Bubbies Ice Cream

Branding / Packaging / Web Design / Campaign Ideation

Title: Sr. Creative Designer / Dates: 08.2021 - present / Industry: CPG Manufacturing & Distribution / Natural Foods

Since August 2021 I’ve worked as the Creative Designer within the Marketing Department at Bubbies Homemade Ice Cream & Desserts, Inc. In January 2024 I was promoted to Senior Creative Designer. Bubbies, founded in 1985, is a super-premium mochi ice cream manufacturer with national and international distribution at retailers like Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Costco. For more information, check out bubbiesicecream.com.

As a part of the Marketing department at Bubbies, I work closely with the Marketing Manager, VP of Marketing, and partnered agencies on a variety of design projects from conceptualization through feedback-gathering, refinement, and final production. I also communicate with partnered agencies to provide feedback on deliverables and facilitate projects. I manage new and ongoing marketing and graphic-related projects requested by Sales, Quality Assurance, and Operations. I assist employees and company leadership by providing design services including: web and user interface development, packaging design, print production, presentation design, sales collateral, out-of-home advertising (transit shelters, billboards, sampling vehicles, sampling carts), paid media and digital advertising, corporate materials (business cards, letterhead, signage at HQ, swag design), photography and retouching (product and lifestyle), and social media marketing.

project highlight: campaign visual identity

One of my largest projects at Bubbies so far was building out the visual identity and all related materials for our 2022 Summer Campaign: Take the Trip. This included providing direction, feedback, and approvals to agency partners, as well as designing collateral myself, including a custom truck wrap for a sampling vehicle.

While the marketing manager and VP of marketing decided budgeting, activations, and a tiered budgeted approach for the summer campaign, my responsibility was to develop a campaign-specific visual identity that would support the marketing efforts at multiple levels/mediums (web, in-person activations, shopper marketing, social media and PR, etc). I would also need to build guides and package/organize graphic elements for other agencies to use.

We had partnered with a creative agency who developed a high-level campaign overview. From there I was able to build upon this overview by fleshing out specific visual elements to create a cohesive identity that could be used in a scalable way across many applications. This was a unique challenge: to create campaign-specific branding that was similar enough to our newly-rebranded company to support the identification of the new branding, while still lending a unique look that would differentiate this campaign from our other campaigns.

Pictured: I used our brand guide and campaign guide to create a visual identity that would resonate with our rebrand while remaining unique from it.

Once the visual identity was organized, I gathered the elements, colors, photography, and logos lockups to hand off to agency partners; namely, an agency that specialized in in-person marketing activations. They would handle the design and logistics of a month-long sampling tour, with a custom-wrapped truck that would travel from Miami to Jacksonville, handing out samples of our mochi.

Pictured: Truck wrap design mock-up.

Unfortunately, the activation agency did not produce a brand-aligned truck after three rounds of feedback with the Bubbies Marketing team. At this point, I realized it may be more efficient for me to make the design in-house. With the green light from my boss, the hand-off became an in-house build.

Pictured: The finished truck on the streets of Ft. Lauderdale. July 2022.

It can feel counterintuitive when you start a project on your 24" monitor, knowing the end product needs to be 10 times that size. The process involves consideration of the way shape and color will be perceived at a large scale compared to how it looks on screen.

The sampling truck lent itself to a whole new set of parameters, because the design elements had to fit around grills, lights, windows, and doors. Various design considerations included ensuring that graphic elements lined up across all truck faces, that the design would be cohesive when the sampling window was fixed in its open and closed positions, and that typography and QR codes were visible and within reach to scan via smartphone.

Pictured: Promo of Bubbies’ wins from 2022 National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association’s Golden Penguin Awards.

The sampling campaign successfully increased brand awareness and introduced many guests to the mochi category as a whole. We ran out of samples at every stop.

In its inaugural summer (2022), Take the Trip earned three awards from the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association’s Golden Penguin Awards, placing GOLD three times within the Summer Favorites Ice Cream Promotion category: Community Involvement, Overall Marketing Campaign - Manufacturer, and Social Media Campaign. For the second consecutive year, Bubbies was recognized as the Top Marketer - Manufacturer.

Sampling truck in Florida. Video credit: @kateharley on Instagram.

Street sampling in California via bicycle carts. Video credit: @wherejaimiegoes on Instagram.

Transit shelter and influencer postcard promoting Take the Trip Sampling Tour. Video credit: @madeinorlando on Instagram.

DIGITAL MARKETING ASSETS

Paid Media / Retailer Onsite and Offsite Display Ads / In-House Social Media Graphics / Email Marketing

Adobe Illustrator / Adobe Photoshop / Original Photography / Digital Illustration

Instagram - PR Post Original Photography — Instagram - PR Post
Original Photography

LinkedIn - CleanHub Partnership Original Photography — LinkedIn - CleanHub Partnership
Original Photography

Instagram - Paid Media to drive brand awareness

Web - Display Ad Original Photography — Web - Display Ad
Original Photography

Florida Sampling Tour Route Vector Graphic

photography

Events / Product Sampling / Local Beach Clean Ups / Product Studio Photography

Sony a7 III Mirrorless Camera / 28-70mm Lens / Adobe Lightroom / Adobe Photoshop

Print Advertising

Out-of-Home / In-store Advertising / Truck Wraps

Adobe Illustrator / Adobe Photoshop

experiential marketing & activations

Promotional video for Bubbies pop-up shop at Showfields Miami in July 2023. I recruited a videographer and supervised filming and art direction on-site. I provided multiple rounds of feedback to the editor regarding content, timing, sound, and overall flow.

Promotional video for Bubbies; sponsorship of a Labor Day 2023 beach clean up, hosted by Beach Bucket Foundation in Miami Beach, FL. I recruited our video vendor and coordinated filming, including communication between the host organization, the videographer, and Bubbies’ partner PR agency. Once filming was complete, I provided all feedback to the videographer to get the video completed on-time and on budget.

Promotional video for Bubbies’ sponsorship of a beach clean up hosted by Heal the Bay, a nonprofit that advocates and educates about keeping coastal ecosystems clean. I was on location for this video shoot and provided feedback throughout the editing process with our vendor.

Promotional video for Bubbies Take the Trip summer campaign and product sampling event in July 2023. I recruited the videographer, oversaw shooting on-location in Newport Beach, CA, and provided feedback on video content, editing, and music to our vendor.