Cory Smith

• Designer of Retail Toy & Gift Products, Manufacturing Specs, Branded Packaging Templates, Illustration, Instructional Guides, and Copy Editing

Product design, packaging, and book publishing design lead for Creative Brands extensive line of wholesale gifts, books, religious supplies, and housewares. Brands: Santa Barbara Design Studio, Slant, 47th & Main, Faithworks, Autom, Living Grace, and more
• Created clean technical design specifications for overseas product manufacturing
• Proposed ideas for packaging templates, applied graphics, constructed mock-ups, and prepared final print files
• Designed brand line looks and solved art file versioning for use on packaging, catalog, and web advertising
• Constructed and edited books in conjunction with writers, focusing on visual and linguistic style consistency
• Volunteered to sketch floorplans for office, warehouse, showroom, tradeshows, and other special projects
• Clearly communicated needs to overseas vendors, designers, sculptors, illustrators, and photographers
• Improved and maintained art asset archive for ease in search and retrieval from shared server

Product concept and packaging design of educational materials, art supplies, furniture, and toys for preschools nationwide. Brands: Colorations, Environments, Excellerations, Children’s Factory, and Angeles
• Effectively analyzed market opportunities and areas of high return to propose new product concepts for development
• Challenged to meet 68% margin target, using low MOQs, in the development of products aligned with state standards
• Contributed to overall PD team goals by exceeding target margin through manufacturing insight and cost negotiation
• Employed wide range of design materials including wood, plastics, fabrics, metals, electronics, and crafting materials
• Partnered closely with Quality Assurance throughout safety testing and supplied foreign labs with product care labels
• Applied understanding of plastic mold approaches, screen printing, and other manufacturing production processes
• Generated brand packaging templates and easy-to-understand art files to achieve first-round sample approval

Design lead for Childcraft brand developed product for the industry's leading provider of educational classroom supplies.
Focus on early educational toys and materials to help teach literacy, art & crafts, special needs, physical education, and S.T.E.M.
• Gained consumer insight through focus groups and used the CCSS to conceptualize curriculum-based products
• PD team achieved an average of 65% annual ROI of value-driven new product design of unmatched quality
• Generated early educational product concepts in keeping with the corporation’s long-term strategic plan
• Converted insights from qualitative research, classroom visits, and competitor analyses into business opportunities
• Managed external design agencies and overseas vendors through production, manufacturing, and testing stages
• Accounted for all department budget costs for production art, packaging design, and manufacturing costs
• Co-created a metric-driven value stream for product development based on e-lean (six sigma) business principles

Invited into Comcast’s Eastern Division to address reducing creative costs. Directed advertising campaigns for marketing cable television and internet products for the largest cable communications company in North America
• Cut creative costs by 40% from prior year, hired and renegotiated agency designer and copywriter contracts
• Integrated creative department of newly acquired New England Comcast with Comcast’s Eastern Division
• Collaborated with A&E, Bravo, and ABC/Disney in joint ad campaigns, enforcing Comcast’s style guide

Hired into a large team of contract designers challenged in contest-fashion to conceptualize a fresh graphic direction for office supply store chain, with 1,500 stores nationwide. Designer of chosen concept would then art direct the team in its execution
• Achieved art director position with my winning concept! Design format to be used for one year on all advertising
• Quickly produced a style guide and trained remaining team on design guidelines
• Influenced designers in how to resolve design challenges by taking advantage of the concept’s flexibility
• Successfully adapted concept onto newspaper ads, catalog formats, web graphics, and retail store signage

Brand managed and art directed all visuals for Zany Brainy, an FAO Schwarz owned specialty toy retailer with 188 US locations
• Led in-house designers and external agencies in branding and packaging 11 private label toy and gift product lines
• Conceptualized private label toys and advertising for licensed brands: Build-a-Bear, Thomas the Tank Engine, Miffy
• Maintained integrity of private label product through the design of brand style guides utilized by overseas vendors
• Hired and directed designers, ad agencies, models, copywriters, illustrators, photo studios, stylists and set builders
• Created Zany Brainy’s first direct mail catalog utilizing in-house and external talent achieving an on-time launch
• Managed design of IPO promotions, annual reports, prospectuses, store signage, website graphics needs

Built foundational direct catalog marketing and quality product development skills at the premier manufacturer of educational materials for elementary and early childhood organizations in the US with over 60 retail teacher outlets
• Advanced from direct mail catalog layout artist to top creative position at Lakeshore and Toys to Grow On
• Key creative player among a dynamic team that grew the business from 60M in 1988 to 350M in 1997
• Mentored a strong in-house team of layout artists, product designers, photographers, stylists, and writers
• Supported launch of Store of Knowledge, a joint retail venture with PBS Television, with all graphics needs
• Conceptualized Store of Knowledge brand packaging, prospectus, store signage, catalogs, and billboards