Send a Message: Design that Brings Your Team Together
Last month, I celebrated my businesses 10 year anniversary. I've seen a lot of challenges and problems come and go, but I've never seen anything quite like the fallout of COVID-19. We've got staffing shortages. We've got supply chain delays. We've got a lot of hard conversations with customers and employees. It's a really complicated problem.
The good news is all of the individuals that are coming together rising to the occasion and helping with these difficult issues. And today I want to talk about how I as a graphic designer and brand strategist fit into the solution. First, let's talk about company culture. So back when I graduated, which was a long time ago, if you had asked me to describe my favorite workplace, in two words, I probably would have said fun and exciting.
Back then, business culture was totally different. If there were beanbags and X boxes and beer taps in the break room, you had made it. That is not the case anymore. Employees have different priorities. Now, workers are focused on practical asks instead of X boxes, they want work life balance, instead of beanbags, they want paid time off.
Now, if you were going to ask me or anyone else for that matter, to describe my ideal workplace in two words or less, it would be supportive and respectful. So how does graphic design help you create that kind of workplace? Let's talk about it. So you probably heard the word team thrown around a lot in business culture and for good reason, companies that genuinely work together as a team are unstoppable.
To get to that point, everyone needs to be on the same page and to get on the same page requires constant communication. That's where I come in from interior signage to employee swag. Internal branding broadcasts your company's values in a very consistent and clear way. Company culture and internal branding are pretty ambiguous topics.
So I want to get into some examples to really break things down. Like I said, communication is all about consistency and what's more consistent than a wall that you walk by every single day. This is a large design I put together for Tristar. We started small with a wall in their waiting room and Tristar liked it so much that we designed a bigger one to go in the manufacturing facility that was also repeated in Spanish.
Something I really appreciate about Tristar is how down to earth their principles are. I also appreciate how Tristar is very clear about how these principles are going to be followed through. For example, they have a guiding principle about safety and a core value. They call right with speed, which means they will always make sound and intentional judgments.
I think it really shows a commitment to putting these principles into practice an installation like this is a big impact. It's something your employees will see every day. It adds a pop of color. It rallies everyone around the same ideals and it keeps everyone on the same page. Right now. My clients over at Apollo Endos Surgery are going through a process to focus their business around their core values.
They came up with five core values and then they also created five employees subcommittees to talk about how they are going to put these core values into practice. I think it's a really cool way to go about this, especially by involving their employees. When Apollo created these values, they needed a simple way to communicate them. So I created this graphic with five icons for each value.
Each icon reinforces the value itself. It's a quick visual way to communicate when your company is talking about core values, that conversation can get really ambiguous and off track. These icons are a way to keep that conversation focused and on task as the subcommittees discuss their values and as the company moves forward, they have a visual cue to keep everyone on the same page. Eventually Apollo will be putting these icons on to company swag like pens notepads and also
interior signage. Keeping these icons around the office really reinforces their company values. So that's it for today. If your company is struggling with employee morale or retention, reach out to me. Thank you for watching. And I hope you learned a little bit about how graphic design can help solve the problems of today. See you next time.
