Red Hat: Open Source Stories

Open Source Stories is a program, created by an in-house creative team at Red Hat, that highlights how people out in the world are using open source for good. It was born out of the urge to tell stories about people using open source outside of the enterprise IT world, and to showcase how open source can positively affect communities, no matter the size or location.

I started working on Open Source Stories (OSS) as a junior designer in 2016, creating film posters and marketing materials. Since then, my role has evolved to caretaker, guiding how the series is branded, being a strategic partner to the executive producer and film team, and also being an active design contributor on any new film or multimedia series. Working on Open Source Stories alongside so many incredibly talented people is by far one of the most rewarding experiences during my time at Red Hat. It allowed me to experience cross-functional work at its best, it opened my eyes to the power of storytelling, and it gave me a new appreciation for every person and discipline that I was lucky enough to work with.

Branding & art direction

In early 2019, Red Hat went through a transformational rebrand. As the sole designer for Open Source Stories at that time, I proposed an update to the overall branding and visual language to ensure that the series felt consistent with Red Hat’s new brand. The previous branding relied heavily on the use of handwritten elements paired with a brand typeface and it started to create a lot of inconsistencies, and tonally it did not align with the new brand and every story the team wanted to tell.

Leading a cross-functional group of designers, writers, and UX designers, our team created a new mark and dynamic art direction for the series rooted in our new brand, in curiosity, and in storytelling. And to better enable global creative partners, I created a set of guidelines to ensure the proper use of our newly created visual language.

previous branding & visual language

New branding & art direction

Film posters & promotion graphics

Over the last 6 years at Red Hat, I’ve created a bespoke visual art direction for 8 films and 3 article series. My main design role is to take a finalized story and develop an art direction to express it through a variety of media such as film posters, social ad placements, and graphics for the web. I also consult and strategize with various teams about innovative ways to promote our stories on different media platforms. And more recently, I worked with our global translations team to translate the “Opening the Loop” key art into Red Hat’s core 8 languages.

Here are some of my favorite finished designs and processes in between.

Films by order: Opening the Loop, Starting Small, The Science of Collective Discovery | Article series: Because We Had To

This is the personal site of Liz Wetzel and is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Red Hat, Inc.