Product Graphics Studio
I was instrumental in the day to day management of activities within the Whirlpool Product Graphics Studio for 13 years - starting as an Associate and moving up to a Lead position through organization and attention to detail. This is a fast paced environment with multiple rotating deliverables. I reported directly to Charles Stohrer, Senior Manager.
In 2019 the studio was tasked with self transformation - all product graphics would be executed by a global team of Graphic Designers. I was part of the small team which visualized and executed the formation of the global Product Graphics Studio to manage and execute this enormous amount of controlled artwork.
“Zach Pipik worked as my right hand at Whirlpool for 14 years and moved up to Lead. He helped me build a department and several processes. As well as developing process independently while honing existing ones. Aside from working together, he was training teams, managing projects, with teams of people for strategy development in the area of graphic design and production. He was an incredible mentor to many in and out of his discipline. He has a vast knowledge of how to look at design, engineering, usability, color, and see the big picture. His ability to streamline and remove the “churn” on projects and problems is amazing. His work ethic is far above par. Not to mention his dedication to a company, project and team members including process partners. He would be a huge asset to any company in a host of design and design leader related opportunities.”
Transformation goals.
Two teams were to be blended to provide the highest utility to our process partners. Advanced designers would explore future state visual brand language and out of process creative requests while the Product Graphics Studio would focus on delivering product graphics in volume. PGS supports the Advanced Graphics Studio by request. In order to transition a number of Graphic Designers into the product graphics world, intensive training and reorganization was necessary.
In this period of time I worked with a team of fewer than 5 people to create training documents which allowed the on-boarding of our new team mates. I authored much of the information and created online resources which could be referred to at any time, as our team spanned the globe from India to Brazil. This was done in parallel to development of the new workflow for the larger studio.
“Stylemaster” was our organic name for product artwork.
Studio requirements included all responsibilities of the former teams with the addition of creative support to the Advanced Graphics Studio and new technical requirements for the organization.
The artwork development process was broken down into sections in order to best fit with the product development. These projects involved all brands and categories, and were executed by each member of the team.
Each team member has a dual focus - being expert in one category and one brand. We also provided redundancy by cross training in one other brand and category with another designer globally.
This process required the creation of a project management system from the ground up using available tools, as there was no budgetary allowance for the move. This was a development initiated well before the change, anticipated by product development teams.
Working closely with Directors, Managers, and other Lead employees a system was developed to track each project from inception to execution - while tracking each artwork and associated materials. This system stretched the capabilities of Google Sheets, generating well over the million cell limit of a sheet. With the help of a hero in the Product Excellence team - we created a series of nested sheets from which any project could be cross referenced. This tool provided a common frame of reference for the development teams to organize aesthetic part creation with engineering drawing generation, and is an important resource for import of finished artwork into the overall enterprise management software. Using these tools the Product Graphics Studio became an “always awake” global studio, which not only delivered on all phases of development but provided significant increases in efficiency. Flexibility is paramount when creating a large scale graphics management system.
Within a large organization, structure will actually lead to creativity as it provides a pathway to engage the right talent and work at the right time. Providing access to subject matter experts helps to prevent work-arounds and rogue execution of branded graphics.
The tracking tool and associated processes were only part of our solution. Using data scraped from the project tracking tools each project in the execution phase of development is directly visible to leadership, with a weekly summary of progress and red-flag help requests.
Note: Documents modified to hide sensitive information.
