As Creative Director, I led a 7-person team to develop a playful, handcrafted visual identity for Elmer's 2025
slime line, then trained a custom Adobe Firefly model to produce it at a fraction of the cost.
Team
Creative Director: Ana Montenegro Burnett
Lead Photographer: Jason Solis
Retoucher: Mary Bowen
Videographer: Lians Jadan+ Daniel Mohill
AI Specialist: Brittany Rodgers
Adobe Specialist: Jacky Peters
Graphic Designer: Ana Urena
Context & my role
In early 2025, Elmer's was preparing to launch a new line of slime products aimed at kids. The campaign needed to feel tactile, imaginative, and true to how children actually play (not polished or corporate). I was brought on as Lead Creative Director, responsible for the overall creative vision, team direction, and a key technical challenge: making the production process scalable without blowing the budget.
First AI-powered project to launch at Newell Brands (A company-wide milestone) pioneering the use of custom generative AI in production
I led a cross-disciplinary team of seven (spanning photography, retouching, AI production, editing, and design) across the full six-month project lifecycle, from initial concept through final deliverables for both print and digital channels.
The Problem
Elmer's had two challenges that pulled in opposite directions. They wanted rich, imaginative visuals (a handcrafted cut-paper world) that would visually resonate with kids and feel distinct on shelf. But they were also working with a tight budget, and physically constructing intricate cut-paper environments for every asset would be prohibitively expensive and slow.
The visual direction was clear from the start: cut-paper environments that felt tactile and child-friendly, consistent across packaging, print, and digital. The unsolved question was how to produce them at volume without physically building each one — and without sacrificing the look and feel that made the concept compelling in the first place.
