Gauger + Associates
Employee Handbook & Holiday Identity

Award Winning Project Expanded

Shortly after starting at Gauger + Associates, I was approached by our creative director to design a book jacket for our recently revised employee handbook. Essentially, the handbook is an internal resource and guide to our company policies and standards, so I didn’t think the design would see the light of day, but I relished the opportunity to play with the existing brand graphics. This design was so loved by our team that it was submitted to and won Graphic Design USA’s American Graphic Design Award for Book Design (2018). Inspired by the win and still enamored with the design, our CEO suggested expanding the firm’s use of the pattern to a variety of holiday greetings. The results were fun meditations on the company’s brand in the new context of wrapping paper for gifts sent to our clients and an interactive direct mail holiday greeting. In the mailed package, the recipient received a ready to assemble Gauger + Associates party hat — a thinking cap to start off the creative new year with a festive outlook — as well as an invitation to post a picture on their Instagram and tag us in it. I loved the finished result and the challenge of counteracting the distortion of type on a curved and tapering surface.

These second and third iterations went on to win additional awards: American Graphic Design Award for Package Design (2018), and the American Graphic Design Award for Direct Mail (2018).

Inspiration

Gauger + Associates are known for their well-established retail and real estate branding and had recently decided to expand into new areas. And at first, I started moving toward an elegant but perhaps expected solution. Around the same time, I attended a weekend workshop at the Letterform Archive through Type at Cooper West, which was being taught by the delightful Ellen Lupton, of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. I came back to work the following Monday ready to take some risks with my design. That’s when I thought of creating a pattern out of the Gauger + Associates logotype against the company red as a background. My idea was to hide and reveal certain letters of the company name and to then reveal the title in the midst of the pattern.

Outreach

While many corporate holiday greetings come off as impersonal, I looked for ways to personalize the experience. Gauger is a small firm, and its people and their relationships with clients are foremost in their business model, so we took staff pictures with our hats to personalize each greeting across all of our e-blasts, paper cards, and Instagram.