I am unable to share my work due to the nature of new business. Just know I am very excited for all the work I’ve done here! 

When we started our employer brand rebrand in January 2020, we knew we had a lot of ground to cover. 63% of college graduates had never heard of us and our employer brand was almost non existent. The world changed in March when we originally planned to launch. Our research held up but our execution would need to be different.

The employer brand space had little differentiation between competitors or other industries. This was our chance to stand out against not just our industry but the entire employer brand space.

We created an employer brand that built on our existing creative system to bring it to life. We refreshed messaging that featured heart-felt yet confident language, new imagery, font styles and existing brand elements. We wanted potential talent to feel hopeful, excited and emboldened to tackle the next phase of their career and life. They're more than a just a number. They matter. Their passions matter. They don't have to give up what's important to them to have a career they love at every level.

We launched through multiple channels but focused on our website and social where we used our summer internship program to kick our new brand off.

During our student summer program, participants and new hires received a customized gated welcome experience. They were welcomed with a personal video from the CEO prompting them to select an exclusive gift from our company store. This effort helped make a unique and memorable first impression.

This audience is often difficult to engage, so we needed to keep the conversation going. We connected with them authentically with one of the best ways to get to know someone, music. We created a collaborative Spotify playlist that encouraged students to add songs that motivated them. This allowed students to experience our culture in a different way, and to get to know each other as they "interned" remotely.

Even though we couldn’t throw a party in person we wanted something special to mark the end of their program and the huge career milestone of receiving and accepting their first full time employment offer. They were able to share the news via social using a branded gif and a dedicated employer brand hashtag.

In just two weeks of the students summer program, the Spotify playlist generated 5.5 hours of music and 117 likes from program participants.

Additionally, we launched a social awareness campaign during this same timeframe where it accounted for 30-45% of all total impressions and engagements for the entire month of July. The celebratory branded gif and message generated more than 500 posts from our newest employees. 

And that was just the beginning!

I led the evolution of Grant Thornton's award-winning global visual identity, overseeing its growth and development across every aspect of the brand over 3+ years. My contributions spanned a wide variety of initiatives, including; Expanding the brand system through templates, ribbon design, and sponsorship materials, developing video assets, authoring and designing comprehensive brand guidelines, growing existing ad campaigns, designing internal award trophies, creating a badging system, managing the digital asset management (DAM) system, developing new brand assets based on DAM data, facilitating a TV shoot, enhancing social media templates, expanded brand photography, designing and submitting award entries, leading a team in Bangalore and fostering their growth, pivoting brand strategies for post-COVID market relevance, running department-wide inspiration meetings to spark creativity, and everything in-between

From high-level strategy to intricate details, I was deeply involved in shaping how the brand showed up in the marketplace.

Your wedding day is one of the biggest and best days to show off your personalities as a couple and who better to brand your big day than yourself?

We wanted our engagement photos to be the base for our overall look and feel. We needed a few pictures for the family but we wanted the majority of our shots to be 70’s Giallo horror meets metal album cover. Armed with a shot list, locations we selected we set out for a full day shoot with one of my collaborators Brian Cooper.

I used the photos to design our invitations, welcome sign, seating chart and my personal favorite, a shirt for our family bar crawl. It was fun to put little details of our story; the “tour dates” on our bar crawl shirt marked special occasions in our relationship and the bands that marked each table were all bands we had seen together.

I’m glad projects like this are once in a lifetime but I’m proud it all came together.

Day of photography from the lovely Megan Saul.

Every year I have the joy of working on our annual report.

I’ve produced several on-site photoshoots featuring staff at the Chicago office. The heart of our brand is our people and the best way to help that come to life is using pictures of and from our people. In 2020, we utilized photos our employees shot during the pandemic to highlight their optimistic outlook on their new work from home environment and social unrest. While this year was hard, it was clear our people saw the good in others and a bright future at our firm.

Partnering with an outside agency and our internal communications department I art-directed our award-winning 2019 annual report which earned a Platinum Ava Digital Award, Platinum dotCOMM Award, and Gold Hermes Creative Award.

At BBDO I worked in the breakneck world of new business. We created immersive experiences for our clients to get them fired up about the work. Whether a presentation, a room immersion, or branding our agency we were ready for any request that came our way. Top notch design was always at the center of our philosophy.

Every now and then I dive into self-indulgent projects.

I was able to fulfill a dream creating album artwork for a friend’s collaborative quarantine music project. Getting free rein I created each cover based on the song itself and created a system to keep the project feeling connected.

I designed a shirt for our family bar crawl during our annual Northwoods vacation to commemorate the occasion. There is something special about seeing your whole midwest family turn heads.

My colleague told me the pizza pattern I created for the BBDO annual summer party was pure joy. Praise doesn’t come much higher than that.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with some killer clients outside of my day job.

I was asked to help one of my favorite breweries with a template for their investor meetings.

I also work with Melissa Fisher, an infinitely interesting professor and author, designing her anthropological presentations.

Every now and then we created presentations for BBDO that did not revolve around new business.

Old work but still proud of where I came from.