Like many firms engaged in the built environment, MASS faced unique challenges and opportunities to contribute to public health during the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 and beyond. The rapid exchange of information amongst health experts in our network required fast moving but rigourous work to develop and design guidelines. The work reflects crossdiscipline collaboration, the result of which flows from layout design work.

As the in-house graphic designer at MASS Design Group, I developed and implemented the visual identity for print materials, including the branding and report design for the firm’s anniversary event. The cover design drew inspiration from the plan-view shapes of MASS’s most iconic built works.

When I arrived at MASS Design Group, the team was working with a logo, a preferred color, a preferred font, and some habits. In my tenure there, I codified the tendencies into an active and functioning design system. I defined the brand and disseminated it across our international teams through trainings and one-on-one consults. I developed a library of print assets and a process for making use of these custom designed templates for presentations, proposals, reports, and cutsheets.

Page design for the firm’s tenth anniversary celebration report

Fundraising materials such as this MASS.Labs prospectus represent a collaboration between narrative, development, and  design contributors.

Design collaborations across teams often embodied the concept of "building the ship as it sails." In many contexts, a graphic designer is simply on the receiving end of text and images to flow into a report. Intead, my tenure as the in-house graphic designer was marked by the opportunity to work alongside research and communications teams to design the content and strategy for the work.

With a robust and complex portfolio of work beyond built projects, MASS Design Group required a diversity of materials representing its many research and fundraising aims.