Responses by Peter Ladd, creative director and cofounder, Pendo.
Background: Communications company Unifonic was experiencing a time of rapid growth and were challenged with how to hold onto the culture it has worked hard to establish for both existing and new employees. Among a number of team-building events and gatherings, there was an opportunity to develop a keepsake piece that would capture life at Unifonic and its culture. We pitched the idea to design a “culture book” that would weave the stories, voices and people together as one.
Design thinking: To really understand the culture at Unifonic, we surveyed and interviewed the team to include everyone in the process. Our concept, The Story of U, was inspired by firsthand examples of how employees contributed to the culture, what culture meant to the team and how ‘you’ are an integral part of it all. Focusing the narrative on both the individual and the collective provided the thread to weave the story together from cover to cover.
Challenges: Engaging the entire company—more than 150 people—to be a part of the project and distilling everyone’s responses!
Favorite details: The use of color and type throughout the book and how it conveys messages and content in interesting ways. The client trusted us to push the limits of the Unifonic brand through the project, which resulted in a very rich, distinct book that captured the energy of the company.
New lessons: We learned a lot about the history of telecom and communication (as far back as the 1920s) and its different eras while researching the developing content for the book.
Visual influences: The brand itself was inspired by early telecom and communication imagery—namely the waveform symbol, which is synonymous for communication and speech. We interpreted the waveform and used it as a device that weaved throughout the book in many different ways.
