Merging Ahead
Aurora Innovation, Inc.
The Story
When I joined Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle technology company, as a Staff Visual Designer, the brand marketing team was shifting focus from experimentation to unification in line with the refinement of Aurora’s mission and company goals that came with its recent IPO. I quickly established myself as a reliable and consistent steward of the visual brand, going from supporting small internal projects to leading company-wide campaigns to directing nationwide initiatives in a short time.
The Dashboard
I began my journey by tackling one of the Marketing & Communication team’s high-priority backlog goals by bringing their ideas for an external newsletter to life. After presenting an extensive research and analysis reference document, we created what the team would later agree to call:
‘The Dashboard.’
I created the wordmark and then designed and presented a modular layout based on the priority of the intended content as previously established by the Communications team. After a quick approval round, I used my front-end coding skills to build a reusable template from scratch in HubSpot.
I worked in parallel with writers and directors on the team to set up a companion document that enabled the copy team to collaboratively develop their ideas for the content of each newsletter and seamlessly deliver the finished narrative to the implementation team.
News Page
Further insights from the research document, which laid out the landscape of other similar and relevant newsletters and media pages, outlined opportunities for sharing additional content. I combined that additional content into a drafted design to pitch a supporting ‘media’ page that would become Aurora’s News page.
2022 Release of Aurora’s News page
Events Page
After successfully implementing The Dashboard in HubSpot for the Marketing and Communications teams, I worked with the Events team to design a set of landing pages to host the details of Aurora’s upcoming and past external engagements.
Building on the knowledge I gained from creating email templates for The Dashboard, I put my HTML and CSS skills to work again and coded the pages, along with templates used to make additional events, using HubL to create Aurora’s Events Page.
Values Refresh
In support of leadership’s recent refresh of Aurora’s internal values, I worked closely with the Internal Communications team to brainstorm and realize the ‘Values in Motion’ concept and theme.
With support from the Creative Director, I created a campaign lock-up and updated the suite of icons paired with the refreshed statements. We used the statements, icons, color palette, and lock-up to design and produce stickers, a booklet, and a water bottle for employees during the campaign launch celebration.
Intertwined with creating the printed items, I assumed a lingering team task to update the screensavers displayed in the conference rooms between meetings. I designed a new template allowing the team to easily swap out photos and messaging as they saw fit moving forward and used the Values campaign content to launch the update.
Water bottle produced for employees
Companion booklet
Social Media
As a result of the increase in my work with internal groups and my growing track record of efficiently refining the visual brand internally and externally, I readily accepted the request to update the design of Aurora’s social media posts featuring employee quotes.
I designed a standardized but flexible template based on Aurora’s previous quote posts and block-quote designs from various online publications. The first use of the design featured quotes from employees about International Women in Engineering Day, which used a monotone blue color palette. Later, I swapped the colors out for expansive gradients in carousel posts when we featured quotes about Diversity Week.
Instagram posts (via instagram.com/auroradriver)
Business Review
The meticulous brand alignment I displayed through the increasing scope and visibility of my work made me a clear choice when the Creative Director needed assistance with a project that worked directly with the executive staff - the design production of Aurora’s quarterly business review shareholder letter.
The shareholder letters are crucial business documents and are a collective effort by every part of the company. The design production is specifically responsible for bringing life to all the hard work and progress explained in the copy by creating or sourcing relevant content to tell those stories visually. The effort required creating or sourcing various types of media from across the company and working with stakeholders to update and align content with the brand standards and the overall style of the document.
After supporting the Creative Director during the Q2 2022 business review, I took over the task and led the design production into the following year.
Graphics from the 2022 Q2-Q4 shareholder letters (via ir.aurora.tech)
Brand Guidelines
Having already proven myself as a meticulous design resource and reliable brand manager, I gladly accepted the responsibility of updating Aurora’s brand guidelines for the year.
I assembled and assessed assets from throughout the previous year to uncover and clearly define the team’s most consistent design patterns and presented the findings alongside my suggestions for making the document more definitive and resourceful.
After considering and iterating with the team on the content, I moved forward with designing the document, directing the creation of supporting assets, announcing and releasing the updated document in collaboration with the Communications team, and creating related materials associated with distribution.
Pages from Aurora’s 2023 Brand Guidelines (via aurora.tech/press)
Multi-Office Photoshoot
During conversations about the content standards in the brand guidelines, the team regularly spoke of wanting to update the internal photography and use it more prominently to showcase the lively ‘energy’ of the people and internal culture. Once the photoshoot was approved, I volunteered to own the project from start to finish.
I brainstormed and presented all mood boards and storyboards, coordinated with multiple offices to stage locations and source talent (employees), managed and directed all day-of operations for the multi-day shoot, and oversaw all post-production work and delivery with the photographers.
I reflected on all the different facets of the business I’d supported up to the shoot to set up a welcoming environment and foster a positive experience for everyone involved. Together, we produced a gallery of images that successfully captured the ‘energy’ and ‘motion’ of the people and progress happening at Aurora. Many of the photos from this shoot can be found throughout Aurora’s website and marketing.