Target | Dynamic Capabilities for Scalable Creative

Designing smarter systems and smarter ads.

Target was in the middle of a major promotional refresh—elevated visuals, tighter timelines, and a demand for more personalized, high-performing campaigns. But the creative system in place couldn’t keep up. Legacy workflows were bloated, timelines were misaligned with customer behavior, and dynamic campaigns struggled to scale across 19+ categories.

My job was to change that—by building a system that delivered not only speed and consistency, but smarter creative thinking from the ground up.

Situation

Target’s promotional content system was outdated and overcomplicated—producing inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and creative that lagged behind consumer behavior.

  • Manual asset builds and Photoshop-heavy workflows slowed delivery

  • Redundant re-shoots for each media type created bottlenecks

  • Platform-specific variations led to inconsistent execution and confusion

  • Dynamic video ads lacked structure and clarity, reducing engagement

Research Findings

  • Dropoff in attention after the third carousel frame

  • Poor interaction with dot navigation

  • Offers over 40 characters exceeded what users could read in 3 seconds

  • Visual clutter diminished message recall

We also identified a gap in internal knowledge around cognitive load, behavioral design, and designing for the customer journey.

Task

Redesign the creative system to be:

  • Modular, flexible, and scalable across platforms

  • Intuitively aligned with how users consume content

  • Built for speed, clarity, and reuse

  • Embedded with behavioral design principles and accessibility standards

What I Delivered with My Team

I led the end-to-end transformation of Target’s promotional creative system—designing a modular, API-powered framework, streamlining production workflows with Sketch and 1:1 imagery, redefining UX standards around cognition and clarity, benchmarking platform performance, and equipping teams with the tools and training to design with behavioral intent and journey alignment.

System Design:

Architected a modular, API-connected framework with 2–4 offers and built-in constraints for speed and clarity

Production Workflow:

Transitioned teams from Photoshop to Sketch; introduced a 1:1 image system to eliminate unnecessary re-shoots

UX Strategy:

Rewrote creative rules for memory and cognition; taught teams how to prioritize clarity and reduce visual overload

Team Enablement:

Built toolkits, playbooks, and led workshops on cognitive load, hierarchy, and customer journey design

Platform Evaluation:

Compared Google Display vs. Innovid DCO to guide spend and creative performance

Impact at Scale

This transformation wasn’t just about faster workflows—it redefined how Target thinks about creative at scale.

We replaced format-first thinking with a mindset grounded in cognitive clarity, scanning behavior, and memory-based design. I led this shift by helping teams design for how people actually consume content—what they notice, retain, and act on.

The result was a new design language rooted in clarity and functional storytelling, enabling real-time, responsive creative through DCO. Now the standard across all digital offers, this system turns insights into action—delivering scalable, high-performing creative at every touchpoint.

This was just the beginning.

This wasn't just a design upgrade—it was a strategic transformation.

By aligning creative with user behavior and systemizing scalable design, we built a new model for how Target delivers performance storytelling across every touchpoint. This framework didn’t just improve speed and consistency—it taught teams to think differently about how ads are read, remembered, and acted upon.