Caroline Yi

As Design Producer for Waze, I worked on several projects over three months of freelancing, including the new co-pilot partnership with Headspace (including new original moods!), print and digital collateral for the new Waze Carpool app and program, and new dark-mode friendly assets for the Waze app.

I produced with the in-house Brand Design, in managing forecast and workload, and fielded requests from our Marketing and Product Marketing teams, while working with external partners like Burn & Broad and Modicum.

Tools used: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Figma

I was the Director of Creative Operations when Cole Haan premiered Generation ZERØGRAND, along with the rebranded launch of ColeHaan.com. To introduce “GenZG” to the GenZ shopper newly graduating into the workforce as well as the current audience built over the last 90 years, our Marketing team tasked the Brand Design team in showing the versatility, in its style and in features & benefits, across digital and in-store platforms.

Generation ZERØGRAND also launched with two limited-time, limited-quantity collabs with CHINATOWN MARKET and influencer GREYLAYERS.

For this campaign, I led the Brand Design department in all the 200+ individual jobs for print and digital executions:

• Managed all simultaneous 100+ campaign requests and created timelines in Asana, presentations with digital PDFs and InVision, and approvals and communication among Marketing and the C-suite. Creative assets included: teaser and launch site flip HP and LPs, ecom assets, paid and organic social media, display ads, emails, PR look book, window art, and in-store retail signage.

• Worked with the digital site team and digital designers to implement stages of the site rebrand with new assets. We used Zipboard and InVision to review designs, and Google Sheets to list and create the waves in which each page and module would need to be updated with weekly Slack video calls.

• Led weekly status meetings and daily digital stand-ups for 40+ members of Marketing and Brand Design using Airtable for live updates, which we used as our database for all jobs.

• Managed Photo Producer and external talent (The Collected Works) to create digital animated assets.

• Compiled and supervised the very comprehensive “Seasonal Style Guide” for company-wide usage of images (repurposing from shot lists created within Airtable), products featured, legally approved final copy, and graphic toolkit.

As the Director of Creative Operations, I worked directly with the Cole Haan Brand Design VP and CCO to create an icon library as part of the Brand Identity to represent all the Grand 36Ø Design & Engineering System of features and benefits (some pictured here) as well as matching pictograms, intended to be used across all of Cole Haan’s redesigns and platforms.

• Within the greater Creative Operations workflow, I set up the iconography and pictograms as a separate job within Airtable with the specified scenarios we needed to capture within each illustration.

• The process included me working with a brief from Global Marketing, an external vendor (The Collected Works), and internal Brand Design (Design and Copy) to brainstorm and design all iconography. I coordinated all reviews and final approval by the CMO and CCO remotely via Slack screen share.

• I oversaw the production of motion videos.

Cole Haan launched Collection in Fall 2017, featuring models and entrepreneurs Karlie Kloss, founder of Kode with Klossy, and Christy Turlington Burns, founder of Every Mother Counts.

I produced this photo and video shoot, managing the entire shoot budget, post production, approvals, etc. I also managed all creative executions and deliverables with the Cole Haan Brand Design and Marketing teams, including OOH, direct mail catalog, retail in-store and site.

Director + Photographer: Cass Bird
Set: Marla Weinhoff
Stylist: Karla Welch
Production: Prodn
Creative Ops Senior Manager and Producer: Caroline Yi

I was so honored to be featured in Slack’s Customer Stories as the Creative Operations Director, Brand Design at Cole Haan!

Slack was a huge part of our daily operations company-wide, which was implemented just months before I joined the team in 2016. As the Slack admin, I implemented channel creation and naming nomenclature, etiquette, tutorials, and a Slack Tip of the Week. Slack made the speed in which we needed to share, discuss, and approve totally possible. We used Slack apps like Google Drive and implemented automations using Zapier.

We also had a little fun with Slack with some custom emojis, spotting our footwear #inthewild, and a channel for shared love of Halloween– to name a few!

And with mutual love and respect, Cole Haan came out with an exclusive Generation ZERØGRAND shoe with Slack for their IPO day.