In-house team Est. 2018
Brand Studio
At Gusto, Brand Studio is responsible for creating and maintaining a category-defining HR brand that celebrates the people at the heart of modern businesses — from business owners and HR professionals to hardworking employees and modern accountants.
FOLLOW THE TEAM AT
bit.ly/gustobrandstudio
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Team Members (10)
(AS OF PUB. DATE: Apr/18/2022)
Alex Towne
Copywriter
Amanda Ortiz
Illustrator
Dan Reid
Design Director
Ellen Ennes
Lead Copywriter
Joseph Barrientos
Designer
Melanie Picardo
Brand Designer
Micah Panama
Creative Director
Michelle Leen
Creative Producer
Ojai Mitchell
Brand Design Lead
Peter Herbert Barnaba
Brand Designer
On working in-house…
Benefits
Mission fit: We all specifically choose Gusto. We’re incredibly passionate about supporting businesses and inspired by the mission to create a world where work empowers a better life. Measurement: We’re involved with the performance of our work even after it’s shipped. It’s empowering to be able to iterate quickly and back up our ideas with real data and impact. Knowledge depth: Our team has seriously deep product knowledge because of our focused approach and cross-org collaboration. It positions us as strategists and improves our work. Teamship: There’s no team-vs-client tension when you’re in-house. Marketing partners, product experts, and brand creatives are equally invested in creating the best work possible.
Challenges
Avoiding burnout: We’re organized by customer segments so while being able to focus is nice, we do have to be thoughtful about rotating designers and writers to provide ourselves with new challenges. Need a change after launching a big accountant event? You should be able to dive into something new, like our employee app instead. Keeping it weird: In-house, the pipeline of projects rarely lets up. It’s easy to go into creative auto-pilot in favor of shipping things fast. That’s why it’s important for us to say “no” sometimes. We need to be intentional about making space for fresh, weird, original ideas.
On working with…
Others
We occasionally pull in freelancers to collaborate on things like motion graphics, or we’ll work with a muralist for an office wall project. Other times, we might partner with an agency to bring a large-scale video project to life or hire a writer to help us during our busiest season. Between the big tasks and the smaller ones, we’ll probably tap our network of smart creatives at least once or twice a month.
Guidelines
Our brand guidelines keep us honest and consistent while giving us a platform on which to build and grow. (In fact, we’re currently revisiting the way we show up for our growing customer segments.) Our guidelines also help provide the entire company with the vocabulary they need to talk and ask questions about the brand. Because, at the end of the day, everyone here is responsible for creating and representing Gusto. Not just us. A good set of brand guidelines has to have the perfect mix of inspirational moments and functional tools. You need bold headlines and visuals that get employees excited about what our brand represents. But you also need quick, clear instructions. And it doesn’t hurt to have a library of approved assets that allow partners to self-serve. Possibly the most important thing is figuring out a good digital home for your guidelines so you can update them easily and in real-time. A perfect tool may not exist, but we’re pretty happy with Brand Folder right now.
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