The Challenge
Demand was outpacing the system.
Templates were inconsistent or missing. Designers reverse-engineered the brand on every asset. QA was reactive. And the volume kept climbing: one Tier 1 sale brief meant about 200 deliverables, across 5 markets with their own disclaimers, 12 destination heroes, 14 display banner sizes and 2 variations, for 8 stakeholder teams, in 25 days from look and feel to final. Often two or three campaigns ran at once, alongside monthly promotions. The volume was real. The infrastructure wasn't.
The Solution
Not a redesign. A rebuild.
The first move wasn't aesthetic; it was structural. A repeatable workflow from brief to delivery, with every handoff clear and every role understood. Loom-based async direction replaced ambiguous back-and-forth, and a steady team rhythm kept six designers moving as one. Taste can't survive volume on heroics.
The Foundation
Template Ecosystem
More than 70 production-ready templates covering every recurring asset: advisor flyers, emails, brochures, decks and signage. Brand elements locked, editable zones defined, export settings baked in. Tools, not style guides, so designers spent less time deciding and more time shipping.
The System
Briefing
Every client request was translated into a structured brief before it hit the queue: offer, audience, legal, messaging, assets and references. Every designer worked alongside a senior on the same brief, and open questions were answered by leadership before production started. Direction traveled by Loom, not comment threads. Ambiguity was the enemy of speed.
The System
Quality Assurance
At this brand tier, an incorrect disclaimer is a client relationship problem. QA became a system, not a final check: ten checkpoints on every asset, from offer lockup hierarchy and legal language to map validation, export settings and version control, with peer review by trained seniors and AI-assisted copy proofing as a second pass. Nothing left the building on luck.
The System
One Brief, Every Surface
Look and feel, lockups and copy, pushed through the template library into every channel at once: onboard signage and app tiles, sales flyers for five markets, web heroes, email, 14 display sizes per hero, paid social, and video cut for online, connected TV, onboard and trade.
The System
Workflow Innovation
Partway through the engagement, I shifted portions of production into Canva and then Figma. Not to cut costs, but to cut friction: small client edits no longer had to come back through a designer for another export and handoff. AI-assisted proofing now adds a second QA pass before delivery. Next, agents draft first-pass layouts from structured briefs, while designers keep direction, selection and polish. Let agents start, not finish.
The Team
Structure
A system is only as strong as the people running it. Seniors owned peer QA and mentoring, giving every designer support without routing every decision through me. Every asset followed one review path: designer, senior review, creative director final pass, client. Quality scaled without creating a new bottleneck, and 20+ creatives have been trained on the account since 2024.
The Team
Onboarding
Creative teams naturally evolve. People grow, move accounts or take new opportunities, and the client should never feel that transition. One onboarding board holds everything a new designer needs, so any new creative can ramp up in two weeks without slowing the account down. Continuity lives in shared knowledge, not in any one person.
My Role
What I owned
I led Seabourn end to end: creative direction across every channel; the operating model behind it (templates, briefing, QA, and onboarding); the client relationship, including training their team on the new workflow; and the bench, scaled from two designers to six.
The Result
Impact
Over the same period, onboard campaigns averaged $15M+ a month against an $8M goal, and the client's investment in the creative grew 3.4 times as they handed us more teams and broader scope. That trust isn't earned by assets. It's earned when execution stops being their worry.
Credits
Creative Systems Lead Pooyan Alizadeh
Senior Designers Arash Sharifkian, Laura Faccone
Designers Karan Vora, Deyan Cavalcante, Larissa Damasceno, Nicolle Ginter
