Alexis 20th Anniversary

For many company-wide initiatives, the net is cast far to bring in as many ideas as possible. The 20th anniversary of one of Applied's staple products, Alexis, was no different. All designers across Branding were asked to pitch one to three concepts for the look and feel of the campaign, beginning with the logo.

Conceptualization

I began the ideation phase by collecting some keywords and pulling basic shapes from product photos. This is an easy way to grab elements and imagery quickly. I prefer to iterate digitally, so from there I took the inspiration and began spitballing in Illustrator.

Once I had a solid couple of concepts, I refined and iterated those more to make a cohesive collection using the product colors. I wanted to show variation, since I knew this campaign would touch pretty much every corner of Applied — website, trade shows, social media, and beyond.

Review and Approval

During an internal peer review of concepts, design leadership chose a handful of options to present to stakeholders, mine amongst them. While the review process was happening, I started to work on ideating for the deliverables we knew about at the time, to save some time down the road (which turned out to be a great decision, as the scope ...you guessed it... expanded). Ultimately, one of my concepts was chosen and we began work on producing deliverables.

Reference: Alexis Product Images

Conceptualizing and Ideation: Quick Brainstorm

Conceptualizing and Ideation: First Round Logo Concepts

Peer Review: Refined and Colored Logo Concepts

Review and Approval: Chosen Concepts

Deliverables

As the list of deliverables grew, it became clear that the design system would need to be pretty simple and flexible, so that any designer could work on a project at any time. I made a quick campaign guide, detailing line widths, colors, and basic stylings to ensure everything stayed cohesive. After all, at the end of the day, this was an external marketing campaign.

An incomplete list of deliverables is as follows: logo, social media posts, webpage, 10x10 backdrop, celebration invitations, printed signage, digital signage, wall graphics, email signatures, magnets, pins, interactive touch screen slides, and video graphics.

This project was only possible through highly collaborative efforts. I think every designer on our team had a hand in something. As project lead, the way I managed this was through regular check-ins and an updated schedule of deadlines. I acted as the trafficking coordinator for all incoming feedback, to shield the designers from too much back and forth, confusing redlines, or disgruntled requesters while advocating for the design decisions our team was making and adapting to changing priorities from the requesters.

Below you will find the deliverables packet.

Implementation

Once each project was approved, I moved forward with implementation. It varied project to project, but the gist is that I sent files to our trade show vendors, installed wall graphics and signage, and generally made sure everything came out the way it was supposed to.

This campaign was one of the largest I have spearheaded. It lasted 18 months and crossed two oceans. It required patience and grace, as well as a fair amount of advocacy and quick thinking. While it was a stressful few months of design and preparation, it was without a doubt a great success.

Below is a collection of the final deliverables I created for this campaign.