DATE AUGUST-JANUARY 2019
DURATION 6 MONTHS
ROLE BRAND STRATEGY, GRAPHIC DESIGN, CROSS-TEAM COLLABORATION

Building a Brand Guide
Cybrary
DATE MAY 2019-DECEMBER 2019
DURATION 8 MONTHS
ROLE GRAPHIC DESIGNER, BRAND STRATEGY

Context
Cybrary is an online cybersecurity education and career development platform. The company mission is to upskill the current workforce by providing everyone with access to affordable and competitive cybersecurity training. When I was hired at Cybrary in 2018, I had the exciting task of representing the brand by creating thousands of unique imagery assets as a Graphic Designer on the Creative Services team. I was also the first ever full-time design hire in the company, which meant I had the most fortunate responsibility of representing and defining our brand.
While Cybrary already began growing a distinctive visual identity over its start-up years before my arrival, there was no detailed documentation or guidelines existent for best brand practices. Additionally, Cybrary had a goal of facilitating their B2B offering. Growing our B2B pipeline meant we had to put our best foot forward when speaking with potential partners.
Seeing this gap, I, along with Product and Marketing, began creating a formal brand guide. I was in charge of managing the look and layout for the rest of the guide.
*record scratch* Yeah... that was me. A full time graphic design hire with no branding experience. Fortunately, being at a start-up came with a lot of flexibility in terms of hat-wearing. At this point, I've been spending hours each day looking at prominent brand's style guides/marketing materials and asking all the questions, no matter how small. A series that inspired me around this time is called Building a Brand by The Futur. I highly recommend it to anyone curious about the brand-building process.

After some deliberation and research on competitor guides, these sections were decided on:
Logo
Typography
Color
Voice
Imagery*
*Being a content-first platform with video courses that each have unique thumbnails, Cybrary's brand was often defined by its imagery. Along with the layout and look of the guide, the imagery section was my baby! Since I created thousands of unique course cards and dozens of marketing ads, it was a must to to accurately represent that visual differentiator in our guide through clear, concise language and key visual examples.


Here's me as an intern geeking over my designs being displayed in the office.

Keeping things unique and consistent
Unique and consistent: almost an oxymoron. That was the challenge-- to search for a consistent visual theme while making each asset stand out on its own.

I understood that consistent design needed a consistent process. This is where I began to present my image creations to different team leads to get honest and unfiltered feedback. Using this feedback, I gathered words that were most often used by the team when explaining their visual ideas. The most common words collectively used assisted in brand evolution as I continued my graphic design work.

Using these most common feedback terms, I began creating thousands of assets containing this visual theme. At the same time, it was my direct responsibility to align each team on the new brand standards that have been getting documented in the brand guidelines. Here are some of the ways this happened.
The Result
A consistent, strong visual theme across all our platforms that encompasses' Cybrary's out-of-the-box problem solving that all teams are effectively aligned on.
Visit the Cybrary site to see the branding in action: www.cybrary.it
What I learned
[BRANDING] A brand is not merely created out of thin air by the company design team. Rather, a brand is curated by its users and stakeholders. The most effective way to create a brand that resonates with every stakeholder is by actively including other teams in the branding process. This can be done with consistent meetings, feedback loops, card sorting exercises, or even branding games. The users' voice is naturally included by working directly with the product team.
[FEEDBACK] Gathering feedback is vital in any design process. Plus, deciphering and applying the feedback is detrimental to brand definition. Throughout the branding process, I learned to document as many communications as possible, and organize feedback based on project phase, so that I am able to go back and use it in my creation process.
Additionally, it is always important to circle back to stakeholders who provide feedback. This is where designers can truly see if they hit the mark, or if there is more ideation that needs to be done. Disagreement in design can cause misalignment in brand; I strive to bridge that gap with every team.
Content
-
Create branded, customizable Powerpoint template and documentation for all course presentations
-
Present brand guidelines to VP of Content and team + answer any questions
-
Meet with over 30 instructors 1on1 to discuss best brand practices when recording courses
-
Create content-specific guidelines on using course template and brand etiquette
-
Provide design feedback for any content collateral
Marketing
-
Meet and align with marketing contract designers on best brand practices
-
Create an image repository
-
Lead bi-weekly brand marketing meetings
-
Provide design feedback on any marketing collateral
Product & Dev
-
Create on-brand assets for heros, copy, content cards, and video
-
Collaborate with frontend developers for formulation of set dimensions, padding, typefaces, and logo placements
-
Provide design feedback and suggestions
Sales
-
Create customizable sales pitch deck template
-
Provide imagery and design feedback for any sales collateral