A client was experiencing brand drift and process challenges. The CMO asked me to step in and lead the internal design team in a creative director role. I implemented processes, developed design systems, elevated the team culture, established a project pipeline, and realigned the brand.
The standard design for most assets from 2017 to 2022 consisted of a cuboctahedron against a navy blue background. This de facto design persisted after 2022, and stakeholders independently pursued new directions without any design leadership while the creative team worked in silos. As a result, the brand stagnated, and then there was divergent growth, leading to brand drift. My role was to solve these problems and to improve the team's efficiency and quality of work.
A website redesign is a major undertaking for any organization, especially when it’s the primary sales channel. Given the project’s scope and timeline, an external agency was engaged to handle wireframes and initial concepts. My team’s role focused on contributing creatively, with primary responsibility for producing the majority of the website’s custom creative assets.
The samples above are a home page concept I developed as a solution set. The proposed design and behavior swapped the background image for a new relevant image upon reloading the page. It provided much-needed clarity on the InfluxData offering and elicited an “ah-ha” connection from customers.
Document assets, whether electronic or leave-behinds, are vital brand touchpoints. They must be visually appealing, well-organized, impactful, engaging, and consistent across various types of documents.
I designed the InfluxData document assets to work together as a “family” of documents with a logical hierarchy. The new brand elements I created were implemented consistently across assets, and the result was a unified set of scalable documents that supported the new brand direction and instantly connected with their audience.
Images are powerful for connecting with your audience and telling your story. The right image can indeed "tell a thousand words." However, the InfluxData brand didn't have or use images. I saw this as a missed opportunity because, unlike many other database companies, InfluxData had use cases where one could showcase their product in action with true-to-life images.
I developed a scalable solution using realistic, relevant images combined with a texture overlay to illustrate the InfluxData sensor/ingestion story effectively. The image treatment is unique to InfluxData, allowing differentiation from competitors. This differentiation allowed users to see and visualize their specific use case while simultaneously cultivating a sense of pride by being part of something much greater. The final images, as well as brand elements from this solution, also became useful tools for building consistency across other brand assets.
Architecture diagrams clarify product functionality, build technical confidence, and help customers make well-informed decisions. They also ensure the product aligns with their business goals and technical requirements. Architecture diagrams must be flexible to effectively show different viewpoints, integrations, or other customizations that may provide a set of variations.
This was precisely the case for InfluxData. I developed a solution for their architecture diagrams that was simple yet flexible enough to adapt to many use-case-driven variations. The result was scalable and allowed for maximum customization and flexibility.
Corporate YouTube pages should be engaging and playful, breaking traditional branding constraints. We aimed to move away from the outdated cuboctahedron-against-navy design and bring something fresh to life. Heather Hunsinger, one of the talented designers on my team, executed on design work while I provided overall direction.
Our designs utilized various textures from other recent assets we created, along with cuboctahedron patterns we developed. The result was a scalable solution, allowing easy custom video cover production while making the page functional, fun, and visually compelling.
