Red Hat: Thought Leadership Program

After being promoted to Art Director at the beginning of 2020, my first assignment was to lead a cross-functional team to develop an art direction for our Thought Leadership Program from concept to execution. The strategy of the program was to combine Red Hat’s unique point-of-view (coupled with third-party pieces) about emerging technologies to encourage on-site engagement with a compelling, interactive experience. Our charge as the creative team was to create a visual system that was content and data-forward, using design as a support to widely share the Red Hat perspective through this interactive experience.

The final result was a fresh suite of creative work that supported the program strategy and Red Hat’s POV.

Art direction

Based on the brief, we knew that this program would be content and data-heavy, but it also needed to feel fresh and forward-thinking. The team started to iterate on a direction that uses bold type to support a confident POV from Red Hat, simple shapes to help tie together multiple technology metaphors, and dynamic layouts to help make the content feel more editorial.

Creative chaos

We were working with quick timelines to accommodate an industry event launch, which meant that creative pieces were being developed when a clear point of view on the emerging technology was not even finished. Without clean handoffs between disciplines, our team all but dissolved our job titles and worked together on everything. The absence of clear content about the technologies resulted in a flexible direction towards abstracted visuals that didn’t try too hard to explain how the tech actually worked—that worked in our favor when we needed assets to be bold, quick, and easy to read or watch.

Final result

In a month of creative chaos, we established an art direction, tone, clear point of view, and suite of assets for the launch of this program. Using the combination of simple type style, limited color, and subtle textures, we built versatile pieces that could meet IT decision makers where they already were and introduce Red Hat’s unique perspective for their business challenges. We took advantage of strategic placements in IDG, InfoWorld, and SmartBrief, as well as focusing heavily on LinkedIn as our main social platform.

Always iterating

As industry trends shifted , we evolved the program to focus more on how Red Hatters see problems differently to lean into our competitive advantage. This led to a slightly different approach to the campaign, bringing actual Red Hat experts to the forefront and pairing their point-of-view with third-party pieces. The art direction shifted to use more photography, 3D renders, use of handwritten annotations to show how Red Hatters see opportunities when others see problems, and we emphasized more of a lighter color mode for the web experience.

Credits: Liz Wetzel (art director), Claire Allison (lead designer), Nick Burns (associate creative director, design), Eric Kramer (senior motion designer), Aaron Williamson (UX design manager), Renee Mansell (UX designer), Dawn Quinn (senior content strategist), Jacques Oury (marketing director), Bryson Mooring (senior account manager), Anna Stark (marketing director), Beth Nash (corporate media strategist), Jimmy Ryals (associate creative director, copy), Travis Conte (online marketing manager), Jason Carabelli (senior content strategist).

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