Brand Design: Innovation, Interactivity, Sizzle and Social

A bunch of these files were created in Flash, which essentially no longer exists. So I recorded the interactions of each one in a video. I would have made a thousand different design decisions and tweaks on these, but do please keep in mind that most of these projects are from more than 10 years ago.

Innnovation

What if I told you I almost single-handedly added millions of views of the Safeco Insurance brand? It happened. This is one of the projects I’m most proud of.

Below is a screenshot of statistics from one of my “widgets” from in 2010. (Example below)

The Genesis

In 2009, I had an idea: What if we made it easy for independent agents to share our content (and our logo) on their sites? These folks run their own sites, and they’re always looking for cool and free stuff to post.

I created video players, quizzes and short animations agents could use to add interactivity and flair to their sites. But most importantly, each featured the Safeco logo prominently. And because independent agents sell a lot of other brands as well as Safeco’s, we wanted as much real estate as we could get on their pages.

Hundreds of agents placed these widgets on their sites, and they received millions of page views.

Project duties (Quizzes): I researched the subjects and wrote the quizzes, then coded and designed them in Flash. Enabled tracking code to see where the widgets were located and how many pageviews they were getting.

Interactivity

One of the major projects we worked on was introducing thousands of our employees to the brand ethos. These products were launched on our internal coms site and during in-person brand sessions designed to engage the enthusiasm of our employees for our core values.

In order:

A microsite about the brand standards
A Wheel of Fortune game I designed and coded to add to the excitement of the in-person sessions.
A microsite primer on our agent personas.
A quiz to see how well you knew them.

This one was meant for the overhead at Brand Session where employees played in a group session lead by a presenter running the game. It has the sounds of Wheel of Fortune. Working on getting the audio to play.

This one came after the merger, when everyone was on edge. It ran on screens in our common rooms. There was also a clickable microsite that had the same theme. We wanted as much transparency as possible, and we wanted people to know things would (probably) Be OK. And generally, things were OK.

Sizzle

I learned After Effects, and everyone wanted a cool “Sizzle Reel” added to their projects. Here are a few. My designs/animations are much more elegant now. But the key to focus in on here is how I use the music in tandem with the message.

I’m a drummer, so I feel the music even in static graphic design pieces. If you’re doing it right, there’s music in every communication. There’s something about putting it all together – music, movement and message – that is so satisfying.