Creative Redesign
The Jackson Hewitt brand has evolved quite a bit in the last decade. Throughout the independent growth and transformation of the print, in store and web visual identity, we decided it was time to bring all three together and unify our brand guidelines based on user research. We found through partnering with the consumer insights team, our clients responded positively when there was a human element to visuals, and that the softer organic shapes in our digital exploration were more welcoming than the hard angles we were using in our print and in store collateral. As a result, we set out to create a series of new design patterns and templates that could be used across creative materials that boasted a robust way of designing with the use of imagery at its core, but not relying solely on the use of imagery. In an effort to keep current work on track, I managed a creative agency that helped pitch concepts, provided them with knowledge, a vision and concepts to work from, and was the project owner pitching concepts to the CMO and business stakeholders for approval on this project. Below you’ll see some of the foundation groundwork I pulled together to kickoff this project and inform the agency on where we were, how we got there and why we want to take our VisID to the next level.
The next step in the process was to work with the agency to being a high level audit of the brand standards and all the creative samples provided. Once we completed the audit, we grouped our audit findings by theme, and began working up some visual applications to consider and showcase as we presented our findings. I then began documenting some overarching design rules based on our findings to bear in mind for any creative when designing for Jackson Hewitt. I also began documenting a proposed flow for our brand standards. Below you’ll see some snippets of this body of work.
Finally, I began presenting proposed creative to the CMO and key stakeholders, refining ideas, and providing direction to the agency accordingly, until we had a set of creative materials that were approved for use. Once the materials needed for the tax season were complete, I put together a proposal for software that would allow us to gather our brand standards as a living breathing virtual document, that anyone with creative rights could access. This vision was to help share the creative onus respectively among the content team who could input tone of voice, agencies who could ensure we always had up to date talent rights and contract information in the book, and finally the in house creative director who could update creative rule sets as needs developed. Pictured below are a few samples of this work.
