Waaayyyyy back in 1997 I worked as a junior designer for DSW Partners in Salt Lake City, Utah. Seriously one of the best experiences in my career. I was there for 3 years and got to work with some of the best marketing and creative people in the country...and on some big brands and high profile projects. It was at this job I earned my 'Multimedia Goddess' title from one of the Creative Directors since I branched out pretty easily. Working not just on production design as most of the others in my group, but also animation, presentation and interactive modules for clients such as StorageTek, Iomega and Intel. I was named Lead Designer of the group after the first year, then promoted to Associate Art Director six months later.
Speaking of Intel. I was one of the 200 people in the agency who had a little part of working on the big Super Bowl ad campaign in 1997. The TV spots directed people to the website to vote on something, and it was on those website graphics that I contributed to the project. Long before high bandwidth connections, an important element to these graphics was that they LOOKED good but didn't take long to download as the site loaded while MILLIONS of visitors pinged servers to cast their votes. During the big game my friends (also colleagues) tried to access the site real time after the ads aired to see if it worked. And they did! Frankly, the quality was terrible compared to what we can do today thanks to better bandwidth.
Fast forward to 2020 when I was invited to freelance for Muddy Gecko, a group of marketing people who formerly worked for none other than Intel. My past experience, while 22 years old, made me 'one of the family' and I was excited to work on the brand again...and see how it had evolved. The 'drop e' logo had gone through a bit of a change. The 'circled' logo that had become extremely recognizable in use for 15 years.
At the time I joined Muddy Gecko, Intel was getting ready to launch a big re-brand and lots of assets needed updating and refreshing. I went through a great deal of training from Intel on their new brand elements. There weren't many existing assets in the new brand, so following the guide to create infographics and presentations was an extremely exciting creative challenge.
Branding begins with the logo, colors and fonts, though there is much more involved. As I developed the new assets, I considered how to implement the 'spark', photography, typography, iconography and color balance between all of the shades. I have a few examples in my portfolio of work in Intel's updated brand. Here's one of the many infographics I developed:
Such a great experience with a major brand that I've been able to contribute to for the span of most of my career. I still have one of these cute guys in my office. Introducing the BunnypeopleTM Characters. Play that funky music!
