Executive Creative Director, Imaginuity
Leading, collaborating and delivering projects of every scope and type with Imaginuity's integrated teams of creatives, strategists and technologists to lead clients towards “meaningful connections” using experience, expertise and craft to produce the best work possible. Responsible for driving our client's goals forward — from concept to completion while managing Imaginuity's creative resources effectively and efficiently.
My favorite part of the job was growing and mentoring the creative team as well as contributing to the advancement of the overall agency culture. My second favorite part: working with operations leaders to assess and facilitate more efficient processes for collaboration and execution, both inside Imaginuity and with our agency partners and clients.
Creative Director, Sept 2014 - 2016 // Executive Creative Director, Sept 2014 - Sept 2018
Introduced, implemented and trained the agency’s individual contributors and their direct managers to tools like Invision, GatherContent, Slack, Adobe XD and Mural
Creating systems of consistency and efficiency by introducing, testing and implementing new ways to communicate across departments, manage quality control, enable knowledge transfer, document processes, and execute intelligent solutions with the utmost attention-to-detail.
Invision replaced non-clickable keynote “prototypes”
GatherContent replaced multiple content-aggregation tools and unlinked documents
Slack replaced email as well as different messaging platforms used by each department
Adobe XD replaced multiple tools including Photoshop, Illustrator, Google Slides, Invision, Keynote, and code repositories
Mural became a tool for collaboration with clients across time zones, who could not visit our office due to schedules and budget-constraints
“Frances is a creative problem-solver who helps her clients see fresh possibilities and stay on track with their brand strategy. She is clear, honest and energizing to work with, collaborating well across technical and creative members of her team. She's also a great mentor to budding creatives and a leader in the design industry who is passionate about design-thinking. When you work with Frances, you get a clear sense that she's "on it" and dedicated to delivering a smart and impactful end result. As her client, I found her concepts, ideas and ability to keep us on track refreshing and extremely valuable.”
Jacqueline Chen, Partner - Connective Agency
Design Thinking Introduction + Implementation + Advocacy
Introducing design thinking methods and philosophy to team members across practices and executive leadership, to train the team to work together to solve problems and challenges using human-centered techniques. Challenges included investigation and audit of the company’s internal values, creation of our customer experience and enablement strategies, as well as project-centered scoping and assessment.
Direct management of 6-8 full-time creatives (art directors, designers, copywriters), vendor partners and creative freelancers.
Creative direction (and sometimes delivery) of all client projects (over 20 active projects at once), working with multiple project / account managers, strategists, and developers.
Additional management and operations responsibilities include:
Write / direct / edit / approve all creative briefs
Project estimates and scope-of-works
Traffic management and resource allocation
Vendor management and direction
Hiring, recruiting and interviewing
Development of career pathways and expectations
Mentorship, goal-setting and coaching
Practice roadmap
Performance reviews and 1:1s
Process documentation and delivery consistency
“Even before I started at Imaginuity, Frances fully encompassed what it is to be a mentor in both a team and individual sense. Any knowledge acquired on her own time, money and effort always made it back to our team. With each new industry shift, she guided us forward with a clear big picture in mind. She was then able to capture that big picture and turn it into actionable items. She never let the work or the culture become stagnant. With so much on her plate she still had the time to mentor us individually. I never left a conversation with Frances with a bunch of half-truths or incomplete information. She never held back in sharing her experience, her knowledge or her intuition with me. I am grateful to know that I have made a connection with someone who will always have my back.”
Elda Marroquin, Senior Art Director - Cinemark