Rugs USA Rebrand
Creative Director: 2022-2024
As Rugs USA’s first-ever Creative Director, I was hired to co-lead a full-scale brand refresh—transforming the company from a promotionally driven, discount-perception brand into a modern, trustworthy destination for high-quality, accessible design. The rebrand was strategic and phased, touching every aspect of visual expression across the Rugs USA brand.
My role spanned all creative touchpoints: from digital and print design to photography, video, social media, and packaging. In partnership with the Directors of Brand Marketing and E-commerce, I led the redesign and migration of the brand’s e-commerce site. I also directed a full logo and identity refresh, introduced elevated creative standards for still and motion content, and scaled the in-house creative team—expanding a small photo studio and design department into a fully functioning creative operation. To ensure cohesion, I established comprehensive brand guidelines adopted company-wide.
Brand Identity Refresh
The rebrand began with a clear challenge: transform a promotionally driven brand into a modern, trustworthy destination for accessible, elevated design.
We introduced a simplified wordmark that shifted emphasis to RUGS, placing our product and promise at center stage. This was supported by a timeless, functional font family with both serif and sans serif options, along with a warm, earthy color palette—creating a system built for clarity, cohesion, and long-term utility.
To support storytelling and education, we created hand-drawn illustrations used across marketing and site content. Packaging was also overhauled—standardizing materials, improving substrates, and bringing cohesion to the unboxing experience.
The result was a refreshed identity rooted in trust, taste, and usability.
Site Redesign
The Rugs USA e-commerce site was one of the brand’s most critical touchpoints—and one of its most outdated. The challenge was to move beyond a purely transactional experience toward one that could tell richer stories, inspire design confidence, and showcase product in ways that felt modern and aspirational.
In partnership with the Director of E-commerce, we led the redesign and full migration to a new platform. The updated site introduced expanded navigation, editorial-enhanced category pages, immersive PDPs with integrated video, and shoppable custom landing pages. We also launched a branded blog and integrated UGC, creating a more dynamic, personalized customer journey.
The redesign elevated both form and function: balancing inspiration with utility, and creating a digital experience that matched the brand’s refreshed positioning as an accessible but elevated destination for home design.
Photography
Elevating the brand’s photography was central to the rebrand. The goal was to move beyond flat, low-resolution imagery and create a photographic vocabulary that felt modern, aspirational, and design-driven—while also presenting rug details with greater clarity.
We introduced new styling standards across product, editorial, and campaign photography: simplifying sets and styling so the product remained the focal point, adjusting camera angles so rugs occupied more of the frame, and adding updated close-up shots to better capture color, texture, and detail. Retouching was modernized for a more authentic finish, and high-quality CGI was introduced to expand visual storytelling and bring new technology into the workflow.
The result was a modern, cohesive visual language—elevated enough to inspire, clear enough to convert.
Additional Achievements
Beyond the core rebrand initiatives, we also introduced several programs that deepened engagement and drove measurable growth:
Design Collaborations
Launched Rugs USA’s first-ever design collaboration program with interior designer Lauren Liess, followed by four additional partnerships—all of which became top-performing collections.Custom Rugs Program
Introduced a new category for custom-sized rugs, delivering made-to-measure solutions within 2–3 weeks.Catalog Relaunch
Revived and redesigned the mail-order catalog program, resulting in a 12% lift in conversion compared to previous catalogs.