About Gina Saldana

Tools help you move. Direction guides you.

I'm a Creative and Art Director in Phoenix with 19 years in brand strategy, creative direction, UX/UI, and creative operations.

I started designing custom websites in 2007. I co-founded a remote studio and grew it to 16 people, then moved in-house to lead brand and creative at a publicly traded company, managing a portfolio of brands across six marketplaces and three sectors: retail, industrial, and government. The work served B2B, B2C, and D2C audiences, with creative teams of up to six. Along the way, I guided teams across WordPress, Salesforce, and HubSpot, transitioned creative operations from Adobe to Canva and Figma, and kept remote teams aligned through COVID.

I can align stakeholders in the boardroom and still work in the files.

Get my resume Book a call

Experience

Creative & Art Director

Rammun Foundation

Washington, DC · Oct 2024 to Jul 2026

Partnered with the CEO and Founder as one of a four-person core team to build a new humanitarian nonprofit's brand from zero.

  • Built the brand identity, voice, and campaign art for urgent aid initiatives.
  • Built the full website and donation platform on WordPress, Shopify, and Fundraise Up, and ran usability tests in UserTesting before launch.
  • Helped raise $1.2M in year one through organic social alone, then matched that total by Q2 of year two.
  • Grew the donor base from 0 to about 8,000 and Instagram to 24,000.
  • Built creative, content, and AI workflows, then handed off the system so the team could run it alone.

Creative Manager (Brand Strategy and Creative Operations)

Liquidity Services

Bethesda, MD · Jun 2021 to Oct 2024

Led the rebrand of a public company and six portfolio marketplace brands, reporting to the VP of Marketing.

  • Built a unified brand architecture with David Aaker's framework, and sunset overlapping brands.
  • Launched a self-service Canva system, adopted company-wide in a month, cutting asset production from 17 days to 2.
  • Served as capabilities manager for designers in business units.
  • Brought agile practices from product into marketing and design, and centralized creative intake.
  • Cut trade show production spend by about half, and captured 1,000+ leads in one day.

Senior Graphic Designer

Liquidity Services

Bethesda, MD · Mar 2019 to Jun 2021

  • Worked on the product team with UX/UI and dev in two-week sprints, writing user stories in Jira.
  • Designed wireframes and responsive marketplace screens that developers built into coded design systems.
  • Ran usability tests in UserTesting, and took part in QA and user acceptance testing before releases.

Creative Consultant

Red Pen Creative

Phoenix, AZ · 2016 to present

Select freelance projects alongside full-time roles.

  • Designed the UI for a regional lab's website and patient portal across desktop and mobile (2017).
  • Designed wireframes and a design system for a commercial real estate firm's website.
  • Led UX/UI for Arizona Muslim Alliance's site rebuild, from discovery through dev handoff to launch.
  • Ran usability tests in UserTesting on client web and app projects before launch.
  • Led a search behavior study that drove about 40,000 new leads and $240K in client revenue in one month.

Digital Designer

Isagenix

Gilbert, AZ · 2016

  • Designed health and wellness campaigns across email, social, and product landing pages.
  • Retouched product photos, and refreshed product brochures and the company magazine.

Graphic Designer

Philosophy

Tempe, AZ · 2012

  • Storyboarded beauty product campaigns, and designed landing page UI and social ads for dev handoff.
  • Designed storefront posters and retail collateral for Sephora, Nordstrom, Ulta, and QVC.

Co-founder & Creative Director

iStartUs (now Red Pen Creative)

Phoenix, AZ · 2007 to 2016

  • Co-founded and grew a remote design and dev studio to 16 people, leading 250+ brand, web, and e-commerce projects.
  • Designed custom websites and mobile apps for iOS and Android, from wireframes through launch.
  • Ran QA and user acceptance testing on every build, and secured client sign-off before launch.

Skills

Creative leadership

Creative direction, art direction, brand strategy, brand architecture, brand governance, integrated campaigns (digital, web, print, events)

UX/UI

User flows, wireframes, prototyping, interface design, design systems, design tokens, responsive and mobile-first design, iOS and Android apps, accessibility (WCAG)

Research and testing

User and stakeholder interviews, moderated usability testing, A/B testing, surveys, competitive and accessibility audits, QA and user acceptance testing

Operations and delivery

Agile (Scrum, Kanban), user stories, roadmaps, feature prioritization (familiar with MoSCoW and RICE), scope, budgets, vendor management, creative resourcing, DAM, AI-assisted workflows

Tools

Design and prototyping

Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva, Sketch, Axure, Balsamiq, InVision, Framer, Webflow

Research and analytics

UserTesting, Hotjar, Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Semrush

Project management

Jira, Confluence, Asana, Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, Adobe Workfront, Airtable, Notion, Trello, Azure DevOps

Web and CMS

HTML, CSS, WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify. Dev partners build in React and Tailwind.

Marketing and CRM

HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Fundraise Up, Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer

Video

Adobe Premiere, CapCut, Captions

Collaboration

Miro, Lucidchart, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, SharePoint, Zoom

AI

Claude, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Figma AI, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly

Education

  • Arizona State University · Studies in Computer Science
  • Phoenix College · Business Marketing Certificate
  • Google · Marketing, E-commerce, and Data certificates

Quick answers

What do you do?

I'm a Creative and Art Director in Phoenix, Arizona. I lead brand strategy, creative direction, UX/UI design, and creative operations.

What roles are you open to?

Full-time roles in creative direction, art direction, brand, UX/UI, and creative operations. I'm based in Phoenix and open to hybrid or remote work.

How much experience do you have?

19 years, since 2007. I co-founded and grew a remote studio to 16 people, led creative teams of up to six, led 250+ projects, and led the rebrand of a public company and its six portfolio brands.

What industries have you worked in?

Beauty, health and wellness, e-commerce, B2B marketplaces, SaaS, and nonprofits, across B2B, B2C, and D2C markets.

Do you code?

I design and prototype in Figma, work in HTML and CSS, and hand off design systems to developers, who build in tools like React and Tailwind.

How do you use AI?

I use AI to speed up research, wireframes, and production. Creative direction and final brand review stay with people.

How do I contact you?

Book a free 30-minute call on redpencreative.com, or email gina@redpencreative.com.

Gina Saldana, Creative and Art Director, in the Arizona desert.

Let's talk

Hiring for a creative, brand, or UX/UI role? Have a project in mind, or just a question? Book a free 30-minute call.

Book a call Get my resume