EDMUNDS.COM
Developing style for a car classic company.
At Edmunds.com as a part of the small creative team in the Marketing department I collaborated with various teams, such as Human Resources, Strategic Insights, and Public Relations. This work included developing an new iconography style, creating stylized reports, updating and refining the style guide, to creating internal emails and assets to keep employees up to date on the latest from Edmunds.
Design Systems
Presentation
Reports
Collateral
Iconography
The Problem
Edmunds had just hired an outside agency to update their brand, but the internal teams were finding it wasn’t falling short. They needed someone who was comfortable not only looking at the brand but creating multi-page layouts to flesh out the missing pieces.
The Solution
Took time! Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither if tailoring a style guide that doesn’t work for a 600 person team. But it involved a lot of work with the in house team, especially the Creative Director on what visually felt correct then honing in.
Style Guide
After we had sufficient collateral for a start the style guide started to develop over 6 months hand in hand with a copywriter checking over how the marketing creative team and web development team were interacting with the elements.
To ensure an accurate guide we checked in with employees in other departments to make sure it communicated clearly and concisely for the 600+ employees who would need to reference the document. This interactive digital-first style guide allowed for team members to get where they need to, download fonts, and find server folders with collateral options.
Reports
From quarterly reports to special one-offs, these reports were primarily designed for web to be shared with media outlets. The design needed to be print ready for special in person events where the PR team would hand these out to VIPs.
A unified system had to be created focused on utilizing ample white space to allow the graphs to shine. I created typographic styles, layouts, and grid systems for the reports to establish a new system that had never been seen at edmunds before. A PDF example can be found here.
Internal Documents had a different feel
While B2B and B2C documents had a similar feel in intensity as the reports, internally? Edmunds wanted fun. They wanted internal documents and emails to reflect the more playful side of Edmunds culture (they do have a slide in their office after all).
So from custom icons, logos for events, newsletters, posters, benefits, and more the internal style of Edmunds let the creative team take a break and have fun.