Sarah Crizer

Over a 12-month engagement with Cognizant, I led the visual refinement and strategic extension of the company’s global brand identity system. The Visual Identity 3-Year Check-Up initiative evaluated and strengthened the brand three years post-brand refresh. Our focus was on evolution, not reinvention. A central component of the work was developing a Visual Identity Framework—a strategic blueprint for how the elements of the visual system are assembled and expressed. This framework aligned the brand to three core storytelling approaches: Brand Story (vision and ambition), People Story (human-centered narratives), and Services Story (capabilities and value delivery).

In parallel, we expanded the color architecture, typography standards, shape language, introduced approved pattern designs, imagery, and layout principles, and a data visualization system into a more modular, scalable ecosystem supported by updated global guidelines and asset recommendations.

We explored hundreds of design studies across applications, formats, and storytelling contexts to rigorously test the system’s flexibility and coherence. The samples featured here represent a select set of approved micro-adjustments.

Lead creative partners (and some of the best humans on the planet):

Nertil Muhaxhiri, Deepyellow
Luisa Collazo, Cognizant

I was brought in by Said Differently for a quick-win engagement with their new client, TIAA. The goal was to design a responsive email campaign that communicated insights from a dense financial report in a way that felt clear and relevant to the audience. The content was complex, so part of my role included reviewing the report and identifying the most meaningful data points to feature.

Leading art direction and execution, I developed custom data visualization approaches for both desktop and mobile. Rather than using standard charts and graphs, we explored more thoughtful ways to visualize the information—formats that felt aligned with TIAA’s brand and made the insights easier to grasp at a glance. The data visualizations include a combination of stock imagery, Firefly AI image generation, and hand-drawn sketch elements. I worked closely with project managers, copywriters, and the creative director to ensure the visuals and messaging were tightly integrated and effective across devices.

Recently launching a global brand refresh, T.Rowe Price is building a range of creative assets, systems, and new branding expressions across the business. I was contracted as a Content Designer to work within the Global Digital Solutions (GDS) Experiences Design Team. I lead the art direction and created digital illustrations + branded content to support web campaigns in the Japan/APAC region.

In collaboration with UX/UI designers, project managers, design system leaders, and key stakeholders, we prototyped a series of web campaign pages within the Beacon design system (Figma). My process included in-depth cultural research, content auditing, and deep brand immersion. These digital illustrations are some of our final Japan/APAC assets, reflecting the new visual brand, specifically curated for our Japan audiences.

Selah Coffee Company roasts high-quality whole bean coffee with a mission mindset. Ethically partnering with farmers, coffee brokers and producers in strategic locations, Selah works to improve the economic status of surrounding villages and towns by helping eliminate the need for corruption and negative commercial trading, such as drug and human trafficking.

Selah means "to pause, to rest, to reflect." We wanted the brand design to evoke that same sense of a thoughtful pause: to living in the moment and being present. The bird symbol ultimately embodied the sense of reflection we wanted to convey.

I created the logo identity, package designs, and high-fidelity website and app design references.

selahcoffeeco.com
Instagram: Selah Coffee Co


—
If you’re in the mood for some really good coffee, order here!

Using PwC's Annual Global CEO Survey as the basis for our design, I created a system for implementing digital and print assets for PwC's brand presence at Davos 2022 & 2023.

This suite of representational vector illustrations was created to represent PwC’s Global Learning & Discovery’s (L&D) 4 areas of service:

1. Content
2. Delivery
3. Certifications
4. Impact

For each area of service, we created a hero illustration along with a smaller version of the concept that functioned as an icon and shorthand image. The illustration set was created as assets for Global Learning Service’s new Sharepoint site, which is a service hub for global territories. Beginning with rough sketches to get the concepts nailed down, I then based new scenes, elements, and characters on PwC’s representational brand illustration style to craft and visualize the content messaging.

COP27 is the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Paris Agreement, and was held November 6-20, 2022, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. PwC has supported the engagement of businesses and countries at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) for the last 10 years.

I was tasked with creating a series of options for an on-site wall graphic to represent PwC’s partnership and commitment to climate change. We explored imagery, color, layout, and various type treatments to most accurately reflect our optimism and mission in the race to reach Net Zero. I worked with key stakeholders, who worked closely with the host country representatives at COP, to clarify our perimeters and brand presence.

While working as Brand Designer for the AWS Global Events Creative Team, I lead the brand design production for Summits 2021, Spring and Fall programs. I produced brand design applications for three events over a six-month period. Each event had it’s own design and colorway system, respective brand guidelines, multiple language translations, and each event covered both a virtual online platform as well as in-person experiences. Here are a few digital and print examples for the Spring Summit 2021.

EV Connect provides electric vehicle charging management software and solutions. This logo concept was part of a rebranding effort, and was one of three final designs. While the client chose another direction, this concept and identity system represents the connection between people, ecosystems and software. To help visualize EV's charging solutions, we wanted to show the value and flexibility of the intersection of those combined solutions—all the things that make EV Connect unique and ubiquitous in the electric vehicle industry.

Working with Anderson Creative, I developed a collection of icons to represent concepts and design principals. This iconography style was created for specific diagram illustrations to be used in Airbus marketing collateral.

Minds + Machines is GE’s annual premier Industrial Internet conference. This premier event features GE Digital’s robust ecosystem between machines, people, and software. With thought-leading keynotes, informative sessions, and hands-on demos and technical trainings, attendees experience a wealth of industrial application interaction and collaboration.

I lead the design for Minds + Machines (yrs 2017-2018), for global and regional (Europe) events. Building on my years of event branding experience, I developed the visual design for all marketing amplification projects (website design, email marketing, social amplification, promo materials), as well as overseeing brand and design continuity for the onsite experiential design. 

Photography by Jackson Patterson Photography

Project: Logo identity

Cinder & Seed is a film and story production company. With a range of clientele and project types, Cinder & Seed wanted an identity that was simple, iconic and typographical. Leaning into their cinematographic style, my goal for the identity mark was to create a unique baseline for the branding palette to serve as a backdrop to their work. The black and white color system combined with the custom typographic icon allows for a strong foundation to a clear identity mark.

I lead the design and created various infographics for industry and co-branded related campaigns with GE Digital. These are often used as downloadable assets within a campaign to drive engagement and thought leadership.

Using GE Digital’s existing iconography system, I created new icons to expand the brand’s icon library. Using GE’s brand design language, “Flow,” we’ve illustrated new concepts to represent various industries we work in, as well as icons for the GE Digital website. Here are some examples.

Coursefriend is a service to help you choose your next online computer science course. 

The goal of this project was to create an identity mark that communicated the presence of learning in a digital world, and also subtly represent the computer science industry. We wanted to play with typography and create a clever mark that could be interpreted in a few different ways by the viewer. I designed the logo and provided web branding consultation.  

I lead the creative build for GE Digital's 2018 Sales Kick Off. The theme around 2018 SKO was FOCUS, and came out of our goal for authenticity on the industry climate as we embraced a collective clarity to move forward. With this design, we typographically aimed to push the emphasis of the letterform to represent an idea of complexity—all the things that are competing for our attention, things that require distinction or simplification—and contrast those ideas with our greater sense of clarity and direction.

Leading the design for our Industry pages on ge.com/digital, I was responsible for designing the visual flow of content and building out the webpages. I worked closely with our team and key stakeholders within the organization to ensure alignment to the right business objectives, developing appropriate content and design strategies that connected with our industry audiences.

Here is an example showcasing the process to designing these pages.

Landing page concept for GE Digital's customer stories

Role: Lead creative direction + design execution

Meridium’s annual user conference focused on delivering compelling customer stories, engaging in industry thought-leadership, and showcasing unique, interactive end-user product enhancements to the software enterprise suite. 

I lead the visual design for Meridium Conference, years 2009-2016. I was responsible for creating and executing the visual brand for each conference year. I managed contract designers and worked closely with multiple outside production vendors to align and execute the event's brand via: stage graphics, video productions, on-location print works and installs, environment graphics, and overall spatial attendee journeys. Leading up to each year’s event, I also worked closely with the Meridium Marketing team to create digital marketing campaigns and sales enablement pieces. 

These examples display the overall brand-feel for Meridium Conference 2016. The theme for the 2016 conference, “Your gameplan for your assets,” centered on creating a playbook for our customers' APM initiative. Basing off of this theme, we created a brand application that included sports-related design elements combined with industry imagery for an engaging and successful attendee experience. 

Meridium (now part of GE Digital) created APM software and services for global asset-intensive companies. 

Photography cred: www.yanasphotos.com

Over the course of my 7 year tenure at Meridium, I was privileged to take part in many brand adjustments and explorations. Early on, we were able to play and experiment with various identity elements. My focus was to establish a visual brand philosophy and identity for the company, leading the APM community with a powerful and recognizable visual brand. These examples show some of those early explorations that also ended up sticking around for a few years. 

*Meridium (now part of GE Digital) created APM software and services for global asset-intensive companies.