Branding | Production

OpenView

At OpenView I was responsible for the firm’s brand and its evolution. I created sub-brands for events and conferences that each had their own unique design identities. I built out a 60+ custom icon set and designed the layout templates for all of the ebooks, case studies and other marketing content the team produced. This was the first opportunity where I had inherited an existing but limited brand style guide and was given full reign to design for its future and implement it in my own vision.

The most challenging and most impactful project that came out of this period was the first edition of OpenView’s BUILD book. The goals of which were to create a unique visual identity for “BUILD” as its own entity, but based on the OpenView core brand styles. There were 4 months to execute this project, from concept to print to delivery. Also, at this point I had been focusing primarily on digital production so a 150-page printed book designed cover-to-cover by myself alone, in just 4 months was thrilling and daunting.

The first month was spent brainstorming names for the book, content that would be included, how many pages there would be, and how we wanted to organize everything. By the time we nailed this down, I had 3 months remaining to come up with creative direction, design layouts for every spread and hopefully get to the small design details I loved about book making (section wayfinding, folios, dividers, etc.) Not to mention the printer needed a minimum of 2 weeks for production.

At the time of the BUILD book, color overlays were the hot trend and the OpenView color palette of primary blue, red, yellow and green were playing nicely with this trend. My vision for the creative direction of the book was to design a pattern of sorts that would appear to “build” in a stacked manor. The pattern was made out of overlapping circles and triangles that vaguely reflected “OV”, the nickname of OpenView. I then assigned one of the 4 primary colors to each section of the book and incorporated color overlays with the photography of the page spreads for additional uniformity.

The book came together spectacularly and was so well received by its recipients that it has since been reprinted twice. The BUILD book has been sent to members of the OpenView network across several continents, dozens of countries and cities worldwide. It still remains one of my favorite pieces that I’ve produced, but it’s also rare that I get to hold a physical copy of my work in my hands so that definitely adds to the glamor!