Morningstar Design & Systems

WHAT I DIDDesign
Art direction
Brand systems
YEAR2024–2026

CREDITSCreative Services Team

I’ve spent the last 2 years focusing on 2 main areas at Morningstar: brand design and brand systems. Both areas nurtured each other; bread and butter design work moved org-wide systems forward, org-wide systems brought consistency and speed to the bread and butter work.

My work in brand systems (modular email system, social media and ad templates) have seen widespread adoption across the org’s design and marketing teams, creating a downstream effect of trustworthiness and brand consistency. The documentation for each system lives on the Morningstar Design website and the component libraries are built into Figma.

For brand design work, I designed a ton of stuff, mostly for the screen, but not always. Some highlights: a new company-wide lower third, market strategist newsletters, and art direction for social first executive thought videos.

Market Strategist Newsletter System

Scalable graphic system for Morningstar’s market strategists LinkedIn newsletters. The goal was to show personality, relay their respective topics using Morningstar iconography and IP, and present a vision of subject matter expertise.

Where Data Speaks Campaign Work

Banners for the Where Data Speaks brand campaign.

Social Video System—Custom Intros

My team built out an entire playbook for a new social first video system. The idea was to design for scale, production, and craft, while allowing it be self-service.

Most of the system uses a one-size fits all approach to allow for that speed and production, but in a few instances, like in the examples above, we custom built intros for high level executive thought.

I was responsible for the art-direction and storyboarding for these. Motion was assisted by Isaac Day.

Modular Email System

Social Media Ad Templates

Anyone who has worked on corporate social media knows the importance of standardized social media cards. Morningstar’s central marketing design team had rough guidelines, but nothing was documented or built in a Figma library. To top it off, Morningstar’s design teams are decentralized causing more instances of inconsistency across business units.

A working group from central marketing’s design team set out to standardize and document elements like:

Margins
Logo size and placement
Typography
Spacing