Dhanai Holtzclaw

Resume

Full experience below · PDF is your designed one-pager

Download PDF↓

Dhanai Holtzclaw

Art Director · Creative Director

Brand · campaign · motion · AI generative creative · concept to shipped

Los Angeles, CADhanaiH@gmail.com702.321.1971linkedin.com/in/dhanaigithub.com/dhanaidhanai.net

Summary

Art director and creative lead with 20+ years across broadcast, advertising, web, and product. Fifteen years directing brand and campaign work in agencies and startups — most often as the entire creative department, accountable for every asset that left the building. Built and art-directed a hand-drawn apparel brand to $3.8M in lifetime sales. I came up on Photoshop and Flash, when motion was what made a website worth visiting; After Effects followed, and I still specify easing down to the curve. Today I direct AI-native generative video and image campaigns, and build the production front end when that's faster than briefing it.

Experience

Takeout Order — Founder & Creative Director

  • Built the brand end to end — identity, voice, and a full hand-drawn product catalog — and scaled it to $3.8M in lifetime sales.
  • Wrote and art-directed campaigns across paid social, web, email, and packaging, owning every idea from concept through finished asset.
  • Directed hundreds of shoots, live-action and AI-generated, building a repeatable system for on-brand generative video and imagery (Seedance, Kling, Nano Banana via fal.ai).
  • Ran continuous performance-creative testing where fresh concepts were the primary growth lever, not media spend.

Well Shucks — Founder & Creative Director

  • Launched a second apparel brand from positioning through storefront — "tragically nostalgic: vintage children's illustrations for adults with behavioral issues."

Studio — Creator & Director

  • Directing an original animated series — story, character design, and shot direction — and building the production system behind it: characters, locations, and props as entities with variants that hold a cast consistent across generations. Cut a finished one-minute clip from ~8 hours to ~2.

DJcity — Creative Director

  • Owned brand, campaign, and product creative for a DJ music platform across six years — a startup creative function I built and ran.
  • Directed DJcity TV's on-air identity: logo animation, show bumpers, and title sequences built in After Effects and delivered to broadcast spec — 25fps masters and alpha-channel titles cut into editorial.
  • Art-directed The Cutting Room title package end to end, from type design through final composited delivery.
  • Directed a production designer and partnered daily with an in-house developer to take creative from concept to shipped product surfaces.

Ciplex — Creative Director

  • Designed and art-directed the web experiences for ArcLight Cinemas and Grauman's Chinese Theatre, alongside brand, campaign, and digital work for a roster of small-business clients.

Earlier career

Agency and studio work across interactive, brand, and editorial design during the Flash-to-web transition.

  • Mego — Creative Director2009 — 2010
  • Getback — Art Director2008 — 2009
  • Hello Design — Lead Designer2007 — 2008
  • Cytek Studios — Lead Designer2005 — 2007
  • Resultz — Interactive Designer2003 — 2005

Skills

Creative
Art direction, brand identity, campaign concepting, copywriting, editorial & layout, hand illustration
Motion & AV
After Effects — title sequences, broadcast graphics, logo animation. Easing and timing with sharp exponential curves; AE curves into CSS or Framer Motion. Premiere for edit; Ableton and Cubase for audio.
AI creative
Generative video & image direction — Seedance, Kling, Nano Banana, Flux via fal.ai & Runware; prompt direction for motion, fabric, and graphic fidelity.
Design tools
Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign, Procreate, Figma
Build
Next.js, React, TypeScript, Shopify, Meta Ads
Also builds
Ships production software solo — Parfade (live iOS app), Studio, and B2B fulfillment tooling, in Next.js / React. I can prototype the idea, not just brief it.