2021 in Review: studioID Design
A look back at Industry Dive content marketing design in 2021
At studioID, Industry Dive’s global content marketing studio, we offer over 40 different types of media products to our clients. During 2021, studioID designers created more than 850 pieces of content marketing collateral across 22 industries. Our most popular products included static infographics, animated infographics and interactive microsites. We designed more than 150 of these three products over the course of the year.
Creating this many pieces of content was only possible because we grew our in-house team of designers, sharpened our web design and animation skills and greatly expanded our freelancer network.
This post covers a few of our biggest 2021 achievements and ends with two examples of our work.
Table of Contents:
- Creating the studioID Design team
- Fostering collaboration and sharpening hard skills
- Adding Design Project Managers to our team and expanding our freelancer network
- Increasing collaboration with studioID Content Strategists
- Client project spotlights: Epson & Square
Creating the studioID Design team
In 2021, the Industry Dive design department split its largest team of graphic designers, who were working on both internal and client projects, into two new teams. One of the new teams was Brand & Marketing Design, a group focused on meeting Industry Dive’s marketing design needs and unifying and strengthening the overall Dive brand. The second team we created was studioID Design, an agency-like group focused on supporting studioID, Industry Dive’s global content marketing studio, and designing content for its hundreds of clients.
Throughout the year, studioID Design worked to scale our design freelancer network and processes. With more efficient systems and a larger more international team, studioID Design was able to create over 850 pieces of content marketing collateral — from white papers and survey reports to product promotional videos and animated infographics — for Industry Dive’s studioID clients.
Fostering collaboration and sharpening hard skills
studioID Design was fully remote and greatly spread out in 2021, with members in NYC, Washington, DC, Boston, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, San Diego, Dhaka, Denver and London. Over the course of the year, we tripled in size and grew into a team of 12. To keep the group aligned during this period of rapid growth, we implemented weekly design review sessions. These events served as an opportunity for design feedback on client projects, provided a space for the designers to creatively challenge each other, and increased communication across the team.
In mid-2021, studioID Design welcomed its first Front-end Designer, a team member focused on building and maintaining marketing microsites for our clients. Before we created this role, our visual designers would design mockups for microsites, and then we would partner with an external agency to write the front-end code. By bringing design and development in-house, we gained greater control over the entire process. This increased autonomy allowed us to build microsites faster and experiment with adding progressive enhancements, like animations.
With growing client interest in microsites and other web-based products, we decided to invest in upskilling studioID Design’s graphic designers. Our primary training was a six-month visual design program centered around ShiftNudge. We referenced our lessons during weekly design reviews in an effort to practically apply what we learned and elevate the quality of our work over time.
Adding Design Project Managers to our team and expanding our freelancer network
As studioID Design grew, it was clear we needed greater organization and structure. In particular, we needed help with project management; as mentioned in the intro, we had 850 client design projects in 2021. To address this issue, we hired our first Design Operations Manager and first Design Project Manager. The addition of these two staff greatly contributed to our overall success. They helped gather more timely feedback from internal and external stakeholders, ironed out process documentation, managed design timelines, communicated with our freelance network and kept the whole team accountable.
Increasing collaboration with studioID Content Strategists
Over the course of 2021, studioID Design trained approximately 25 studioID content strategists on our design processes. We also coached the strategists on how to adopt the perspective of a designer when reviewing creative work and looked for ways to partner with them earlier in the content development process. It is a common misconception that design teams don’t need to be involved in the process of creating marketing collateral until the very end — when the copy has been written, the video scripted or the infographic narrative planned. At Industry Dive, we believe the opposite is true; designer involvement at the beginning of client projects is extremely important. studioID Design staff partner with content strategists and clients as early in a project’s process as possible to ensure greater design process efficiency and a higher-quality end product. Over the year, we became more connected than ever with our studioID content strategy coworkers.
We conducted our design review sessions with studioID content strategists async over Slack and live on quick Google Hangouts. These sessions helped us better educate our content strategists on design fundamentals and ensured they understood how we arrived at key design decisions. The sessions also opened up conversations around ways to improve the work we do for our clients. This communicative work environment ultimately led to more collaboration and stronger ideation for our clients.
Client spotlight: Square Omnichannel Graphics
Working closely with Square’s content strategy lead, we ideated visual solutions to Square’s marketing needs that best fit their budget, timeline and technical requirements.
We created a decision-tree-style infographic and animated GIFs to add visual engagement to Square’s long-form article. The designers wireframed, designed and animated a series of visuals that felt native to our client’s branding. You can view the full experience here.
Client spotlight: Epson Interactive Landing Page
From the initial concept all the way through the review phase, we partnered with the content strategy team to create a microsite for our client, Epson. studioID Design owned the design and development portion of Epson’s new interactive microsite. The goal of the project was to create a microsite that illustrates the future of work across multiple industries. Once we understood the goals, we dove into wireframes, static design mockups, development and quality assurance. Throughout the design process, we held review sessions with the content strategists and our client to align on the progress. We wanted to design an experience that felt trustworthy, purposeful and visually engaging. We created a series of interactive illustrations to showcase new technology in the education, retail, office and manufacturing industries. The interactive portion is designed to feel closely aligned with Epson’s greater content hub. You can view the full experience here.
