Company
Justworks
My Role
Founding Designer
Director of Design
Creative Direction
Brand Ownership
From 2013 to 2018 I was Justworks’ first designer and eventually led the design team of about 10 people across product and brand. When designers joined, this is the orientation I gave to describe how our design decisions ladder up to our core values. Also shown are brand activations that reflect our unorthodox approach.
“Shared language, shared often” is the core of design leadership
Both internally with the design team, but also externally across the Justworks org, my goal was to evangelize what design did and how it connected to each teams’ and the entire company’s goals. All language here ladders up to the Justworks core values, creating a through-line across concepts.
Complexity does not just mean interface
Payroll, benefits, HR, and compliance are boring and complex topics. Communicating them effectively in ads is just as important as in a workflow. Similarly, it is our job as designers to facilitate our teammates - whether Sales, CS, Ops, etc - to effectively communicate with their customers and partners.
Tone is just as much a part of brand as visual identity
Brand is how our company’s values are expressed to the world. In earlier iterations of Out-of-home campaigns, the tone was simply the personal snark and sense of humor of myself and others on the marketing team. This drew attention but wasn’t the right tone, it was too mean and fairly arbitrary. Over time, we refined our tone to be always on the side of the entrepreneur, to commiserate, and to own that we’re the kinda weirdos you want in your corner.
We put the F-U-N in Payroll
No, there is no F, U, nor N in payroll. In fact, paperwork can get pretty scary. That’s why we decided our brand holiday would be Halloween, since “every day of the year is the scariest day for an entrepreneur”. Our Union Square NYC Subway Station takeover was a huge success, not only setting us up as a cornerstone of the NYC Startup community, but <a href="https://adage.com/article/special-report-small-agency-conference-and-awards/small-agency-year-1-10-employees-gold-circus-maximus/309870">winning AdAge</a> as well.
Get in, get out, get on with your day
Justworks isn’t meant to be the destination. Our goal wasn’t to create engagement or keep things sticky. As an entrepreneur, you start a business because you love something or are good at something – and neither of those are running payroll and making sure your employees have benefits. The Justworks dashboard is emblematic of that philosophy. From left to right: what you could do, what you need to do, what’s next. That’s it.