Verbal design offers more than copywriting: it creates a strategic framework for every word your brand says.
Brands in 2022 need to connect with audiences across a shifting digital ocean of ten zillion touchpoints. As a strategy-driven creative lead with a copy background I’ve partnered with agencies including Gretel, Kettle, R/GA, Giant Spoon, and Day One to design verbal identities that feel ownable, inviting, and utterly human—with outputs ranging from multi-channel messaging platforms to brand stories to voice & tone guidelines. Below are a few of my recent favorite projects.
A brand voice for Tend, a next-generation financial well-being platform, that helps Tend not sound like a bank—because it isn’t one.
Research shows that fear, shame and anger are the most common emotions surrounding money—so to build a brand identity for Tend, a member-based, social-powered fintech company, the goal was to give Tend a look, attitude, and voice that’s optimistic, inclusive, and disarmingly human.
Agency: Gretel
Relaunching Departures, American Express’ iconic media property, for the digital age with a verbal identity that inspires editorial content, marketing comms, and the online UX journey.
If travel means more to you than just the trips you book—if you see travel as a mindset, or a lifestyle—you are willing to embrace the change behind any journey. When the challenge arose to evolve American Express’s iconic Departures magazine into a media property for the digital age, my team welcomed the chance to reimagine the platform’s current footprint while honoring the elevated heart and soul of the original print edition. I led the brand voice work, partnering closely with T Brand’s creative leaders and Giant Spoon’s strategy arm to land a verbal approach that synced across editorial, marketing, and UX. The result is a smart, thoughtful voice that helps inspires new journeys for readers with unexpected perspectives on travel, art, well-being, cuisine and more.
Agency: Giant Spoon / Kettle / T Brand Studio
The challenge of unifying CBS’s brand voice for the streaming era? Defining what role the media giant really plays for its audience.
Who is CBS anyway? What if CBS wasn’t a huge media brand, but a person you knew—how would they act, and how would you feel about them? As part of a multi-stage refresh of the CBS brand identity, including a full-motion reimagining of the iconic eye logo, I led brand voice and messaging development. To land at how CBS should speak, I first identified who CBS could be: with a brand persona called the “intuitive host”: who always knows just what you want, always welcomes you, and is always thrilled to introduce you to some amazing new people.
Agency: Gretel
How to speak the Equinox lifestyle of high-performance living, whether you’re speaking to fitness hipsters, spin class fanatics, or lovers of luxury.
As an in-house creative leader, I helped evolve Equinox into a 360 luxury lifestyle brand by developing a verbal identity that embodied a core idea of “high performance”—the result was an omnichannel brand voice and tone where every word works as hard as any other, reflecting expertise, elevated taste, and a spirit of bravery that is ready to face any challenge.
Agency: In-house