Internet Society Creative Director

Growing a global brand: stewardship, systems, and scale

The Situation

A rebrand is only as good as what happens after the agency leaves. Once the Internet Society's new brand foundation was established in 2015, the real work began: taking that foundation and making it live and breathe across a complex, decentralized, global organization consistently, sustainably, and over the long term. As the internal brand lead, that responsibility fell to me.

The Challenge

The brand had been well received, but acceptance alone doesn't create consistency. ISOC operated across dozens of countries, with chapters, program teams, and staff who all had their own communications needs and varying levels of design literacy. The challenge was building a brand ecosystem robust enough to scale globally, flexible enough to serve diverse contexts, and simple enough that non-designers could actually use it. At the same time, the organization was evolving. Communications grew as a function. Campaigns became more sophisticated, and the brand needed to stretch into new territories like events, digital, video, fundraising, sub-brands, all without losing coherence.

My Approach

My philosophy was that a brand only works if the people using it understand it and have the tools to apply it. So alongside the creative work, I invested heavily in infrastructure and education. I worked with contractors and freelancers to extend my capacity, while remaining the strategic and creative lead across all brand output. I broke down silos between departments, embedding brand thinking into the day-to-day work of project teams, the communications function, and content production as a collaborator and champion. My goal was to make every staff member brand ambassadors.

The Work

• Brand extension and sub-brands As the organization grew, several sub-groups and programs needed their own identities. I developed a logo extension system that brought these into alignment with the parent brand giving each group a distinct presence while maintaining cohesion across the whole.

• Digital asset management I implemented a digital asset management system to organize brand guidelines, templates, and photography into something searchable and accessible to a global team. This single infrastructure investment paid dividends for years in consistency and time saved.

• Photography and video direction I hired and directed photographers to build a new library of brand-aligned imagery moving away from generic conference room shots toward visuals that reflected the organization's human approach and global character. I also led the concept and production of brand-level video assets, including an "about us" video that remains featured on the organization's YouTube channel today.

• Social media and templates I standardized the visual language across ISOC's social media channels and built a library of templates that allowed staff to produce on-brand content independently without needing to brief a designer for every post.

• Events Global events on a limited budget required creative problem-solving. I developed a scalable event identity system with custom booth graphics and worked with a global distribution partner to produce branded swag that could be deployed across regions cost-effectively.

• Campaigns As the communications function matured, I led the creative development of integrated campaigns — developing concepts, messaging frameworks, value propositions, and channel recommendations for initiatives including newsletter growth and fundraising.

• Brand guidelines The guidelines were more than a reference document — they were the connective tissue of the entire brand system. I came to this work having been on the receiving end of vague, hard-to-use guidelines, and I was determined to create something different: robust, well-considered, and genuinely usable by designers and non-designers alike. Written to reflect both the brand story and the practical realities of the work, they were designed to stand on their own for years. The live guidelines can be viewed at assets.internetsociety.org/guidelines

• Brand education and governance To keep a global, decentralized organization consistent, I created tutorials and how-to videos, ran open-door calls to walk staff and chapter volunteers through the assets, and updated templates annually — ensuring they remained both current and accessible. Accessibility standards were baked into every update cycle.

The Outcome

Over time, the organization came to understand and value cohesive brand storytelling in a way it hadn't before. The brand held by way of education, well-crafted tools, and consistent/persistent internal advocacy. The global staff and community was able to represent the organization credibly and consistently across dozens of countries. The assets, systems, and guidelines built during this period outlasted leadership changes and organizational shifts which is a measure of how deeply the brand was embedded into how ISOC operated.