In-house brand & performance design / Pet nutrition

Pupford

Photography, packaging, landing pages, paid social and an illustrated cast of pups — the day-to-day design engine behind a direct-to-consumer dog food and training treat brand.

ClientPupford
RoleGraphic Designer & Photographer · Full-time
ScopeBrand photography, packaging, landing pages, paid social, illustration, email
DatesDec 2025 – Aug 2026
LocationUtah, United States · On-site

Three apricot poodle puppies leaning over a peanut butter dog cake beside a Pupford Train Peanut Butter bag

Peanut Butter campaign

Three pups, one cake, no second takes

Set build · art direction · photography · retouch
One of five campaign shoots

Pupford sells food and training treats straight to pup parents who are two scrolls away from a competitor. That splits the design work in half: the brand side has to feel hand-drawn, warm and genuinely fond of pups, while the performance side has to survive a paid feed where the first half-second decides everything.

Working in-house meant owning both ends of the same system — art directing and shooting the campaigns, cutting the ads out of that same library, and turning the illustration set loose across social, email and print.

01

Campaign photography

Five shoot days — Summer BBQ, the peanut butter set build, the pink and flower studio series, and product. Concept, styling, shooting and retouching.
02

Product photography

Clean packshots of the whole Good Dog Food and Train ranges, framed identically so flavour variants read as one system.
03

Landing pages

Long-form Good Dog Food builds with tested angles — a product-led desktop page, a nutrition-authority variant, and a mobile listicle.
04

Paid social & static ads

Ad sets built as sequences and as colourway families, so a winning concept can be re-cut for a new audience without a new shoot.
05

Illustration system

An original cast of hand-drawn pups — Procreate, Dry Ink brush, always on Chiffon Cream — running through packaging, social and email.
06

Editorial carousels & email

Educational carousels, a twelve-part recipe series, and lifecycle email built on the same illustrated language.

Campaign shoots

Landing page builds

Disciplines owned

02 — The kit

Two colours, seven lines, one typeface

Pupford Brand Guidelines v1.0 / the rules every
photograph, pack and ad on this page is built against

Pupford Persimmon Red

PMS 7417 C · C0 M82 Y82 K0 · R225 G79 B61 · #E14F3D
Logotype and typography — used sparingly so it never overpowers the segment colours.

Pupford Chiffon Cream

PMS 9141 C at 35% · C2 M1 Y10 K0 · R252 G249 B233 · #FCF9E9
Background, logotype and illustration ground — every hand-drawn texture sits on it.

Secondary colours only ever appear as full floods, or paired with Chiffon Cream. Each line segment carries its own darker shade for type and illustration.

Train

PMS 169 C
C0 M34 Y21 K0
#FFB3B9

Type & illustration
PMS 7631 C
#572D2F

Engage

PMS 2717 C
C32 M13 Y0 K0
#A8C7FE

Type & illustration
PMS 7546 C
#25384A

Reward

PMS 122 C
C0 M9 Y80 K0
#FED34C

Type & illustration
PMS 5815 C
#565126

Health

PMS 358 C
C32 M0 Y51 K0
#ADDD9B

Type & illustration
PMS 553 C
#274736

Calming

PMS 522 C
C24 M40 Y0 K0
#B99CCF

Type & illustration
PMS 2627 C
#3D0F58

Cognition

PMS 224 C
C5 M64 Y0 K0
#EB6ECA

Type & illustration
PMS 229 C
#67214A

Gut Health

PMS 157 C
C0 M40 Y71 K0
#ECA25C

Type & illustration
PMS 161 C
#613E21

Typography — Buenos Aires

AaBbCc

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890!?@#$%^&*()_+

BoldHeadlines, always title case
BlackSub headlines
Semi BoldSecondary type, call-outs
Regular & ItalicBody copy

Primary · Bold50 / 60 · auto
Secondary · Semi Bold8 / 9.6 · auto
Body · Regular13 / 15.25 · auto

Positioning

Good
Dog
Food

Iconography

Single line, varying weight, never filled.

Procreate, Dry Ink brush · same texture as the illustrations · Persimmon Red or PMS 7631 C, always on Chiffon Cream.

Illustration

The colour does the labelling: shirt and accessory take the flavour colour, trousers take the type colour.

Colour in Dry Ink for texture, details in Studio Pen for clean lines · Chiffon Cream always sits beneath the texture · every pup a different breed, every parent a different hairstyle and skin tone.

The shoot, the ad and the landing page are the same decision.

In-house, nothing gets handed off. One library, one system, and one person accountable from the set build all the way to the checkout button.

03 — Photography

Sixteen frames, five shoots

Summer BBQ · Peanut Butter · studio · product
concepted, styled, shot and retouched in-house

Man sitting on a green studio set with two dogs and a Pupford product display

Two women and a dog on a gingham picnic blanket with Pupford treats

Dog catching a treat mid-air against a pink studio background

Studio set of oversized paper flowers and moss with Pupford Train bags arranged across it

Styled pastel table with a dog cake, tulips and Pupford treats

Puppy caught mid head-shake against a pink studio background

Pupford Train BBQ chicken bag standing on a smoking grill beside barbecue sauce

Woman framed inside a red and white pool ring

Three friends on striped loungers holding Pupford treat bags

Three Pupford Train treat bags arranged on blocks with treats scattered on a peach background

Man sitting with two dogs and Pupford bags on a pink studio background

Woman lifting an apricot poodle in the paper flower studio set

The Pupford Train range lined up along a smoking grill

Woman on a gingham picnic blanket surrounded by the Pupford range

Woman kneeling with a golden dog and Pupford bags on a warm studio background

Three Good Dog Food bags arranged on a striped pool float

04 — Packaging

One pack, three proteins

Good Dog Food / identical framing, and a flavour colour
carried across every touchpoint for that ingredient

Red Good Dog Food beef recipe bag on a light background

Freeze-dried beef PMS 7141 C · #E56B59

Yellow Good Dog Food chicken recipe bag on a light background

Freeze-dried chicken PMS 1459 C · #FF8F29

Pink Good Dog Food salmon recipe bag on a light background

Freeze-dried salmon PMS 1915 C · #EF4B8B

In context

The pack has to work outdoors too

Summer BBQ shoot / the same packaging system
styled, lit and shot on location

A Pupford Train bag standing with green apples and a wooden crate on a picnic table

Train, hero packshot

The Pupford range arranged with a picnic basket on a red gingham blanket

The range, grouped

Pupford bags sitting inside a red and white pool ring floating on water

Seasonal styling

The Pupford range standing in a row on a red gingham picnic blanket beside a basket

Set for the shot

Front-of-pack illustration

Classic BBQ Chicken, rough to shipped

Procreate / Dry Ink for colour, Studio Pen for line
six passes · every one answers a question the pack asks

Blue pencil sketch on grid paper of a pup parent crouched at a kettle grill holding out a treat to a basset hound

Rough

Blue pencil on the iPad grid. Pup parent crouched at the grill, treat in hand, basset waiting. The scene is settled here before a single colour goes down.

First colour pass

Line and flat colour. Tee on the flavour colour, shorts on the type colour, per the packaging guidelines. The pup is standing, polite, a little static.

Revised colour pass: the basset hound is up on its hind legs begging for the treat; the tee is now Train pink

Revision

The pup gets up on its hind legs and takes over the shot. The tee swaps to Train pink so the figure sits with the bag it will live on.

Refined illustration: pup parent sitting with the basset at their side, three drumsticks on the smoking grill and a BBQ sauce bottle beside it

Flavour, made legible

Chicken goes on the grill, smoke rises, the sauce bottle joins it. The pair are recomposed to sit low and wide for the band under the logotype.

Front-of-pack artwork: the illustration placed under the Pupford logotype on a cream ground above the pink hill and the Classic BBQ Chicken Flavor bar

On the pack

Dropped into the front-of-pack template: cream ground, pink hill, logotype above, flavour bar below. The Summer Edition roundel takes the top right.

Photograph of the finished Pupford Train Classic BBQ Chicken bags, front and back, with treats spilling out

Shipped

The printed bag, front and back, photographed in the studio with the treats out. Same scene, now at retail scale.

05 — Landing pages

Same product, three different arguments

Good Dog Food / hover a page to scroll it

Full-length screenshot of the Good Dog Food desktop landing page

Desktop — product-led Build 01

Full-length screenshot of the nutrition and authority landing page variant

Nutrition & authority Build 02

Full-length screenshot of the mobile listicle landing page variant

Mobile listicle Build 03

Good Dog Food landing page shown in a phone mockup

Conversion

Testing an angle should cost a layout, not a shoot.

The desktop build leads with the product and the promise. The nutrition build leans on ingredients and authority for a colder audience. The mobile listicle reframes the whole thing as an article — the reader is halfway down before it asks for anything.

All three are cut from the same photo library and the same illustration set, so a new argument is a day of layout rather than a new production.

Desktop Mobile listicle Nutrition angle A/B variants

06 — Paid social

Built as a beat, then re-cut

Static ad sets / sequences, colourway families and angle tests

Yellow ad frame reading Just Found with treat bags

01Just found

Yellow ad frame reading Your Pup with a black dog

02Your pup

Yellow ad frame reading Their New with a dog taking a treat

03Their new

Yellow ad frame reading Favorite Treat with a husky and product bags

04Favorite treat

Salmon · PMS 1915 C

One concept, three colourways

“Switch to Freeze-dried Raw”

The same frame, the same crop, the same headline — only the flavour colour changes. Three audiences, three creatives, one build. The flavour palette does the segmenting so the concept never has to be re-shot.

Campaign · training

Is your dog walking you?

Five concepts / each built twice, 9:16 and 1:1
so the story cut and the feed cut ship together

“Walking YOU?”Brick wall, full pull

“Every walk = stress”Café patio

“More like bonding”Doorway, tiled floor

“Simple, positive & actually fun” — 9:16 story ad

“Simple, positive & actually fun” — 1:1 feed ad

“Simple, positive & actually fun”Treat pouch detail

“A joy to be around”Bench, two pups

Campaign · seasonal

Memorial Day Sale

One offer, five angles / polaroid, review-led, product-led
every angle cut for both placements

Make training memorablePolaroid & illustration

Grab his attentionBorder collie, bag in hand

A reward they sit forHusky paw shake

Everyone agreesReview-led, Samoyed

Limited-time bannerHiker & lab

Also in rotation

Single-concept ads

Angle tests that ran on their own

Ad showing a Good Dog Food bag ringed by eighteen whole ingredients

18 ingredients

Frozen raw expires

What I ordered versus what I got comparison ad

Ordered vs. got

Red ad with a bowl of kibble ringed by raw meat and vegetables

Raw nutrients

Story placements

…and re-cut 9:16 for stories

Same concepts, rebuilt full-bleed / the headline moves,
the crop changes, the argument does not

Story ad framed as a search for how to stop my dog chewing furniture, with an Engage collagen stick bag beside a chewed chair leg

“Built for chewers”

Skip the thaw

Healthy poops

Vertical what I ordered versus what I got comparison ad

Ordered vs. got

07 — Motion

Made to loop

After Effects / short social cuts, silent,
built so the last frame runs back into the first

Ins and Outs 2026

A new-year list post animated as a hard-cut loop — short enough that the feed replays it before the reader has finished reading.

Pause to pick your pup’s next trick

A spin-the-wheel loop that turns the pause button into the mechanic — wherever the viewer stops it, that’s the trick they train next.

08 — Carousels

The format that does the teaching

Instagram carousels / drag or use the arrows to page through each post

Prime Day · 12 slides

Swipe for a secret message

Twelve hand-drawn frames that turn the swipe itself into the mechanic — the envelope unseals, the letter unfolds, and the offer is the payoff. Played back here at posting speed.

Frame 01 / 12

Recipe series · 12 slides

Twelve months of treat recipes

One template, twelve colourways — a seasonal recipe a month, each carrying its own line-segment colour and its own drawn pup.

January treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

February treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

March treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

April treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

May treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

June treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

July treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

August treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

September treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

October treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

November treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

December treat recipe card with an illustrated pup

12 slides

Community series · 13 slides

Did we draw your dog?

Followers send a photo, the pup comes back hand-drawn. The cheapest engagement mechanic on the calendar, and the one that put the illustration system in front of the most people.