Express Yourself!

With over $5M in VC funding, I lead a team of 6 incredible designers bringing to life a unique library of super expressive GIFs for mobile messaging and social media. Under my watchful eye, every single element got love and attention from concept to application. With a critical eye, we combed through every stock image site in the universe, licensed thousands of wildly different images from all kinds of illustrators and photographers, then chopped up and animated them following the visual appeal, usability and flexibility standards I developed.

6 DESIGNERS

3000+ GIFs

600 DAYS

I had to learn the Art of South Park (Crispy, we are forever grateful!) and when I first presented some of our initial concepts the feedback was something like, “You are really working wayy too hard, you need to do a lot less!” As OG fans of South Park, the team and I were both humbled, and stoked to work with our SP neighbors!

Fox has a ton of incredible properties but after a few conversations we knew Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, American Dad and Bob’s Burgers were the perfect candidates. Working with some of these long-running favorites was a joy and a gift for the team – and for me, it was impressive leading a creative start-up from Shutterstock to Fox Studios all in one year.

If you don’t love animals, not only should you check yourself into an insane asylum, you should also look through the big set of un-domesticated and adorably expressive animal animations we rolled out for HSUS, it will make you love them more than ever. Animals were for sure my number one vehicle for driving emotions home quickly, through the genuine connection that only animals can make.

We threw one deep and presented the NFL with some really great stuff. I made a collection worthy of the GIF Hall of Fame. The mix of energy and spirit captured in athlete photos plus that magical touch I developed, inspired and birthed another Barona signature style of mashing-up Football and Dragonball-Z. A few months after our pitch at the NFL headquarters in Manhattan, the trend was on and Hulu was rocking brand new NFL and NBA ads with a whole new zing. Just sayin’

SGK is a source of hope and strength and they’ve channeled both into a community, not only to raise awareness and fighting-funds against breast cancer, but also to provide strength and hope to those fighting it. We animated epic, light-hearted and inspiring pieces for this collection, with my North Star always aligned to the two pillars – Hope and Strength.

Authentic Brands Group gave me the opportunity to animate a sassy lil’ gatekeeper named Mini Marilyn. My design crew couldn’t easily connect with this brand, but, with their trust in me and my direction, they absolutely crushed it, teeing us up for deeper access into ABG’s more elite brands.

Creators

Parallel to brands, I onboarded a roster of ultra-talented visual artists of all types, from around the world. I developed clear submission guidelines and tech specs to make successful Kwips, without hijacking their creative process. Collaborating with creators that I look up to was humbling and fulfilling, I treasure that experience and look back on it with a big, grateful smile 😊

Celebrities

Public personalities and celebrities are usually super interesting and expressive, so I put a roster together of  fun editorial celeb images that we could animate and elevate. With a mixed bag of characters and a great collective sense of humor, we created timeless stuff that makes you want to smile and share immediately.

Keepin’ it Fresh

We worked like the kitchen of a well-oiled Michelin-star restaurant. So, as the Chef blessed with this big pantry of visual ingredients and a talented crew, I made sure we were constantly serving up fresh, expressive and unique animations ready for the messaging world to savor.