Garrett Dahn Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Led design and video creative direction across ads, social media, and web. Collaborate with product team on design. Contributed across the company to elevate brand, simplify the parent experience, and articulate a clear vision of Synthesis.

Led the development of all external customer touchpoints—social media, website, emails, ads—as Synthesis grew from 10 to 10,000 students.Focused on crafting a unique brand identity by emphasizing student stories and avoiding the clichés of traditional educational products.We designed marketing that respected kids’ intelligence, inspiring curiosity and wonder, not condescension.Key achievements:- Managed a team of creatives (video editors, directors, designers, social media) to deliver branded content during the company’s largest growth phases.- Collaborated with ad teams to create and optimize ads, reducing CAC from $400 to under $100.- Conducted customer research to adapt and evolve brand strategy, with a focus on homeschooling moms.- Built strong relationships with internal teams including educators, engineers, and game designers.

I graduated UCLA and joined Synthesis, an ed-tech startup with maybe 15 employees. I worked on the initial product design, I edited together our first promotional videos, I created early versions of the brand, all of which would be instrumental to the huge growth of Synthesis in 2021. Most importantly, though, I worked on a small team of mission-driven peers, I tested my designs with customers who I counted as collaborators, and I made videos that articulated the ambition of Synthesis.This was a creatively fertile time for everyone at Synthesis — I fell in love with the collaborative energy of a startup, I learned how I could contribute as a creative specialist, and I was deeply inspired by the stories of customers who felt transformed by our product. Those transformative stories I would begin telling in our marketing and social media, thereby articulating and establishing the real vision of Synthesis.

• Designed graphics for Disney+, NFLPA, CSU Northridge, and iHeartRadio.• Did brand identity work for local organizations.

• Designed all the graphics for UCLA's student health center during COVID. Graphics had to be actually attractive and interesting in order to spread our campus health initiatives. I grew substantially as a designer here, mastering Adobe Illustrator and learning how to use design as an effective tool for communicating with the public.• Conceptualized branded marketing campaigns and campus-wide initiatives. Saw my work on signage around campus, which was really cool.

Led all video and design creative for solar energy club at UCLA. The central challenge was to articulate complex engineering solutions into a cohesive, attractive design and marketing strategy. Created the brand identity and managed implementation of the brand across channels.

Spent a quarter in college doing a strategy internship with a sustainability startup called CNSRV WTR. I took on an open-ended project (re: implementing CNSRV WTR in commercial kitchens), researched viable solutions, and presented those solutions on behalf of CNSRV WTR to a group of local stakeholders at Santa Monica City Council and Sustainable Works.

Spent a summer in college helping unrepresented litigants (people who couldn't afford a lawyer) represent themselves against eviction. I spoke with and helped hundreds of people, mostly poor and disenfranchised folks, navigate a confusing and paralyzing legal process. I learned:(a) how to communicate with and serve a whole range of people in a time of crisis,(b) that the system sucks, and(c) that it sucks on purpose.

Naknek, Alaska, United States

Spent a summer in college working at a salmon cannery in remote southwestern Alaska. 16 hour shifts. Repetitive and grueling work. Worked my ass off and met tons of incredible people.