Idea to launch, and everything between
The Cash App January Banking Giveaway, from the research and the brief, through three directions and forty lockups, to a launch across web, in-app, email, push, and social.
This is the long version of what we talked about. One project from a blank canvas to launch, with my role marked at every stage: reading the data and rewriting the brief, running concepting and both reviews, art directing production across every surface, and shipping it. If you are reading this without having been on that call, start with what I owned below. The interesting part isn't what shipped. It's what didn't, and why.
The launched Cash App Friday sweepstakes page. Save $10, and you could win $100.
January Banking Giveaway
Save $10, and you could win $100. One promotion, taken from research and a blank canvas to a live campaign across every surface Cash App owns.
What I owned, stage by stage
One creative lead across the whole arc. Where others contributed, it is named. If you are reading this without having been on the call, this is the fastest way to see the shape of the work.
Partner teams: copy, legal, CRM, and social. I directed the creative and held the line on what it all had to look like as one thing.
A brief you can say out loud
The ask arrived as one sentence: the first Cash App Friday of 2026 is almost here, and we are dropping $100 into 4,000 lucky winners' savings balances. Save $10, leave it there through February, and you are in.
Before opening a canvas I rewrote that as three constraints I could actually design against. New Year means celebratory, fresh start, forward facing, not another end-of-year retrospective. Cause and effect is the mechanic: you have to save to win, so the creative has to make that relationship visible rather than just state it. And it has to live everywhere, across web, social, product, email and push, which means whatever we make has to survive being a 9:16 story, a 640px email hero, and an in-app tile.
That last constraint kills more ideas than any brand guideline. If the concept can't survive a story and an email, it isn't a concept. It's a poster.
Quantity first, on purpose
Before any concept, I give myself one page with no standards on it. Output. Weird factor. Questions. Play with scale. Play with gravity. Play with the unexpected. Make it make nonsense.
The point isn't that the nonsense ships. It's that the first ten ideas anyone has for a savings promotion are the same ten ideas, and the only way past them is to write them down and look at them. The braindump is where the obvious gets used up.
The same page carries the practical constraints so they are never an afterthought: motion and still for every asset, a 3D approach so positioning stays flexible late in the process, and three sizes, desktop full width, square, and social, from the start. And one question in the corner that shaped everything after it: how did last month's giveaway actually perform? Taste is a judgment call. Whether the previous version worked is not.
Three directions, built out far enough to judge
Three directions went to review, and each was developed well past the pitch stage: premise, reference set, mocked key art, and a scaling test against the other products the giveaway would eventually visit, from Pay and Afterpay to Bitcoin, Savings, Card Offers, Pools and Referrals.
Games turned the giveaway into something you play, spotlighting a different micro-achievement each month and turning daily progress into a rewardable moment. Delivery treated every month as an unboxing, a different cash reward arriving in a different container. Rube Goldberg made cause and effect literal: you put $10 in here, and a chain of absurd, satisfying machinery pays $100 out there.
Presenting three fully built directions instead of one favorite and two strawmen is a leadership decision as much as a design one. It gives the room a real choice, and it makes the feedback about where we are going rather than what needs nudging.
The three directions
Each built to the same depth: premise, references, key art, and a test of how it scales across the rest of the product line.
Rube Goldberg won because it was the only direction where the mechanic and the metaphor were the same thing. Games and Delivery went into the file for a future month. Neither was wrong, they were early.
Forty lockups to find one
With a direction chosen, the work turns into volume. Type exploration, lockup after lockup. January Savings Giveaway. Save $10 for your chance to win $100. Cash App Friday Sweepstakes. Enter for a chance to win $100. The same information, restacked, resized and reweighted until one arrangement reads instantly at thumbnail size and still holds up full bleed on desktop.
Most of them are wrong in a specific and useful way. Stack too much and the offer disappears. Lead with the month and it reads like a calendar. Lead with the dollar amount and it reads like a scam. Lead with Cash App Friday and it borrows equity the franchise has already earned, which is the one that ran.
This is the part of the process that doesn't photograph well and matters most. Making forty is easy. Knowing which one to keep is the job.
Lockups, in sequence
A representative slice. Every one of these was a real candidate, sized and stress tested at social and web dimensions.
Roughly forty lockups across four days. Two survived to production: one built for social, one that flexes into web and email.
Figma for the decisions, AI for the volume
The braindump asked for motion and still on every asset, and a 3D approach so positioning could stay flexible late. That is an enormous amount of asset production for a monthly promotion, and it is exactly where generative tooling earns its place.
AI generated the object studies, the containers, the machinery and the props, fast enough that I could judge a dozen versions of an idea in the time it used to take to render one. Figma stayed the place where decisions happened: the grid, the type, the crop, the sequencing, and the file everyone else works from. The two are not in competition. One makes options cheap, the other makes choices explicit and shareable.
What stays human is what was always the job. Which of the twelve is right. What gets cut. Whether the motion earns its runtime or is just movement.
Motion study. The object scales from small to large so savings growth reads in under two seconds.
One brief, every surface it touches
A promotion is not a key visual. It is a system that has to survive an inbox, a lock screen, a feed, an in-app tile and a web page, each with its own constraints, its own copy length and its own legal requirements.
I designed and art directed the full set: the web page in desktop and mobile, the in-app promo hub with pre and post opt-in states and every deep link, the CRM sequence covering launch, opt-in confirmation, four reminder variants segmented across adults and teens, and the winners email, plus matching push notifications and house ads, a social grid and carousel, and story assets for both the reminder and the wrap.
Every one of them needs the disclaimer, the dates, the eligibility language and the same visual promise. The system exists so the fortieth asset is as considered as the first.
What one brief actually produces
The full launch set, from a single creative direction. Designed, art directed and shipped across five surfaces on a seven week timeline.
Launch date 1/23. Concepting opened 12/1, with concept reviews in weeks one and two and refinement running alongside copy, legal and CRM.
The live web page, desktop and mobile.
What came back
The campaign ran, and the report came back four weeks later. Some of it was flattering and some of it was not. Both are here, because the unflattering part is the one that changed how I would build the next one.
Hover any line to reveal it. Tap on touch, or reveal them all.
Source: Cash App Friday Savings Report, social insights, February 2026.
The work that happens between the files
Two formal concept reviews sat in the first two weeks, and I built toward them deliberately: round one to choose a direction, round two to pressure test it. In between I identified where I would need creative support and asked for it early, while there was still time for someone to do good work rather than fast work.
I also learned to ask for decisions, not approval. The most useful slide in either review was not a concept. It was the one that said: is the new direction for the green icons working, is the new direction for green and type working, and are we unblocked to move forward with theming. Three yes or no questions. Vague feedback usually means nobody was asked anything specific.
From there the work is cross functional by default. Copy owns the doc, legal owns the disclaimer, CRM owns the segmentation, social owns the calendar. My job as art director is to make all of it look like one thing, and to be the person who says what the one thing is.
The same five moves, every time.
It runs on its own. Hover to pause, or click any stage to take over.
Rewrite it as constraints
The ask arrives as a sentence. I turn it into three things I can design against: a tone, a mechanic, and a distribution constraint. The canvas does not open until those are sharp.
The results are not the end of the project. They are the first line of the next brief.
The full campaign file: braindump, territories, lockups, and every production surface in one place.
Every brief is different. These eight never change.
The case study above is one example. This is the operating system underneath it, and it runs the same way on a campaign, a homepage, or a design system. If you are weighing whether I would work the way your team needs, this is the honest answer.
Exploration
I make far more than I need. The first ten ideas anyone has are the same ten ideas, so I spend them fast and keep going until something surprises me.
Depth
Every direction gets built to the same standard: premise, references, key art, and a test of whether it survives everywhere else it has to live.
Design
Craft is the argument. Type, spacing, motion, and restraint are how a page earns trust before anyone reads a word of it.
Collaboration
I work with copy, engineering, legal, and brand from the first week rather than at handoff, so what I design is what actually ships.
AI
Generative tooling makes options cheap and production fast. I use it to widen the search, never to make the call.
Leadership
I run reviews that ask for decisions instead of approval, and I name the direction so the room has something real to push against.
Testing
I read how the last one performed before I open a canvas. Instinct sets the direction, evidence sets the priority.
Launch
The work is not finished at the mock. I carry it through every surface, every breakpoint, and every edge case until it is live.
If anything here is still an open question, ask me directly and I will answer it straight.
Ask me anything