About
Meet Jaclyn Gies, a talented Creative Director with a Bachelor's Degree from California State University Northridge. She has a passion for clean and modern design which permeates every aspect of her work. Her leadership style is characterized by transparency, open communication, and a genuine desire to empower her team to do their best work. Her agile approach and unwavering customer and user focus make her a sought-after expert in the field of UI/UX and product design.
Jaclyn’s collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to design fosters a bevy of creativity to create solutions as unique as the people that use them. She recognizes that successful design requires input from a variety of perspectives and works closely with all stakeholders to ensure that their needs are met. By fostering an environment of open communication, Jaclyn empowers her team to produce exceptional work where the design process is carefully considered, resulting in an end product that delights users and exceeds business goals.
Want to know more?
Here’s a breakdown of everything you might like to know about me:
What qualities and skills should a good graphic designer have?
A graphic designer must be customer and user focused. Able to take comments and criticism and create a collaborative process for projects. Designers should be fast, accurate and create projects that inspire, and are custom experiences.
How do you work with collaborators like copywriters, developers, and project managers?
In my professional experience I have found that collaboration is the quickest way to get something together that everyone can be proud of. I love being able to let everyone on a team have a voice and be heard in the process. In my current and previous roles, I have worked closely with developers, clients, stake holders and VP/CEOs, copy writers, brand managers, legal teams, and users. I like to lead with a clear and direct view, get feedback and approval from all necessary parties. I work well with others and always strive to make something everyone can be proud to have been apart of at the end of the day.
How do you incorporate feedback into your designs?
Feedback is the most important part of any project. Your first shot might be good, but when you incorporate feedback and others opinions you’ll have a better balanced and usually a better all around project. I’m always open to hearing peoples opinions, and I always make sure that if certain feedback will not be the best idea for the overall project to let people know in a constructive way.
What’s a time you received hard criticism for your work?
I have received my fair share of hard criticism for my work but it’s never been something to hold me down. Negative feedback doesn’t bother me, I’m here to create a lasting project and if what I’ve created doesn’t work for the client, then it doesn’t work for me and I work together with them to create something they will like. At the end of the day, I’m here to make things beautiful, and if that means throwing things out and starting again I have no problem doing that.
Describe your creative process. What are the major steps?
The creative process in the professional world starts as it always does with a task or creative brief. From there, the sketching faze begins. This includes using a multitude of programs to create a first few drafts, you can’t just create one direction and think that’s going to be the winner. The creative process requires an in-depth audit of all the possibilities and then narrow it down to what’s possible and feasible for the time frame of the project. Next is prototyping (for UI/UX projects), or creating the first real designs for the client. Then the feedback cycle, creating the revised product and finally submitting for stakeholder review and then packaging the project for final send.
What brands do you most admire and how do they influence your work?
I take inspiration from designers and companies from all over the world. I love to get a wholistic view of design and see where trends are leading us. I have worked with hundreds of huge brands from Casper to intuit, Disney to Thinx and many many more and all of them have their own brand voice and tone. Companies like apple and other large tech companies for example are fantastic to look at for inspiration because they are the epitome of human centric design.
I strive to make things that are on brand and centered around users. Taking inspiration here and there from different brands to create a collage of design thinking that is comprehensive and beautiful. Watching design change always pushes me to strive to the highest and never stop creating.
How do you measure the success of your designs?
Success is measured differently for everyone, but personally I always am looking for usability, and how the end user actually reacts to the product. I might be in love with a project, but the real test of success is when people in the wild are using it or seeing it and talking about it, reacting to it, and ultimately converting with a sale at the end of the day.
How do you meet tough deadlines?
I meet tough deadlines because I’m fast, I work hard, get things done and start off with a good base. Tough deadlines can only be tough if you’re not presented with all the materials to make your work a success in the first place.
How do you work under pressure.
Every day I work under pressure, working in a sass company, all we do every day is time sensitive, and at this point I thrive on it.
Tell me about your experience working remotely.
I love working remotely. It allows me the freedom to not be distracted by coworkers, and work in the piece and quiet of my home. I’m able to easily collaborate with people on Slack and have been doing so for 3 years.
What do you feel is important to make sure the work gets done efficiently?
Having a clear direction to start from, knowing all the approvals necessary for a design, and knowing the end user is a fantastic place to start. From there, I take the necessary steps to work with the people I need to and am never afraid to ask questions.
What’s an example of a project where you disagreed with the client’s feedback and how did you handle it?
Disagreeing with a client’s feedback is a give and take relationship. You always want to take feedback, but there are many times where their idea might not be the best for the project. One example of that is when I am working on my UI/UX work that has many stake holders. There are many times that they as the power user know a lot of things and want things a certain way, however we have to look at the 80/20. Design can not be biased off of one person’s opinion of how a product should look. I always make sure to cite research of usability standards if I things won’t work out, or just provide context of why I think their solution to a problem might not be the best. However it is important to be providing solutions and not just telling people no, so I make sure to always be courteous and explain how their idea might not be the best way to go about things, but here are three other options that are similar, and would work to accomplish the same goal. It’s all about working together to reach a common goal.
Let’s say someone tells you to design something without any context. What do you do?
Without context is where I draw the line, I would push back on that project until I can understand all that is involved. That means I need all the finalized copy (or at least semi-finalized copy), assets including images and fonts before I can begin. You can’t put the cart before the horse, and you can’t get a beautiful project back from me without first providing me all the necessary things for me to be successful.
Walk me through your portfolio. Which pieces are you most proud of, and why?
My portfolio is designed to show off the some of the range of projects that I’ve had the pleasure of working on. And have much more up my sleeve that I’ve worked on that isn’t here so if you ever want to see more examples I can provide those to you. Anything you see that says oxford on it is from when I was an in house graphic designer for them. Referral marketing and UI/UX work is from my current job at friendbuy, and I have illustration work from college and some freelance projects in there as well. I’m proud of everything I produce because I can see the hours of work and the people behind the project that made things work. I am most proud of my UI/UX work as it is very rewarding to create a usable product at the end of the day that is functional and user focused. I’m proud of it because it is a herculean effort to get an entire engineering team, Customer success team, clients and the CEO collaborate on a project that you are designing the face for. I’m proud of it because I’ve been able to increase conversions and ROI for clients single handedly because of my usability updates and strict standards of quality. I hope you can see that when you look through my work too.
Tell me about yourself and your last job
I’m a self starter, I work great alone and with a team. I am a knowledge center for the entire company with anything design related. I enjoy modern clean design and creating custom branded experiences. I love all facets of art, I’m a painter, a UI/UX designer, a graphic designer, illustrator, web designer, art director and whatever anyone needs me to be to get the job done. I’m always happy to jump on projects at any stage in the game and collaborate with others.
At my current job, I work with an entirely remote team to work with hundreds of clients on their referral marketing. We power widgets and marketing collateral to generate word of mouth referrals between friends. I always strive to take on additional projects and collaborate with team members. I work very hard, and am constantly creating, striving, and looking towards the future.
What type of software have you worked with?
I work with the entire adobe suite: photoshop, illustrator, InDesign, lightroom, XD, Dreamweaver, After Effects. I also work with Figma, Sketch, Invision, Zeplin and any other prototyping tools a client needs me to work with them on to create a project together. I can code responsive emails that render consistently across the email service provider list (including outlook which is the most difficult), and can even code CSS style sheets to custom brand pages. I learn fast, and am always up for a challenge.
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