Brand & Design System for Liberty Mutual

In 2017, Liberty Mutual was in the midst of a major brand transition. It was an “all-hands” effort.

From day one, I was an enthusiastic collaborator. Partnering with an incredibly talented group from Enterprise Branding, Marketing and Digital, we were brought together to refine and rollout the new branding across all media.

Pressure testing

Step one in supporting the transition was to explore how the brand would look and feel as an interface. Alongside a small team from Digital, we were tasked with creating design explorations of the new branding applied to our Digital products. We would review our screens in concert with similar explorations being created for other media by the Copper Giants (Liberty Mutual’s internal agency) and Enterprise Brand.

Striving for product design maturity:

• Make the new brand consistent and pervasive

• Establish the foundation of design styles and elements

• Launch the first universal, fully accessible Liberty Mutual Design System (LMDS)

My point-of-view and design exploration was instrumental in both vetting decisions and pushing on the constraints we were designing within. It was a great opportunity to provide early influence to a job I was just starting.

Launching a system

Step two in our journey in launching the LMDS was to form a guild—a large, cross-functional working group—that would organize and extrapolate on the pressure testing. Our working group broke down elements of the brand and interface designs systematically. Mapping each piece to the foundational sections of our design system, which included typography, color, etc.

As a collaborator, I was able to influence many aspects of the guild’s work, including:

• Shifting from basic design principles to Liberty-specific “experience principles”

• Creating responsive typography specifications

• Designing and building an icon library

• Contributing to branded illustration

• Designing a system UI for internal users

• Design initiatives for components types, for example: cards, toggles, etc.

After launch, the guild members worked across all of LM Digital to support adoption and ensure our internal users were successfully using it as intended.

Liberty for the people

The new brand was in-market—increasing unaided brand awareness across different media platforms—but it wasn’t yet reflected on LibertyMutual.com. We needed to catch up.

Can we rollout the new brand, without a redesign?

Being so embedded in the LMDS efforts, it gave me a unique opportunity to facilitate the rollout of the first newly branded UI. Approaching the leadership for LibertyMutual.com, I presented a plan that would allow us to bring simple elements of the new brand live to our customers—without necessitating a wholesale redesign project. We were able to roll it all out in less than one quarter.

Since we followed the plan that I put together, I was asked to serve as Product Owner, with the responsibilities of organizing and delegating work for every designer, developer and product owner in the LibertyMutual.com portfolio.