Creative Director, MasonBaronet
Leading, collaborating, inspiring and delivering projects from concept to delivery for a boutique design firm — working with a small internal creative team, account managers and vendors to deliver high-end, holistic and strategic branding, marketing, advertising, environmental and interactive solutions rooted in “good thinking”.
Responsible for driving our client's brands forward while managing internal and external creative and technology resources effectively and efficiently.
The best part of the job, on top of the level of design we delivered, was growing and mentoring the creative team, discovering new talent, and leading the employee experience across the firm. Additionally, as second in charge, I worked directly with the owner to assess and facilitate more efficient ways to collaborate and execute the best work possible, by getting operational roadblocks out of our team’s way.
Creative Director, May 2011 - Sept 2014
Starting with Purpose
When team members were onboarded, we wanted to make sure they started with purpose and worked towards this purpose throughout their tenure. To do so, I upgraded our existing onboarding manual to include more than the regular and necessary company information.
The new onboarding manuals included a purpose and goal-setting section with action-oriented worksheets to set goals and personal expectations fro their time at MasonBaronet.
Each manual was given to each new employee, and tailored to their role. In addition to the basic information, we created process flows for each type of project we executed to maintain consistency, as well as serve as a basic guide for team members if they were unfamiliar with delivering specific projects.
“When I think of Frances, I think of not only a talented creative director and designer, but also a one of a kind mentor and teacher. I had the pleasure of reporting to Frances during my time as a Creative Intern at MasonBaronet in 2013. When we began working together, what became quickly evident to me was that Frances is the kind of supervisor that makes you look forward to going to work every day. Her enthusiasm for the creative industry, paired with her ability to foster a hard-working, collaborative, and respectful work environment make her an amazing Creative Director. What impressed me the most was that Frances was eager to see that I got the most out of a short 3-month internship by checking in with me regularly to discuss my goals, action steps, and progress. She is incredibly dedicated to her work as both a creative and a mentor, and is someone that I look up to and respect. Without a doubt, Frances earns my highest recommendation.”
Kim Thwaits - Graphic Designer
Project management + time-tracking
When I joined MasonBaronet, we tracked our time, ran projects, and managed estimates and budgets using multiple systems. Seeing this as an opportunity to simplify and make more accurate the business-side of design, I researched and recommended options to alleviate the extra work and mitigate risk. A few months after we began the process, we were implementing Streamtime, which bundled job planning, time-tracking, scheduling, quoting, invoicing and reporting into one simple tool. Employees were not only able to track their time on desktop and mobile, but they were also able to access important documents related to each project within that same tool.
Direct management of 3-4 full-time creatives (art directors, designers, interns), vendor partners and creative freelancers.
Creative direction and delivery of all client projects (over 20 active projects at once), working with the owner, account managers, external writers, and external 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
Internal and external production schedules
Vendor management and direction
Hiring, recruiting and interviewing
Mentorship, goal-setting and coaching
Performance reviews and 1:1s
Process documentation and delivery consistency
Awards management and agency advocacy
Internal marketing
“I had a lot of learning to do over the course of my summer internship at MasonBaronet, and with the level of involvement and consistent guidance that Frances Yllana provided me with, I was able to effectively gauge my skills as a designer in a real world setting. Any student or even seasoned designer would benefit from working with alongside such an inspiring professional as Frances.”
Silvia Skinner, Senior Designer - Moxie Sozo
“Frances knows how to think outside of the box and still remain within the crunched budgets of today. She is honest and seeks to partner with her vendors to get to her goals, which is refreshing. A very creative person. I highly recommend her.”
Justin Eves, Bus. Dev. - Joy Nelson Design
Partnering with vendors and freelancers
Part of my responsibilities at MasonBaronet was to manage and cultivate relationships with independent designers, copywriters and developers, as well as printers, photographers and paper representatives. With the volume of projects and meticulous attention-to-detail and craft, management of these partners took just as much time and care as our internal team.
Along with creative direction, responsibilities included sourcing potential partners, receiving and negotiating proposals and estimates, managing client approvals and managing invoices.