by artists in our communities, to celebrate the rewarding and challenging moments of working with clients.
Together, Jesse Read and I made animated gifs—chock full hand-written type and fun animations, geared towards creative-client interactions.
August 2015 | Early Release of Crack the Client Code
To kick off the FreshBooks and CreativeMornings partnership, we distributed an early release copy of Crack the Client Code (a book written by Mike McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks for freelancers explaining the power of relationships) to all 142 chapters of CreativeMornings. To help boost word of mouth of the book, I created a popsicle bookmark that was given with the book, that encouraged one to share the book with a friend—like you would a popsicle. The bookmark was die cut on a matte laminate card, the same finish of the book.
Here are some people who have shared the book on social:
https://www.instagram.com/p/-3R5HAqNws/
https://www.instagram.com/p/8K2RpYSNss/
https://www.instagram.com/p/8EJEl_iGSM/
Jay Peak, a east coast ski resort that is riddled with character asked Origin Design to develop an umbrella concept that leveraged “emotive marketing”. Instead of focusing on snow advantage and vacation planning in this campaign, we decided to instead back to its foundation.
Role: Senior Interactive Designer, Visual Design & UX Design
Tara Boudens was a third year honours pharmacology student who had recognised how competitive her industry was and wanted a way to stand out in job interviews.
After a few conversations we decided the easiest thing to achieve on her budget would be a business card and logo that would differentiate her from the banality of her classmates. This personal branding needed to represent Tara's unique, spunky and fresh personality that sets her apart, while maintaining that she is a serious professional.
Ultimately our strategy worked, Tara was employed within a few months of graduation ahead of many of her classmates.
How might FreshBooks build awareness that their iPhone app allows small, service-based business owners to work anywhere?
By promoting the FreshBooks iPhone app on an intrinsically mobile platform, FreshBooks will engage with small, service-based business owners to illustrate that they can work anywhere they use their mobile device.
We created an Instagram photo contest centred around the inspirational hashtag, #WorkAnywhere. We invited people to share photos of working on-the-go and asked that they included @FreshBooks with #WorkAnywhere in the caption. The prizes were $500, $200 and $100 awarded towards their business Expenses.
While the contest lived on Instagram, we also leveraged the FreshBooks Facebook and Twitter following to promote the contest.
Results (In 2 weeks):
Increased FreshBooks Instagram following by 30%.
Generated 645,443 impressions across all 3 platforms (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).
175 Contest Entries
My Role: Lead Designer on the project. Together with my copywriter, we helped the FreshBooks marketing team build the strategy and concept for the contest. I did all the design elements and curating of customer seeded content. I also created the word mark for the campaign.
Copywriter: Shannon Elizabeth Murphy
Joanne (Jo) is mother to some and motherly to everyone else (Momma). She hosts an annual summer hoedown for her friends and family to raise money for Ronald McDonald House Hamilton. Plus, she owns a Party Barn, which if left unused becomes just a regular old barn and nobody wants that.
After four years of somewhat "organized" chaos and a RSVP list reaching 300+ it was time to bring a bit more structure to the organization of the event. In the fifth year I made a website that aimed to fix the disorganization by providing all the important details in one place, digitally collecting RSVPs and potluck contributions, and getting people excited about the event. I paired this with a simple eCRM campaign through MailChimp, which prompted RSVPs from the unresponsive, requested potluck involvement from those who had RSVP’d and reminded everyone as the date drew near.
The design concept was inspired by the feeling of the Hoedown: homegrown, kid-friendly farm fun. The design became colour-ful, western-inspired and irreverent just like the party.
Design, Illustrations and Copy by Katie Hinks
Photography by Afterglow Images and Katie Hinks
While working at FreshBooks, my copywriter and I did customer user-testing on a weekly basis. We talked about what they loved and hated about being a small business owner.
Most loved the freedom of being their own boss and getting to do what they wanted, but hated the admin work that came along with it. A big pain point for them was tax time. They feared the consequences of making a mistake when filing their taxes and dreaded putting aside the time to do it. Even if they were going to use an accountant, they were unsure of what they could write off, when their taxes were due or what tax breaks were available to them.
To help ease anxiety around tax time and motivate people to file, we built a tax time resource centre for Americans and Canadians with easily digestible tax time information.
The FreshBooks Tax Time Learnatorium included tips and tools to help our customers feel confident at tax time. And in true FreshBooks fashion, we included a touch of fun—like stress-busting playlists, Taxersize and Tax Time Distract-igami.
The FreshBooks Tax Time Learnatorium got tons of love from our customers and repeat site visits. Once they visited they were on the Dean's List and invited to come back to visit newly added resources with a letter from the Dean of Learnatorium via email.
Art Direction and Design by Katie Hinks
Copywriting by Jaclyn Tanner
Illustration by Jesse Read and Katie Hinks
Photography by Katie Hinks
