When I stepped into the role, the brand had evolved in pockets but not as a system—and it was very easy to mess up.

Logo files lived in multiple places with no clear rules. There were edge-case lockups, legacy treatments, and color versions that only a designer could safely navigate. Decks, PDFs, and one-pagers looked “kind of Pindrop” when a designer was involved and completely off-brand when they weren’t.

Designers had one set of files. Product and Sales had their own decks. Marketing kept reinventing layouts and diagrams. People were also starting to experiment with AI tools on their own, which meant we risked off-brand copy layered on top of already inconsistent visuals.

There was no:

• Simple, foolproof logo system for different backgrounds and placements

• Set of repeatable design elements non-designers could use without breaking things

• Single place to find the right asset, template, or pattern

The result:

• Inconsistent brand expression across teams

• “Fragile” brand elements that broke easily outside the design team

• A flood of one-off requests that kept the team in execution mode instead of strategy