Art direction for Pane Fresco catering guide covers. These special beauty shots are two of my favourite images captured while working with the Pane Fresco by Fortinos client. I was so lucky to work with a talented studio team of photographers and stylists and to be a part of bringing together a beautiful shot that makes the client happy.
Art direction for Pane Fresco’s seasonal product line up. Pane Fresco is all about fresh, gourmet foods and they asked that no alterations be made to their products for the photoshoots. This meant the food on set had a short time limit and careful planning went into the photography to ensure every element looked as fresh and perfect as possible.
Fortinos Holiday gift basket art direction. I was asked to be on-set to ensure that the Fortinos line up of Holiday gift baskets were given some extra attention. Baskets full of produce, grocery items and specialty café items were expertly crafted to display each product available.
Home Depot photo art direction. I was tasked with designing a set that would display groups of tools being featured in the Home Depot Holiday tool book. This multi-level set, constructed out of pressure treated lumber, worked well to showcase all the colourful tool brands.
Fortinos Health department brochure. Concepted and saw through to print a new brochure for Fortinos grocery stores to highlight their extensive health food department. Started as 6 pages and was expanded to 8 pages at the next printing. This piece is now part of the regular production schedule at Fortinos and has been printed 3 times per year since 2020.
Pane Fresco (Fortinos) Catering Menu brochure. This twice-yearly brochure features new products being launched and contains the full catering selection provided by the Pane Fresco side of the Fortinos grocery business. My responsibilities included all photo art direction, design and production of this brochure.
Home Depot Patio brochure. This seasonal product brochure was created to feature Home Depot’s Spring patio selection, focusing on ways to elevate small city spaces, and was directed towards the IKEA demographic.
Precision Millwright Group Z-fold brochure. This snappy little piece includes a concise company snapshot and was created to leave behind for perspective clients after sales meetings.
Home Depot Sustainability report. Principal designer on the 2015 Home Depot Sustainability Report. Responsible for new iconography and infographics to tell the story of The Home Depot’s corporate sustainability efforts in an easy-to-digest format.
Cherry Blossoms. Inspired to create something that embodies my love of nature, bright colours and landscapes.
Forest Boardwalk. A daring trek over a rushing river and into the forest beyond.
Pink Gerbera. Specially created for my daughter’s nursery and loved especially during her ‘pink’ phase.
Frozen Lake at Night. One of my first paintings, created for my husband… before he was my husband. I feel like I can hear the crackling ice when I stare at this scene.
The Meeks. I don’t often attempt paintings that require achieving a likeness (landscapes are much more forgiving) but our sweet pooch Meeka is just too cute not to immortalize.
Violet Auroras. A different take on a winter night. This time with crackling auroras.
Blow-dry. A fun little experiment of a painting done over the course of just a few hours. There’s just something sexy and captivating about the swirling hair and colours.
Home Depot winter storm digital planning. Concept created as a plan to market winter storm clean-up products. Campaign was to roll-out as needed during the winter for timely impact on email blasts, social media channels and flipp.
Fortinos & Pane Fresco social and web assets. Provided imagery for Fortinos grocery social platforms and websites that ran in conjunction with printed materials for store events, product launches and seasonal announcements. Work included creating website mock-ups as well as sizing content for use by the Loblaws Agency web team.
‘Dream Book’ digital specialty flyer. When the Home Depot shuttered the printing of its Dream Book, they were looking for a cost-effective way to reach the same customers who would pour through that magazine looking for inspiration and on-trend home renovation ideas. This flyer contained loads of click-through links to shopping and influencer-style articles and was a showpiece for Home Depot’s high-end product lines. I worked directly with the Home Depot account creative director to design & build the layouts shown.
Home Depot digital flyers. Created seasonal and department-driven digital flyers for Home Depot Canada. Flyers were available viewed through flipp.ca and homedepot.ca with click-throughs to seasonally relevant online assets such as DIY guides and project planning.
Fortinos specialty & vendor flyer pages. Although my main roll on the Fortinos account was to manage signage and digital assets, I was often called upon to create last-minute pages needed for their retail flyer – creating many unique pages for special featured content and paid vendor ads.
Home Depot Canada flyer revamp. In 2017 I was an integral part of the creative team that was tasked with refreshing the Home Depot retail flyer. The ask was to take them from a small tab flyer format into a larger attention-grabbing broadsheet layout with an emphasis on imagery and bright seasonal campaigns. This design remains the basis of the printed Home Depot flyer today.
Home Depot Spring campaign roll-out. This was one of the most comprehensive campaigns I was involved in designing for the Home Depot. Starting with iconography design and then developing the look across all channels – retail flyer, in-store POP, web, email and social marketing.
The Bay newspaper ads (ROPs). My first career job after college I worked for an advertising company in Toronto and was placed on The Bay account. I started by producing the many ads The Hudson’s Bay Co. ran daily in newspapers across Canada – several hundred a year at peak production! After a few years I moved up from production artist to graphic designer and I credit my ability to quickly create and resize layouts to my time on this account.
Fortinos in-store signage. The example above is of a product launch which is a good demonstration of the variety of signage pieces I designed for Fortinos. The launch included large-scale printed posters to tent cards, display clings and product tags. An evolution towards more digital content meant creating digital menu boards, cash register screens and LED message boards as well.
Fortinos new store launch. During my time with Fortinos I was part of 2 new store launches. Not only did I work with my client to supply all the necessary in-store signage pieces to various printers, but I was also tasked with creating a campaign of all new pieces to flood the store locale with the news that a Fortinos was on its way. The campaign began with teaser billboards, newspaper ads and flyer wraps. Then evolved to large-scale exterior banners, digital billboards and road-side signs with another round of ads once the store was open to the public. Extra in-store materials such as directional signage and a store map brochure to welcome customers were also created.
Home Depot poster towers. The Home Depot was looking for a way to utilize existing signage fixtures in a more impactful way. These 3-poster towers were initially used to hold random posters chosen by the store manager. We decided to use them to tell a more cohesive story for seasonal campaigns and special events. They were a particular hit during the Holidays to display the new decorative collections available from Martha Stewart.
Smart Home Event, Home Depot. This signage, shown in the smart home section in each Home Depot store, was created for an event where smart home experts were available in-store to assist customers with smart home set-up questions. Posters were set up behind the demonstration table and shelf talkers and brochures helped customers navigate the new product selection.
Fortinos cooler bag designs. Each a year Fortinos chooses to highlight a section of their business on their branded cooler bag, sold in store. I was responsible for concept and design through to sending print-ready files to the manufacturer.
Meatloaf packaging sleeves, Fortinos. Concept, design and die line created for a line of oven-ready meatloaf flavours – a proprietary product of the Fortinos commissary. This project opened my eyes to the strict regulations in Canada for package design!