Objective

A global insurer posts to LinkedIn far more often than any agency can service, and every post that goes out unbranded costs a little of the thing the brand work paid for.

The alternative to designing each one is designing the means to make them, which is a harder brief, because the output has to survive being made by people who are not designers and who are in a hurry.

Creative response

Social template system, icon library and template guide.

• Phase I, scoped in writing before anything was drawn. Two workstreams, stock imagery development and iconography development, and three named deliverables: an asset guide covering colour palette, iconography and styling; ten images with final branding and overlay; and twenty custom icons
• Twenty custom icons, drawn four ways. Eighty files across four labelled sets, the same twenty subjects in four treatments, so the choice put to the client was a style rather than an inventory
• A PowerPoint template, shipped as a.potx. LinkedIn artwork produced in the tool the client already has open, rather than one they would have to be licensed and trained for
• The LinkedIn Template Guide, 2 September 2020, three download links on the first spread, then step-by-step instructions for building a post in the new style
• Digital strategy support, continuing into 2021

The phase-one document is the tell. It sets out what the client will receive, the counts, the workstreams, the asset guide, and says the pages that follow are a sample for feedback so the direction can be confirmed before the final assets are made. Agreeing the shape of the delivery before making it is what stops twenty icons being drawn twice.

Four treatments of the same twenty subjects is the same instinct applied to the choice. Presenting eighty different icons invites eighty separate opinions; presenting one set in four styles asks a single question that can be answered in a meeting.

The guide then opens on the downloads and puts the instructions after them, and the template is a.potx rather than an InDesign file. Both are the same judgement: a system only works if it opens on the machine of the person in a hurry.

Why the icons had to be drawn

• Phase I, scoped in writing before anything was drawn. Two workstreams, stock imagery development and iconography development, and three named deliverables: an asset guide covering colour palette, iconography and styling; ten images with final branding and overlay; and twenty custom icons
• Twenty custom icons, drawn four ways. Eighty files across four labelled sets, the same twenty subjects in four treatments, so the choice put to the client was a style rather than an inventory
• A PowerPoint template, shipped as a.potx. LinkedIn artwork produced in the tool the client already has open, rather than one they would have to be licensed and trained for
• The LinkedIn Template Guide, 2 September 2020, three download links on the first spread, then step-by-step instructions for building a post in the new style
• Digital strategy support, continuing into 2021

Why the icons had to be drawn

The phase-one document specifies twenty custom icons to symbolise key aspects of temperature systems. That is the reason they could not be bought. A general library has one picture for a thermometer and nothing at all for the parts of a controlled-temperature installation, and an icon that gets a component wrong is worse than no icon to the engineers who make up a good share of the audience.

The work