Design Recap: We Have Standards event

A design systems panel at SFDW 2018, hosted at Zillow Group

When I was in elementary school, I told everyone I knew that I wanted to write ads when I grew up. Fast forward [redacted] years, and I’ve yet to work in advertising, but writing and editing have been a huge component of my work in brand design.

When I joined Trulia for a contract gig in April 2018, I was given the opportunity to help shape their SF Design Week event focusing on design systems. Conveniently my husband is an expert in this, having worked on design systems at Apple, Facebook, Rdio and Stripe. He was able to give me a lot of resources to check out, and was able to be my sounding board for good and bad ideas.

At left you can see part of the process of landing on “I/we have standards,” and from there it just took off. Each time I mentioned it in a meeting (sheepishly, which is maybe how designers should always introduce their copy ideas) it got more pickup. It became the event title, and then the foundational concept for the event design. I mostly think more like an editor than a designer (having run a magazine or two earlier in my career) so it makes me exceedingly happy when I can create a tidy, cohesive package of deliverables knit around an impactful concept.

We printed square posters on the risograph machines at Colpa Press. Understanding of the riso printing process allowed for us to easily print 36 versions of the posters by using different paper and ink colors.

The poster wall before (left) and during the event (right). Our talented panelists included Matt Bond of Asana, Jess Clark of LinkedIn, Brandon Ferrua of Salesforce, Mina Markham of Slack (formerly Hillary for America), and my husband Wilson Miner of Stripe. Kristen Stotts of Premier Agent moderated.

Almost every design team/studio uses black foam core to show work, so to speak to our audience we made our event signage (left) with plotter prints, x-acto knives, push pins, and these boards. We followed the same pattern when creating a “science fair” area (right) for guests to learn about the design systems of each Zillow Group company represented.

The event theme allowed us to have a lot of fun with staff t-shirts, name tags, photo booth props, etc. At left, Kristen Kong and Kristen Stotts who were among my teammates in pulling the event off!

Who can ever get enough of 1" buttons? These were a hit, per usual. Reagan Sirengo, who designs for Zillow Group in LA, shows off his choices.

Thanks for reading! If you’d like more eye candy and design recaps, check out my portfolio website at lauraminer.com.