Ashley for the Arts
One event. An entire year of communications.

Creative Lead · Brand Strategy · Team Leadership · Design Systems · Omnichannel

A big event needs more than a big idea.

Ashley for the Arts is a year-round community platform built around a three-day music and arts festival in Arcadia, Wisconsin. In 2026, 75K people attended and the event raised $735K for 70+ schools and nonprofits.

As Senior Creative Manager, I was the creative lead across the program, leading the team and partnering with PR, communications, event leadership, digital, photography/video, production and partners across the company. I also oversaw the creative workflow and project management, helping prioritize and keep a very large volume of work moving in the same direction.

Designed to flex, not fracture

I wrote the brief and helped guide the creative exploration. The test wasn’t simply which direction looked best. It was which one could carry a full year of work.

We landed on a flexible system of color, type, pattern and photography that gave the team room to create without reinventing every piece.

Built to move. Built to last.

The system had to work across teams, channels and formats, then keep working as the campaign evolved.

We built the core system in Figma, then extended it through Canva templates, shared libraries and production guidelines so creative and communications teams could move faster without reinventing the work every time.

AI became part of that workflow too, helping us explore, adapt and produce at speed. The goal wasn’t simply to make more. It was to make the whole system work smarter.

Figma + Figma Make · Canva + AI · Adobe Creative Cloud + AI-assisted production · Generative image tools · Shared asset systems

The work had to scale. So did the system.

Ashley for the Arts brings tens of thousands of people together around music, art and giving back. The creative system supported that experience across hundreds of touchpoints while giving teams the structure to move quickly and stay connected to one brand.