Creative Sprint

Last April I started a project called #100DaysofPhotoshop—you can check out the gist here—where I attempted to do 100 photoshop projects in 100 days. I only got through about a month and a half, but I loved the exercise in creativity, and spring seemed to be the perfect time. So when a friend emailed me at the start of April this year to tell me about #CreativeSprint, a challenge to make something every day of the month, it seemed like fate. I signed up, and like that April became my “Try Something Crafty” month.

So what is Creative Sprint? Every day a new prompt shows up in your inbox, encouraging you to try a new medium or make something outside the box. The goal is to get people to be creative in new ways, and is in particular aimed at organizations that can motivate and inspire their employees by encouraging more creative moments.

My favorite creations of my own all involved hand-lettering, something I haven’t dabbled in much before. The prompts were great for getting me to find inspiration in different places and try some things that I was sure would turn out terribly. I had so much fun with it I was even inspired to pick up Jessica Hische’s lettering book, In Progress.

Make something while you are in the bathroom or with materials found in the bathroom, today.

Getting inspired by bathroom materials had to be my favorite day. I came home from a long day at work, so daunted by the thought of doing anything creative. I left my headphones in while I rummaged through my drawers, and when I came up with a tube of toothpaste all I could think of was the Kanye West lyrics blasting in my ears. Once I started playing with toothpaste I realized how much fun this was going to be, and dug for more and more materials to play with. Needless to say there were some Clorox wipes involved in the cleanup. 

Create something inspired by an email, text or other message that you receive today

One of the best parts of the whole experience was browsing #creativesprint on Instagram and seeing the different ways each prompt came to life . From total novices to more serious artists, everyone seemed to draw in completely different ways. It was a great reminder to me of just how inspiring other people’s creativity can be if you just remember to look.

Make something inspired by the last song or piece of music you listened to

I'm hoping after two years I can call creative Aprils a trend and continue to make it a way to slough off the gloom of winter and usher in spring. If you want to get crafty with your April (or get started now) check out The 100 Days Project and #CreativeSprint. 

True&Co.'s Try-On Truck

In January 2016, True&Co launched its Try-On Truck on a national tour, starting with 4 key West Coast markets. As a project manager working on the truck, I was helping create and manage the work-plan, holding stakeholders to key deadlines for deliverables, strategizing launch plans and locations for each city, and execution of the launch itself. 

Since the truck came to life in just 4 months, there was lot to manage in the buildout phase. My team was responsible for ensuring the agencies we worked with have everything they needed, planning the inventory we'd need to stock and prep for the truck, and helping bring the visual designs and visual merchandising to life. By managing the work plan and holding members of various different internal teams accountable for their pieces, I was able to ensure we didn't lose ground and miss our deadlines. The outcome of all that hard work was our incredible truck itself.

On the strategic side, I was involved in the determination of locations, the structuring of bra fitting appointments and customer flow, and the determination of our marketing strategy. When it came to communicating the tour to customers, we wanted creative assets that would show off the beauty of the truck while still clearly communicating our value proposition: fit experts who would tailor a bra fitting to your needs, helping you find beautiful lingerie fit to you.  

I took personal ownership of creative, engineering and marketing requests, making sure those key deliverables came through on time and coordinating between those teams and the retail team. Since the project had both online and offline elements, we needed print collateral, marketing emails, and landing pages, all of which had to be flexible enough to accommodate tour changes as they arose. 

From an operational standpoint, I was involved in every aspect of the tour, from scheduling tour dates and planning the travel to managing the customer appointment technology and ensuring each new location got added to our website. Once the truck was built we had to get the retail team the help they needed to run the tour, obtain the necessary permits for every location, and operationalize the customer experience we had dreamed up. There were certainly operational changes, particularly when we bumped up against Super Bowl 50 in the Bay Area. With the help of the whole team, however, we were able to get all the necessary permits and activate our truck at 14 locations in 4 cities.