Working as ASG's Deck Designer, I handed off up to 10 projects a week to production, contributing in over 100 Youtube videos published on multiple Google Developer Youtube channels. I worked on all product areas, which includes 20 different brand identities like Cloud and Android. I gained deep knowledge and experience on best practices for layout, typography, illustration, accessibility, and advanced presentation features like transition and animation.
My main focus was to improve visual consistency and accessibility on Keynote presentations to deliver a captivating and cohesive visual narrative that effectively communicates brand messages and enhance user experiences. I collaborated closely with our internal and external clients for feedback and revisions.
Role
Visual Designer focused on Presentation design
Project Duration
Nov 2022 - Present
Tools
Keynote, Google Slides, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects
Team
Design Manager (x2)
Internal and external stakeholders (numerous)
Google Developer Studio powered by Advanced System Group is known for their software development tools and platforms, application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources.
With the overloaded amount of projects GDS juggles, the team resulted to outsourcing third party agencies to help lighten their load in beautifying presentations. Often stakeholders pointed out that branding was coming across inconsistent, so the quality of work as well as the use of time and budget were declining.
As I integrated into the GDS design team, I focused on refining visual consistency and accessibility on presentations to deliver a captivating and cohesive visual narrative that effectively communicates brand messages, clients were thrilled at the quality and time-efficiency of these lower budget projects.
To finalize a deck, each deck needed to check all the boxes in terms of visual consistency to its branding, accessibility standards, and translating technical concepts that matched the client's vision. I hit the ground running by averaging 2 revisions for each deck, leaving the clients and managers happy when compared to the previous third party design agency who averaged 8 revisions before finalizing. That is a 75% increase in client satisfaction, team productivity, and project budgets.
Goal 1
Visual consistency
From layout to typography to icons to animations, all brand assets had to be consistent and distinguishable to their product area.
Goal 2
Accessibility
Keeping in mind most users are watching on a tiny mobile device screen, I balanced between layout and heavy loaded info charts.
Goal 3
Positive client feedback
With detail oriented work comes with technical and detailed feedback. I made sure to implement all feedback details on revisions.
I work on two main types of projects: standard and creative. Highlight #1 focuses on recreating static charts and infographics. These projects simplify complex, information-heavy charts, making them easy for users to follow step by step. Highlight #2 showcases more interactive and creative projects, featuring micro-animations that transition smoothly from one topic to the next. These projects help viewers follow along quickly and easily while expanding on the topic.
Both Project Highlights involve creating interactive design solutions that make following the topic simple and intuitive for the viewer.
On a daily basis I recreate technical charts. For example, shown below is a chart that a stakeholder requested to recreate to add in a video.
Text is too small. 30 pt on videos are accessibility standards
Layout needs to be redesigned. Image is vertical versus video is horizontal
Timing animation step by step being mindful of the editor adding the VoiceOver
Matching the brand colors and finding icons
I recreate and animate information-heavy charts considering the user needs of accessibility, proper layout, timed animation, and consistent branding for the viewers to follow along in a simple and intuitive fashion.
Recreated the chart with 30 pt text for users to see all the information legible on their tiny mobile device screens
Edited the layout so all essential parts of the graph are well-aligned and evenly spaced to create a sense of flow and unity
Built out the chart and timing animations allow the viewers to follow along with ease and more interactive
Focused on visual consistency, I changed the colors, fonts, arrows, and icons to create a strong brand prescence and match previous episodes.
Shown below is a small snippet of a more creative and interactive project taking the viewer from topic to topic while using the same visual assets.
Stakeholders outline on the deck what type of animations they envision. Part of my job is to understand their vision for the animation along with reading the script, and bringing these images or text to life while conveying the right brand messages.
Typically building animations could be very time consuming and take days, especially when animations are created on After Effects which is the industry standard application. I built an expertise using Keynote's transition and animation tools to get the same high quality design for simple position/scaling/timing animation needs that a higher budgeted After Effects project might use.
Moved visual assets from one slide to another to provide seamless transitions from one topic to the next
Created images or choosing from graphic library to best visually translate technical concepts
Built animations that allow viewers to follow along easily and intuitively while transitioning between topics
Maintained design system and branding assets to unify and match previous episodes
Challenge #1: Time management
I experienced managing up to 10 projects a week for the first time. Being on top of my time-management was half the job.
Solutions: I found some techniques that worked for me. When I first started, we didn't have any project management tools so I created my own spreadsheet on Notion to help me stay on top of my projects. I outlined each project with all the small details I took from my flooded emails, like the due dates, links, how many revisions I had, etc. Later on, the team began transitioning outlining my projects on a Google Sheet.
Another productivity boost was using a Pomodoro timer on Youtube. It helped prevent from WFH burn-out as I focused every 25 minutes then took a break for 5 minutes.
Results: Stakeholders received all projects during their respective due dates. Sometimes when projects were too lengthy and could not be finished within the day, I would send the project file and call out a few details I could implement in the next round to address any concerns.
Challenge #2: Learning and juggling lots of different applications
Keynote was the main platform I was using, but I've never used it before starting my job. I learned quickly since it's similar and very simple to use for even first-timers users. With more trial and error, I learned faster ways to recreate designs and animations. I also juggled between Illustrator to retrieve or create graphics and Photoshop to create thumbnail designs. For one project, I started to learn After Effects.
Results: Some learning curves were much quicker than others, but overall I leveled up an abundance of valuable design skills from animation, illustration, and multi-media on Keynote, Illustrator, Photoshop, and even After Effects.
Success #1: Published videos reaching up to 150k+ views.
I contributed designs on videos that gained lots of attention and positive user feedback on Google Developer Youtube channels. One of the channels I work with is Google Cloud Tech with 1M+ subscribers. We receive favorable comments saying "great visuals," "took complex issues and made them understandable" and "training videos created by Google are always high-quality." Here's an example of a video that reached over 150k+ views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A4W03qUTsw
Success #2: Dropping revision count from V8 to V2.
Google outsourced third-party design agencies to refine devbytes, which averaged 8 revisions before finalizing. Templates were often not used correctly and client satisfaction was starting to decline. Google then onboarded me as their deck designer where I averaged 2 revisions before finalizing. This boosted impact on client satisfaction, team productivity, and project budgets by 75%.
I find it very fulfilling to know that I was contributing design efforts to such a large audience like Google Developer platforms. Anytime I received feedback even for the smallest of details, I was excited to learn how something so small can be the ultimatum between a user understanding and valuing a technical concept or not. A reminder of how powerful good or bad design can be.
Thinking back about the time when I was student learning about design, my weakness was in the small nitty gritty details that Visual Designers comes across all the time. Naturally, I've had more of a passion for spending time on big thinking and reasoning, which is why my passion was in UX Design. As I started working as a Visual Designer at Google Developer Studio, my environment and work transformed me to finding refining small details admirable! It has equipped me to be a designer now that I feel more passionate about advocating the importance and value of the smallest of details in design while realigning feedback into the bigger vision and goals like brand identity, accessibility, and user experience.
