My name is Kalena. A native New Yorker in the nation’s southernmost city, Key West.
My emphasis has been creating authenticity. Whether it be helping a client establish an identity they can be proud of, or a book cover for a reader ready to make a change for the better. And sometimes, designing album art for the fun of it. Whatever the case, I seek to create it all!
Of late, celebrating 1 Year Wedding Anniversary <3 kj2wed.com / @kj2wed23Brand: Defy underwent a rebrand in 2019 which included a few fonts, logos and color swatches. As the in-house designer I am tasked with the art direction of all designed assets. I partner closely with the Sr. Director of Marketing and Communication to create: fundraising materials, annual reports, newsletters, corporate one-pagers, recruitment materials, mailers, diplomas, email and social media assets, end of year campaigns, board member announcements, website assets and over-all creative output.
Curriculum: Defy’s mission to lower the national recidivism rate is driven by personal development, career readiness and entrepreneurship. As the manager, I work closely with the VP of Learning. I am responsible for all aspects of curriculum layout design, editing and production. I oversee five series of curriculum, a total of 14 textbooks, along with their respective facilitator guides. I partner with the VP of Program to manage inventory, production and launch date schedules to ensure materials are provided for training/classes. Along with text layout and cover design, I edit photography, create info-graphs and presentation templates, proof and package final print and digital files. I am the liaison to program managers, copy editors, printers and warehouse partners.
Video: Alongside textbooks, curriculum includes supplemental videos of reentry and entrepreneurial interviews. Video curriculum showcases the applied learnings from the textbooks through the lens of graduate case studies and CEOs. My role includes editing and rebranding archival video, storyboarding new subjects and exporting final video with closed caption features for all of Defy’s platforms.
Catalog: The catalog program is the highest revenue driver grossing $30 million annually. As the sole designer and project manager, I was responsible for all aspects of production: ideation, design, population, editing, and press quality sign-off. Aside from catalog, I was the designer responsible for any and all printed marketing opportunities (mailers, inserts and tradeshow materials).
Packaging: Sustainable packaging is vital for an e-commerce with a gifting focus. I was the designer responsible for managing gift box and gift bag designs for A/B testing. As well as art directing photography assets of the sustainable shipping boxes and packing materials for various customer facing and internal use-cases.
Brand: As the designer I developed, pitched and executed special branded materials such as the 20 Years logo, the Earth Day homepage and the B Corp. report, The Good Stuff Report.
Email: With over 3 million email subscribers, I was responsible for creating seasonal custom emails highlighting the latest product launches, collections, and other various branded campaigns.
Homepage: 42,000 customers visit daily. As one of the designers, I was responsible for weekly updates: curating photography, updating product assortment, videos and creating custom animations.
Jr. Graphic Designer
Oct. 2014–Apr. 2017
New York, NY
Cover Design: As the junior designer, I was assigned titles and responsible for all stages of the cover design: research, concept, execution and pitch presentation.
Production: I was responsible for creating jacket and paperback mechanical files, spine dies and printer specs in addition to refreshing old editions.
Advertisement: I was responsible for providing designs for promotional events, social platforms and merchants (Amazon and Barnes&Noble).
Software:
Adobe Creative Suite
Adobe Premier Pro
Adobe After Effects
Final Cut Pro
Sketch
Miro
Google Suite
Microsoft Office
Dropbox
Jira
Asana
Slack
Zoom