Art Director + Creative Manager + Applied AI
DINO REVEAL
Reveal the Dinosaur with Water!
My first packaging assignment at Mattel was a deceptively simple object: graphics wrapped around a tube. That surface had to do a great deal at once. Showcase aggressive dinosaurs inside the cinematic world of Jurassic World, communicate the wash-and-reveal play pattern at a glance, and still leave room for logos, callouts, insets, legal, age grade, UPC, and up to 19 languages. The solution was to let the imagery do double duty, attracting the eye and informing the buyer in the same stroke.
I led art and creative direction across multiple leadership, marketing, and Universal Studios Creative reviews. The graphic system was built to flex, allowing thematic shifts to slot in cleanly from one year to the next, which is how the line built a recognizable identity across the toy and entertainment spaces. Reaching its third year of packaging, sustained by offshore illustration and production teams, is the measure of a system designed to last.
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Waves 1 and 2
Late in the production cycle, the marketing strategy shifted to "blind," hiding which dinosaur was inside each package. To protect the surprise, only two designs from this set went into production. Team: packaging engineer, copywriter, product designer, marketing, illustration, production. My role: art director, creative director, graphic designer, and lead reviewer for packaging and graphics.
PEEL AND REVEAL
Differentiated Play Pattern
Success earns evolution. With the first four waves established, the line grew, the dinosaurs scaled up, and a new mechanic arrived: figures coated in latex paint that a child peels away to reveal the true skin colors beneath. The packaging had to carry an aggressive dinosaur, communicate the new peel-and-reveal play pattern, and still feel native to the Dino Reveal world it was extending.
Early Intention Mock-ups
Mockups built from the marketing brief. I created the images with AI to serve as direction notes for my production illustrator, then carried the peel concept into the structure itself: perforated lines on the package that follow the illustrated rips, so the box becomes one more thing to peel.
Recommended Direction
The direction aligned across Universal Studios, Mattel product designers, Mattel marketing, and Mattel senior management, then served as the reference for illustration direction and development.
Peel and Reveal
Wave 1
Blueline Sketches
Fine-tuning the illustrations before rough color, with notes sent to my illustration production team in China.
