EF / Go Ahead Tours
See the world differently.
Go Ahead Tours is an experiential travel company with the mission of inspiring and empowering as many people as possible to see the best the world has to offer, effortlessly.
In the years that I worked on the creative team, I designed everything from buses to billboards, catalogs to cookbooks, sweatshirts to sunglasses… I art directed photoshoots, branded global conferences, developed brand and sales campaigns, led a redesign for the website and the brand, photographed our travelers on tour in Spain, France, Italy, Monaco, India, and Morocco, all the while inspiring and informing past and future travelers, balancing (and exceeding) business goals and ensuring delight in every detail and touchpoint.
I like to believe that I’ve helped inspire at least a few people to step beyond their comfort zones and maybe return a little happier, a little wiser, and a little more in awe of this magnificent planet and the people they share it with.
CLIENT
EF / Go Ahead Tours
TEAM
GAT Creative
ROLE
Graphic Design
Digital Product Design
UX/UI Design
Art Direction
Creative Direction
Branding
Brand Strategy
Photography
Product Discovery Exploration
For a few months during 2020, when projects were put in a holding pattern, the UX team and I were tasked with exploring future states of the site. I was asked to look at product discovery. How might we evolve our browse pages to allow for a more immersive discovery of destinations and our tour portfolio?
My idea focused on a highly editorial horizontal scroll experience to immerse and engage the user in a way that intentionally differed from the rest of the site so that the exploration stage felt a little like getting (pleasantly) lost in a place. I envisioned using video, audio, live data (such as weather), and highly sensory visuals to engage users in these destinations, while including natural links to tours so users could explore the portfolio after being inspired by the place.
ROLE
Digital Product Design
Digital Art Direction
Guided
Despite the constant conversation around digital, print has remained one of our most effective marketing channels. We consistently saw stronger campaign performance when print supported digital outreach, which led us to explore how print could deliver both inspiration and clear pathways to book.
Guided is a direct mail series built around that idea. Each issue explores a specific travel theme—in this case, Off-Season Travel, historically a quieter sales period for the business.
For this piece, I developed a modular editorial layout system that could extend across future campaigns. Section openers pair full-bleed photography with atmospheric intros, while smaller photojournalistic images and subtle spot illustrations add texture and context. The system elevated the visual storytelling while making production faster for teams working on tight print deadlines.
ROLE
Art Direction
Design
Naming
TEAM
Courtney Keller
Senior Copywriter
Laura Barber
Copywriter
Campaign directly contributed to 19% increase in off-season sales
📈
Campaign directly contributed to 19% increase in off-season sales 📈
Gift Guide
For our holiday editorial messaging, we crafted a gift guide composed of recommendations for our travelers from our jet-setting staffers. Wanting to convey the warmth and playfulness of some of the wonderful humans that make our wheel turn, we shot this in-house with staff photographer, Christian Gilbert, and me helming the art direction. Together with senior copywriter, Jamie Burke, we built out the assets for email, blog, and social channels, where they still live in earnest to this day.
We saw approximately an 8% lift in our typical editorial email open rate, ultimately impacting conversion with a 2% increase compared to the prior year’s Gift Guide campaign.
ROLE
Art Direction
Design
Animation
TEAM
Jamie Burke
Senior Copywriter
Christian Gilbert
Photographer
Brittany Duffy
Producer
Campaign drove 2% increase in sales vs. prior year's campaign
📈
Campaign drove 2% increase in sales vs. prior year's campaign 📈
20 Ways to Experience Italy
This was a spread in a direct mail piece for which we contracted the wonderful Maite Franchi to illustrate a map and spot illustrations to use in a summer campaign to help drive volume to Italy. I served as art director for the illustrations and designed the spreads and other campaign deliverables.
This campaign saw a 9% lift in Italy volume compared to the prior year’s campaign.
ROLE
Art Direction
Design
TEAM
Maïté Franchi
Illustrator
Jamie Gallerani
Copywriter
Campaign contributed to 9% increase in Italy tour sales
📈
Campaign contributed to 9% increase in Italy tour sales 📈
Must-See Campaign
ROLE
Art Direction
Design
TEAM
Jamie Burke
Senior Copywriter
Courtney Towson
Producer
Every year, working in tandem with our Market Innovation & Development team, we debut a collection of destinations designated as “Must-See’s” based on a variety of industry trends and projections. We create an integrated campaign—a print calendar, landing page, emails, paid and organic social content to support the campaign for the entire year.
We did pause the release of the campaign in 2020 because it felt tone-deaf to position these as must-sees given the state of the world. We instead pivoted our efforts to other content geared towards generating the feeling of travel and escape from the comfort of one’s own home.
