Virgin
Voyages

Four ship launches: three as a designer, one as Creative Manager. By Brilliant Lady we’d stopped telling people about a launch and started bringing them along for it, from the first countdown to maiden-voyage moments in New York City. Between launches, the posts below kept that growth going: I jumped on trends, tested new formats and styles, and pushed to lead the cruise industry on social, not follow it.

Reach only matters if people respond. So I designed every story below to be interacted with: quizzes, launch countdowns, Sailor Reviews and creative series using all the new features.

Demand for creative more than doubled, and we met it with the same team. No new hires, just sharper creative direction and project management to get organic and paid social delivered. I started as the only designer on a five-person team, shooting, editing and animating almost everything. Today I lead our video editor and still stay hands-on: every video below is my own edit or animation, made in Premiere and After Effects.

Three tools, two rounds of copying by hand, and every idea re-typed before anyone could make it. I replaced all of it with one Airtable base, built from the team’s pain points. Now brainstorms become briefs automatically, approval takes one click, and the whole social team runs on it.

Social has its own look within the wider Virgin Voyages brand, so it needed its own guidelines: one place that answers how every format and style of creative should look. I designed it first in Figma from our existing work, then, knowing our team would want something more engaging, used Claude to assemble that same content into an interactive digital book. It evolves with the team and gets new hires and contractors on brand quickly.