Freelance art direction of Mathilde Cabanas communications over five years: email campaigns, website and social variations, seasonal operations, and brand collaborations. First on Mailchimp, then on Klaviyo from 2024.
Five years supporting Mathilde Cabanas as a freelance art director, keeping the brand alive across every channel: email, website, social, and one-off collaborations with other brands. A genuine long-term partnership, with Mathilde and her team.
On the technical side, two periods. From 2021 to late 2023, the email programme ran on Mailchimp. In 2024, with the website redesign, the brand moved to Klaviyo: the chance to rebuild the welcome pack and set up a more complete email system.
The pace was steady: 6 to 8 emails a month, plus the website visuals and social posts that go with every key moment. New arrivals, seasonal operations, promos, best-seller highlights: each time, a full visual kit to imagine in the brand's tone.
That's the real richness of the format: being a brand's art director for five years means knowing it by heart, anticipating its instincts, and finding new ways to tell its story together.
Every month brings its key moments: a new collection, an anniversary, a holiday, a promo. And each time, the same trio (a Klaviyo email, website visuals, Instagram posts) within the brand's visual consistency, with a creative angle that wakes the subscriber up.
Several brand friends, each with its own identity, tone and audience. And always the same stimulating question: how to marry two territories so they enhance each other, without settling for a lukewarm compromise.
It's also where the fun is. Collabs are breathing space in the calendar: a chance to step slightly outside the brand's codes and invite other visual worlds to the table.
Two worlds meeting: Mathilde's colourful pop and Maison Moche's decorative print. The art direction built typographic bridges and a shared palette to make the two territories talk, rather than oppose them.
Two strong brands, two very distinct DNAs: Mathilde's joie de vivre on one side, Balzac's quieter elegance on the other. The layout relies on restraint so the two worlds can breathe side by side.
A softer collab, built on stationery codes and the Mathilde "kiss". A unified art direction around pastels, a shared typography and an editorial tone that speaks to both audiences.
Five years with a brand means knowing its instincts, its tastes, its hero products, its big moments. It also means sensing instinctively what will feel like it or not. That familiarity sharpens precision.
A single art director across email, website and social: the message loses nothing moving from one channel to the next. What goes out on Instagram on Tuesday holds the same line as what ships by email on Thursday.
Time builds a real closeness with the brand: you can propose formats that break the codes, test bolder angles, dare unexpected collabs. That's also why I believe so much in long-term partnerships.
Five years of partnership. A brand that spoke every month with the same joyful energy, from the most modest launch to the most ambitious collabs.
Project carried out on a freelance basis for Mathilde Cabanas between 2021 and 2025, across the brand's entire digital communications. Visuals and brand used with permission. All rights to the brand, partner logos and original visuals remain the property of their respective holders.
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