The Visual Arts Center of Richmond is a non-profit founded in 1963. Their largest income generator (and the service for which it is most well known) is classes, and the primary marketing tool for these classes is a 9 panel, custom folded course catalog. Over 7,500 copies are printed and mailed four times a year, with over 300 classes listed per session.

Reducing production time from 40 hours to 3 hours

When I began working with VisArts in 2017, the information for the catalog was organized in a Google doc that required manual pasting for each block of information (~300 classes, 5 info blocks per class). This process took 5 business days to complete. Since then, I spearheaded a new data management system that reduced production time to 8 hours:

• Moved dataset to excel
• Added data fields that appear in the catalog to be filled in by the education team
• Created a 16 step process that cleans, organizes, and formats data
• Implemented an array formula that converts a five column per row data set into a single column row
• Created an InDesign template that retains custom formatting for each row of data – one paste instance, all formatting complete

Leveraging AI to Increase Efficiency

The biggest remaining hurdle was for classes with multiple sections: there was no way to automate the custom formatting required for a conditional instance of multi-session classes. In late 2025, I created an AI ruleset that took my single column dataset and combined the multi-session classes with my custom formatting, reducing production time to 3 hours. Not only has this translated to direct payroll savings for the organization, it has increased production flexibility and time savings across departments, all surrounding the rollout of its single largest income generator.