Greenhouse ERG Branding
Creating sub-brand identities, guidelines and kits for Greenhouse's Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)
About Project
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Greenhouse help live out its DE&I mission and provide a space for people to come together, in community and as allies, to effect positive social change within and outside of the company.
List of Greenhouse ERGs
Goals
It was imperative that the diverse cultures, backgrounds and identities of its employees were reflected in a way that celebrates each group’s unique traits, while also feeling part of a cohesive system that is distinctly Greenhouse.
With this in mind, the goal was to create a design system that provides:
A strong link to the Greenhouse brand
A specific design language for ERGs
Consistent design grid, naming hierarchy, and use of type + color
Customization for messaging
Flexibility for events and social media
A solid foundation and room for scalability as more ERGs are created
ERG logo lockup structure
Process
A logo lock-up that provided Greenhouse context and consistent structure, while also allowing space for the personalities of each ERG to shine through was designated as the foundation to build on.
From there, another designer and I worked together and did several rounds of explorations with check-in points in between to get feedback on each other’s work. With buy-in from our Creative Director, we landed on a final design direction.
Early explorations
Final design direction
The chosen design system includes primary lockups for each ERG in dark and light versions, as well as secondary lockups which incorporate a frame border that contain stripes of colors unique to each group. The colors were thoughtfully chosen from Greenhouse’s expanded brand color palette with the exception of Rainbowhouse and Trellis, where we went outside the brand palette to use colors specific and important to those communities.
In addition to the lockups, we came up with a design language specific to ERGs and a strategy for how to apply the branding to digital assets, social media/event assets, and swag.
Final ERG branding system
The design language for ERGs included layering solid color blocks with fingerprint botanicals and portraits representative of the group
Examples of ERG swag designs
Outcomes
The new ERG branding system was presented to major stakeholders, including leaders from each ERG group and the Director of DE&I. Along with providing the context and thinking behind the branding system, we also included a kit for each group that included brand assets, presentation templates, and general digital resources for immediate use. A process for ERG specific creative requests was outlined with clear steps and requirements (i.e. the types of requests we would help with, roles of the stakeholders, where the budget for requests would come from, expectation of timelines/deadlines) for optimal and ease of collaboration between the Creative Team and the ERGs.
The new ERG branding was well-received by all stakeholders and was adopted promptly by the ERGs. The kits proved to be especially useful as they provided the groups with the most used tools/resources and empowered them to utilize them to achieve their initiatives and goals.
Slides from the presentation given to stakeholders. *Note: ERGs at Greenhouse are called "Arbors."
ERG branding in use