Work Breakdowns

The thinking, in my own words.

Three short breakdowns — one video, one email, one design project. Context, what I made, why it works. No decks, no metrics I can't stand behind.

01 — Short-Form Product Video 02 — Email Marketing Design 03 — Brand / Visual Design

Breakdown 01 · Video Content · Vertical

Short-Form Product Video

Context

A skincare brand's Reels and TikTok looked like product photography with captions on top — flat, skippable, easy to scroll past. The brief: make content that earns the first second, without turning the product into a loud ad.

What I created

A 15-second vertical film built around a morning ritual, with 6s and 30s cutdowns from the same shoot.
A shot list that leads with texture and hands — the bottle doesn't appear until the midpoint.
Soft kinetic type built from the brand's existing wordmark, not an added overlay.

Creative thinking

Hook on the thing a viewer can feel, not the thing you want to sell. Short-form rewards sensory openings — a hand, a texture, a light change — over product shots. The product can wait three seconds. The viewer can't.

Why it works

Pacing matches how people actually scroll: a sensory pull, a slow-mo payoff, a CTA that lands only after attention is earned. The format is also a template — the brand can re-shoot it for every new hero product without rebuilding from scratch.

Takeaway

Content that reads as editorial, works as performance, and scales as a system.

Breakdown 02 · Email · Welcome Flow

Email Marketing Design

Context

A DTC homeware brand's welcome emails were doing one job: delivering a 20% code. Open rates dropped sharply after email one, and the rest of the flow was going unread. They wanted emails that felt like the brand, not a promotion.

What I created

A four-email welcome series, one product story per send, no discounts above email four.
A custom layout system with a clear editorial hierarchy — single CTA, generous whitespace, serif pull-quotes.
Subject lines written as sentences, not slogans: quieter in an inbox, higher on open.

Creative thinking

Treat the inbox like a magazine, not a shelf. If an email promises a story, it gets opened; if it promises a sale, it gets filtered. The 20% code isn't removed — it's earned by email four, after the reader already has a reason to care.

Why it works

Each email does one thing, so nothing competes. The hierarchy guides the eye from headline to single CTA without hedging. And because the layout is a template, the in-house team can reuse it across seasonal drops without touching the design every time.

Takeaway

A system the team can run themselves — not a one-off flow that breaks the next time someone re-skins it.

Breakdown 03 · Identity · Packaging · Social

Brand / Visual Design

Context

A small-batch coffee roaster had outgrown the identity the founder had designed themselves. The wordmark didn't scale, the packaging didn't photograph well on social, and the Instagram grid looked different every week — for the wrong reasons.

What I created

A new wordmark, two accent marks and a simple colour palette designed to live across three bag sizes.
A sticker set that ships inside every order — small, shareable, and built from the same type.
A three-column Instagram grid system in Figma with quote, product and texture modules.

Creative thinking

Design it for the camera first. If the bag looks good in a flatlay on the founder's phone, the whole brand travels. I kept the system tight — one type family, one colour rule, one grid — so anything the team makes afterwards already feels on-brand without needing a designer in the room.

Why it works

Tight system, loose application. Every asset shares the same visual grammar, so a phone photo and a print bag sit next to each other without breaking. The rules fit on a single page — which means they actually get followed.

Takeaway

An identity small enough to remember, flexible enough to grow with the brand.

If any of this reads like your brand, let's talk.

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