Digital Design
at Verizon 140
An agency that takes type as seriously as I do.
A multi-national corporation as large as Verizon is naturally built upon complex business structures. The in-house creative agency, 140 (later re-named Creative Marketing Group) executed work for every business unit; most of our work was with Wireless, but we had hands in Fios and Business.
As a digital designer, I was responsible for creating and presenting animation storyboards for nearly every major ad campaign. Paired with a Senior Copywriter and under the guidance of the Senior Creative Director of Digital, our team worked closely with our Retail counterparts to deliver cohesive, compelling master storyboards and test animations to executives and advertising partners.
Once our core creative team finalized master storyboards, I would then bring my work to a team of 10+ designers to iterate a single concept into hundreds of display and social ads. Much of my day-to-day consisted of reviewing iterative work and ensuring typography and imagery adhered strictly to brand and campaign guidelines. My daily activity as an art director was overseen by the Senior Art Director of Digital.
One goal when I started my design career was to work with a brand that had a strong commitment to Swiss type. In this respect, Verizon was a choice brand. Nearly all our work was based on a single typeface, Neue Haas Grotesk (later updated to a custom font suite designed specifically for digital displays).
This restriction on brand expression ultimately freed us to explore the superior flexibility of Swiss type systems and design creative that relied on the elegance and subtlety of microanimation.
If you live in the real world, you know Apple device launches can feel like a larger-than-life event. As a designer and art director at 140, I got first-hand experience to the behemoth of cross-promotion to make that possible (every Apple keynote meant I’d at least be up until 2 am).
Besides various Apple product launches, I oversaw and executed regularly with a few other notable vendors and entertainment partners.
The Verizon design system is comprised of pixel perfect guidelines to ensure consistency across a vast range of work produced by large teams.
All digital advertising guidelines used for spec designs were developed and maintained by myself, advised by the in-house agency’s Senior CD of Digital.
Any spare time the Senior CD and I had between getting slammed by campaign work was spent developing and pitching new systems to create a leaner, meaner ad machine. Some key initiatives I lead design on were Dynamic Content Optimization and introducing HTML5 to our mobile ad suite.
