My business card may have said Lead Multimedia Designer, but my true role was rather complicated. As the sole visually-focused member of the marketing team at a tech startup I was equal parts photographer, publication designer, front-end and email developer, director, cinematographer, editor, voiceover artist, asset coordinator, inventory manager, last-minute presentation rescuer, spreadsheet wrangler, and so many other things. It was a wild ride, but I got to make a real impact—for example, as a result of my special focus on scaling up video content, Xometry's main YouTube channel saw an over 2,000% (no, that is not a typo) increase in subscribers in my first two years!
As one might expect from such a many-hatted position, I worked on a diverse assortment of projects in my time at Xometry. Below are three of my favorites.The Toolkit
Skills: Graphic Design, Publication Design, Photography
Tools: Adobe CC Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator)
Challenge: Condense a large amount of technical and marketing content into a scannable quick reference guide.
Results: 15% increase in company penetration (approximate) as well as widespread anecdotal approval.
Tools: Adobe CC Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator)
Challenge: Condense a large amount of technical and marketing content into a scannable quick reference guide.
Results: 15% increase in company penetration (approximate) as well as widespread anecdotal approval.
This is a contender for my crowning achievement at Xometry. The challenge handed down by the community manager seemed insurmountable: take an entire website full of comprehensive engineering content and reduce it to its essence while still retaining the information's integrity and usefulness to its intended audience—even the brief is a mouthful! The booklet would need to be both a quick reference guide and a sort of product catalog for potential customers getting started with Xometry.
A spread from early on in the booklet showcasing Xometry's CNC machining and sheet metal fabrication capabilities in a clear, concise, and easily-digestible format.
After numerous rounds of revisions and consulting every engineering-minded person on staff at the time, we finally had it: The Toolkit. Sixteen pages of full-color, saddle-stitched glory containing photography, layout, graphics, and even a little writing by yours truly.
The inside back cover spread of a recent version of the booklet promoting Xometry's revamped referral program. It was nice to be able to immortalize in print a hint of the campaign branding I spent months working on! Fun fact: there are 30 unique photos in the image on the left, 15 of which I took myself.
This little booklet proved itself a powerhouse marketing tool for Xometry with over ten thousand copies printed. It flew off the table at conferences. Xometry representatives used it themselves as a tool to pitch the company out in the wild. It was included in nearly every marketing-based package we sent out: to prospects and top-tier customers, to hobbyists and high-ranking engineers, to artists and makers and movers and shakers. It's unfortunately tough to quantitatively measure its direct impact as, say, a trade show leave-behind, but I can say that company penetration shot up by over 15% after the booklet's distribution really kicked into gear. Where before Xometry’s pitches consisted of Powerpoint presentations and verbal explanations, the toolkit provided a concise reference guide and visual aid that could be left with potential customers as a (hopefully useful) token to remember Xometry by. And most importantly, people love it! Challenge: surmounted.
One of the first distribution channels for the toolkit was a surprise-and-delight kit we lovingly referred to as the "water bottle kit" due to the snazzy branded water bottles that were featured. The kit also included a set of five quick reference cards (which I also designed, of course) intended to be distributed by the recipient to their colleagues. Here you can really see the cutout on the booklet cover!
The toolkit went through many iterations after its inception: updated reference content, the addition and removal of product offerings, and a few additional pages of marketing creative on the tail end. While its base purpose and structure remained the same, its content continued to evolve with the needs of the company and the needs of its target audience (as any good reference guide-slash-product catalog should).
A Data-Driven Redesign
Skills: Graphic Design, Web Design, Photography, Front-End Development, User Interface Design
Tools: Adobe Photoshop CC, Craft CMS, Sublime, GitHub
Challenge: Redesign the homepage of the main website to better convert site visitors.
Results: Over 300% improvement in conversion rate, simplified content management on the backend.
Tools: Adobe Photoshop CC, Craft CMS, Sublime, GitHub
Challenge: Redesign the homepage of the main website to better convert site visitors.
Results: Over 300% improvement in conversion rate, simplified content management on the backend.
Early in 2018, an effort to redesign the Xometry homepage was kicked off with a group brainstorm and discovery session. After a couple of months of small-scale A/B testing to explore some of the ideas discovered during that first session, Xometry announced its Series C funding round and acquisition of competitor MakeTime. With that spectacular news came an urgent need: suddenly, to account for the growth in Xometry’s network and product offerings, we were given just a week to create and launch an entirely redesigned homepage. Talk about a challenge!
A screenshot of the old homepage as of March 2018.
Several issues came up during the discovery phase that would need to be addressed with this redesign, but most of the pain points we uncovered involved information overload: two navigation bars with tons of top-level options, a lot of content crammed into the top section of the page pushing important information below the fold, and multiple calls to action causing confusion and decision fatigue. Through heatmap and user session screen recording software, we found data to back up the anecdotal evidence.
Another less quantifiable issue was the need for refreshed visual language that would better reflect Xometry's growth and enterprise/B2B focus.
A wireframe from early on in the redesign process. After discussing what exactly we wanted to achieve with and include in this new homepage, the UX designer put this together to guide my interface designs.
Taking these problems into account, we decided to go with a modular approach to create a more flexible layout. We also pared down both the navigation and the volume of content to reduce the number of immediate choices users had to make. By splitting the key information users need to know—how the Xometry model works, what kind of capabilities Xometry offers, and so on—into separate modules below the fold, users would (in theory) not be so overwhelmed upon entering the site.
Three of the many iterations this page design went through. It came a long way in a very short amount of time!
We came pretty close with our first attempt, but there was still more work to do in conjunction with stakeholders to figure out exactly how to present Xometry to the public with this new design. For example, the navigation: to help unify Xometry's web apps, I proposed a tabbed product navigation that would let users know exactly where they were within Xometry at all times. This was ultimately scrapped in favor of a combined single navigation bar (which I can also get behind!) with several top-level items removed for simplicity. That said, I actually ended up expanding the sub-navigation in response—by displaying each "dropdown" at full width instead of the single-column menus used previously, the sub-navigation became scalable where it was not before. I then populated this new wide open space with more granular links, letting users get to almost everything much more quickly without overwhelming them right out of the gate.
The benefits of a modular structure came into play early on as well, as stakeholders immediately wanted to rearrange and trim the content after seeing it in this context. These types of revisions during the design phase wound up cementing the new structure as a step in the right direction.
The new and improved navigation in more detail, including a view of the Capabilities sub-navigation opened up.
Once all parties were satisfied and the page was built, we turned on an A/B test pitting the new design against the old one. The testing software picked its winner by an overwhelming margin: the new design showed an over 300% improvement in conversion rate during the testing phase! If we achieved that kind of improvement in a week, imagine what we could accomplish with more time and testing! The site will constantly evolve and improve from here as testing and research continue, but this redesign was certainly a huge leap forward from where we were before.
Meet Xoe
Skills: Graphic Design, Photography, Video Production, Motion Graphics, Sound Editing, Sound Design, Voiceover
Tools: Adobe CC Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Audition)
Challenge: Produce a memorable (and marketable) video for April Fool's Day.
Results: Double the expected email open rate, four times the average email click through rate, 1.2k video views (with no paid promotion), and a lot of positive feedback.
Tools: Adobe CC Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Audition)
Challenge: Produce a memorable (and marketable) video for April Fool's Day.
Results: Double the expected email open rate, four times the average email click through rate, 1.2k video views (with no paid promotion), and a lot of positive feedback.
This project was a doozy. Far and away the highest-production value video that Xometry released during my time at the company, this one included our largest cast and crew and most complex post-production process. Not to mention all the unexpected hurdles that popped up in the sprint to get this out in time!
Our original Lead Xomineer was called away to fix some bugs with a release the day of the shoot! Chris stepped in at the last minute, memorized his lines during a brief rehearsal, and used these very sophisticated cue cards to fill in the gaps during the shoot. Bravo, Chris!
While my first April Fool's Day campaign with Xometry was certainly fun to create, it was admittedly pretty simple in concept and execution. In 2018, we wanted to go bigger. After a great deal of brainstorming and a company-wide poll, we decided to lampoon the growing ubiquity of voice assistants—Siri, Alexa, Google Home, and such—with our very own: Xoe.
One of many promotional graphics I created for the social media arm of the campaign, this shot gives you a closer look at the Xoe interface (created in a combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects) in action.
From a couple of group writer's room sessions with part of the marketing team (plus one very helpful data scientist) emerged the major story beats, and I then got to flex my sketch-writing muscles to refine the script into the final product. I recruited my crew, we cast our talent, set the production schedule...and then, as they often do, Unforeseen Circumstances took over: scheduling conflicts leading to last-minute recasts, technical difficulties, reshoots, and a literal blizzard tried to stand in the way of this project coming to life, but I was not going to let any of that stop me! At some point this had morphed from a fun little holiday stunt into a passion project for me, and I sank a lot of my own time into making it awesome.
My crew and I looking either manic or exhausted (or both?) immediately after the conference room shoot as captured by our "executive producer."
All told, the rollout included several parts: the "announcement" on the Xometry website, the social posts, the email blast, the "project page," and of course the big reveal. Feedback was swift and positive, and we even got a little attention outside of our own circle—we set out to raise the bar for ourselves and we certainly succeeded! Thanks in part to an expertly-crafted subject line care of the marketing engagement specialist (pictured above at right), the email promoting the video achieved an impressive open rate—double what was expected! Once recipients were in, the promise of a voice-controlled future boasted four times the average click through rate to watch the video and read about the "project." The campaign also generated a steady stream of users engaging with Xometry that continued on for several months!
Our CEO took to introducing me as "the creator of Xoe" to visitors and even wanted to bring back the character for other videos...but the real high point was when, within minutes of releasing the stunt to our contacts, we got an email back from a customer who was so convinced Xoe was real that he thought we were just trying to build up hype in advance of a true product announcement! I call that a successful prank!
