I didn’t leave art direction behind. I expanded what it could mean.
That’s the clearest way I can say it. Because when people hear “career pivot” they imagine a clean break, a before and after, a whole new person walking out of a door the old one walked into. That’s not what happened. What happened was slower, more layered, and honestly more interesting than that.
In advertising art direction I learned to tell stories with intention. Every frame, every color choice, every word placement was deliberate. You had seconds to create a feeling, communicate a message, make someone stop scrolling or turn the page. That kind of pressure sharpens you. You learn fast that clarity is kindness and confusion is a design failure.
What I miss about that world is real and specific. The creative, colorful, conceptual freedom of it. Writing and telling stories. Giving perspective. Creating a moment where words, visuals, culture, and sometimes music all land at the same time. Putting a spotlight on a voice, a hidden gem, a movement that deserved more room. Giving a platform to the smallest voice or the largest one, whoever needed it most. Showing up at the right time with the right thing. That’s a calling, not just a job. And I carry it with me everywhere I go.
Product design called me in a different way. Less about creating desire and more about creating clarity. Less about the moment of impact and more about the journey people take every time they open something you built.
But here’s what I know now that I didn’t fully understand at the start: good products are advertising. Time is money. Efficiency is value. When something works so well it removes friction from someone’s day, that’s a message. That’s a feeling. That’s design doing exactly what a great campaign does, just quietly, from the inside.
The advertising brain never left. It just found a new canvas.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
When our team started working with the new Mecklenburg County customer portal through Accela, something wasn’t right. Disabled features, no guide, fields everywhere with no real flow and barely any indication of what actually mattered. My coworkers have been permitting for nearly 20 years. They knew the old process. This was new territory for everyone.
I did not have the patience to sit on the sidelines guessing.
So I picked up the phone and called Mecklenburg County directly. Had them walk me through the permitting process step by step. They were navigating some of the same uncertainty, but we got to a consensus. Clear expectations. No surprises. No wasted time on fields that didn’t apply or applications that would come back rejected because nobody confirmed what was actually required.
Then I brought it back to the team. Cascaded what I learned, mapped out the relevant fields, set the expectations for what the process actually looked like from start to finish. What used to be a source of confusion and back and forth became something people could move through with confidence. We got time back in our day. That matters.
That instinct, pick up the phone, get clarity before you commit, confirm the real requirements not just the visible ones, then bring it back so nobody else has to figure it out alone, that’s advertising art direction thinking. You don’t shoot a campaign without a brief. You don’t launch without knowing what success looks like. You don’t let confusion sit there and hope it resolves itself.
A traditional UX path might have said document the friction and flag it for later. My path said call someone, fix it now, and make sure the whole team benefits.
What stayed the same across both worlds is the fundamentals. Composition. Hierarchy. Color. Visual rhythm. Storytelling. Systems thinking. A well designed interface follows the same principles as a well designed poster. The medium changed. The craft didn’t.
What surprised me was how much I’d love the invisible work. In advertising everything was meant to be seen, noticed, remembered. In product design some of the most important work is what people never notice. The seamless flow. The error that never appears because the system anticipated it. The experience so natural nobody thinks about it.
There’s something deeply satisfying about that. I spent years putting things in the spotlight. Now I also know how to build the stage so the spotlight can do its job.
Whether I’m designing a campaign or a product, the goal is the same. Create something that works, resonates, and quietly makes life a little bit better.
Tapped in. Bridging the work, the team, the people.
That’s where I’ve always been. That’s where I’m going.
Whitney Cullens is a product designer and art director who never stopped being both.