Thy Romance Era
Associate Creative Director, 2025
Meet Lydia Featherstone, a hopeless romantic from the 1800s navigating modern dating in 2025. Designed as a character-led series, the work used cultural contrast and humor to make Tinder feel contemporary, human, and emotionally resonant. A YouTube-first strategy supported long-form storytelling, with TikTok and Meta extending reach and engagement.
Creative Direction & Impact
- Led creative direction with a focus on comedy and pacing
- Built the work as episodic storytelling
- Drove rare, overwhelmingly positive sentiment at scale
- Achieved VTRs 10pp above benchmarks and 42.8% completed VCR
Double Date Department
Associate Creative Director, 2026
The Double Date Department launched Tinder Double Date through a character-driven workplace comedy rooted in Gen Z friendship dynamics and modern dating behavior. Designed for social and CTV, the campaign reframed a product launch as an entertainment-first world with distinct visual language, comedic tension, and scalable storytelling.
Creative & Art Direction
- Built a visual world that felt specific, intentional, and scalable
- Balanced clear product storytelling with tone and entertainment
- Led art direction end-to-end: casting, wardrobe, styling, location
- (Also I ended up having to do a lot of editing and all the motion graphics for the final spot 💅)
Making Ads That Behave Like Memes ↴
Associate Creative Director, 2024-2026Since the end of 2024 I have led creative direction for Tinder’s paid social user acquisition, developing high-volume creative designed to perform at scale while remaining culturally relevant. The work balances clarity, entertainment, and brand consistency across platforms.
Creative Direction & Leadership
- Oversee production of a high-volume of assets
- Led multiple performance-driven creative iterations
- Balanced optimization with strong creative standards
- Strengthened collaboration across creative, strategy, and media
- As a hands-on lead, I am always making (I made all of these statics)
The One Place You Go To Go Places ✈️
Led Expedia’s social creative across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and Threads during a high-volume seasonal content initiative focused on travel escapism, platform-native storytelling, and culturally relevant social behavior. The work balanced speed, consistency, and performance while establishing a more emotionally resonant and internet-fluent brand voice.
Leadership & Creative Direction
- Led creative direction across organic and paid social campaigns
- Partnered closely with strategy and analytics to evolve platform voice and performance
- Oversaw shoots, creative development, and day-to-day content output
- Balanced speed, consistency, and craft across a high-volume social ecosystem
Chat Am I Cooked??
Associate Creative Director, 2025
To launch an OpenAI-powered flirting chatbot, we treated the campaign like a video game release rather than a traditional product ad. Twitch streamers “beta tested” the experience live, creating culturally native, unscripted moments that authentically engaged Gen Z audiences.
Creative Leadership & Results
- Led real-time capture and rapid asset iteration
- Repurposed live moments into socially native ads
- Drove strong engagement and watch time vs. prior launches
- Set creative guardrails for live, creator-led content
The ✨Alaskaverse✨
Senior Art Director, 2022
Alaska Airlines partnered with us to develop a distinct social identity capable of standing out in an increasingly crowded TikTok landscape. We created the “Alaskaverse”, a character-driven content ecosystem blending puppetry, animation, absurdist humor, and recurring mascot storytelling to transform the brand into an entertainment-first social presence.
At the center was Laski, a chaotic but lovable mascot character designed to build emotional affinity and recognizable platform identity across campaigns.
Creative Direction & Worldbuilding
- Developed recurring mascot systems and character storytelling frameworks
- Created puppets, animated assets, and 2D character designs for social content
- Led art direction across production, animation, and campaign development
- Voiced our main character, Laski 😛
Doomscrolling, but Productive 💻
Associate Creative Director | Organic and paid social creative | 2023-2024
Indeed partnered with us to develop a more emotionally resonant social presence for modern job seekers. The work blended internet-native humor, relatable workplace behavior, and low-stakes observational content to position Indeed as a culturally relevant companion throughout the job search experience. The views speak for themselves.
Making Mobile Game Ads People Actually Wanted to See
Art Director, 2021-2022
SUPERCELL partnered with us to launch Everdale with a social-first campaign designed to feel less like traditional mobile game advertising and more like participatory internet culture. As both a creative lead and lifelong gamer, I helped shape a platform-native content ecosystem rooted in humor, gaming behavior, and highly shareable social formats.
My name is Ellie and I’m a Creative Director, artist, and internet culture enthusiast with a background in motion graphics and experimental animation. These days I focus on leading creative teams and building social-first campaigns designed to feel culturally native.
Past client include: Expedia, TikTok, Facebook, Twitch, Ticketmaster, Indeed, Tinder, Yaamava’ Resort & Casino, Alaska Air, LEGOLAND, Johnson & Johnson, Lands’ End, and Everdale
Vayner Media 🤳
Creative Director • September 2026—Present
Associate Creative Director • Aug 2023—September 2026
Senior Art Director • Jan 2022—August 2023
Art Director • May 2021—Jan 2022
Twitch 🎮
Art Director • May 2019—Apr 2021
Camera IQ 📸
Motion Graphics Designer • Feb 2019 - Jul 2019
Super Deluxe 🌀
Motion Graphics Designer • June 2017 - Oct 2018
Education 📖
Oberlin College 17’
B.A. in Studio Art with a focus in Experimental Digital Art