In-house team Est. 2019
Global Brand Creative Team
We have many in-house teams that focus on specific hardware and software, but we, as the Global Brand Creative Team, are responsible for focusing on the overall Square brand. We champion our customers and their businesses, of all types and sizes, and center them as our “why” for everything we do. We do this through a variety of projects that span across all channels, but our work mainly falls under two pillars. One, our brand awareness campaigns, which champion the Square brand and influence subsequent campaigns. From this work we also build out campaign and marketing identity systems. Two, our creative systems work forms the backbone for all of our brand work and is integral in maintaining consistency across our foundational brand elements. This work means continually updating our visual and verbal identity systems and platforms, ensuring our brand system becomes more efficient and accessible for all teams at Square.
FOLLOW THE TEAM AT
instagram.com/square
Team Members (53)
(AS OF PUB. DATE: Aug/8/2022)
Ben Aguirre
Copywriter
Trang Be
Copywriter
Alicia Cagnoli
Creative Program MGR
Ashley Corcoran
Visual Designer
Nick Dahl
Creative Program MGR
Bridget Dodd
Creative Ops MGR
Jess Dollano
Sr. Interactive Designer
Sherese Elsey
Photo Producer
Amy Feitelberg
Photo Art Direction lead
Jack Ferrante
Experiential Designer
Alex Friedman
Sr Video Producer
Brian Gagliardi
Creative Program MGR
Philippe Gauthier
Sr. Visual Designer
Robert Grashaw
Sr. Copy Editor
Evan Groll
Senior Video producer
Jen Holland
Copy Editor
Alison Howes
Production Designer
Neil MacLean
ACD
Julie Mastalerz
Sr Integrated Producer
Brandon Murray
Visual Designer
Lisa Omore
Visual Designer
Wesley Pan
Creative Program MGR O&O
Sue Park
Creative Project Coordinator
Aaron Poe
Design Director
Aaron Ruthnick
Video Producer
Alex Sirjani
Creative Ops MGR
Jonathan Skale
Sr. Copywriter
Erin Smith
Sr. Copywriter
Latia Spradley
Photo producer
Carl Sturgess
Art Director
Eileen Tjan
Group Creative Director
Sara Urbaez
Art Director
Justin Whaley
Copywriter
Johanna Williams
Creative Ops MGR
On working in-house…
Benefits
We each become an expert on our brand and our products, yet in our own ways. The range of creative experience and perspectives converging on one shared goal makes for a diverse yet unified voice that reflects both ourselves and our customers. Being our own client and agency, we also have the opportunity to truly own, advocate for, and influence our work in ways that usually wouldn’t be available to us. We’re working iteratively over time; building, growing, and evolving our brand with our partners across the company.
Challenges
A natural side effect of being our own experts is that sometimes we see things a little too close up and lose sight of the bigger picture. This is true, too, of inadvertently creating copy or design “rules” for ourselves and making the mistake of not questioning and not revisiting the reasons for those “rules” in the first place. We stay constant with our brand, but we have to remember that the world around our brand is ever changing — a reminder that we can, too.
On working with…
Others
When our project roadmap is particularly robust, we’ll seek the help of freelance creatives. We also work with agencies, generally on two streams: campaign work and specialized brand elements like motion and typography. The benefits of bringing in outside freelancers or agencies span from the most functional side of resourcing to the thought partnership that happens when a fresh member joins our team. There’s a particularly inspiring energy that comes from collaborating with external creatives. It keeps our thinking malleable and our brand built by a diverse group of creative thinkers.
Guidelines
The purpose of any good brand guidelines, particularly for an organization our size, is to create a shared understanding of our foundational brand assets and show how to use them properly. All the teams at Square work diligently to present a cohesive brand. In the end, it helps to codify common brand elements and provide some healthy guardrails. As the team responsible for publishing and maintaining the guidelines, we are mindful that a brand identity shouldn’t be locked in a way that only creates hard rules to follow. Our goal is to help teams understand the core brand — things that are good and true — and use it as a starting point. The best creative happens when teams adopt the brand guidelines and build upon them — bending them, but never fracturing them. Currently, we’ve built our brand guidelines as a Figma prototype with interactive elements baked in that allows for easy navigation and wayfinding. It links out to other working Figma files, design templates, and custom tools we’ve built for everyone to use in their workstreams. We’re in the early stages of building our own web-based brand portal that will create cohesion across every channel, house an accessible asset library, and be intuitively designed with consumer-facing and private, Square-only experiences. With the move to decentralization, it’s now more important than ever to have a centralized experience with a platform that is easy to maintain, update, and host.
2022
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