Mac’s List
Branding for the human side
SECTOR
Design
Certified B Corp
Social Change
SERVICES PROVIDED
Rebranding, Graphic Design, Illustrated Information Design
Mac’s List is a Pacific Northwest job board driven by a simple idea that the hiring process should be more human. They live and breathe the opportunity for meaningful and rewarding careers for everyone. However, their outward-facing print collateral and social media graphics didn’t reflect the same liveliness and human-ness of their mission.
The Client
We collaborated with Becky and Leila in the marketing department at Mac’s List to deliver a brand expansion from their mission up — expanding on current logos and collateral to arrive at a look and feel that would energize their clients and job seekers alike.
The Challenge
Everything that visually represented Mac’s List in print and on social media fell short of their true purpose and working style. Their ebooks, sales sheets, and social media graphics had angular shapes and hard-edged fonts. Plus, their original palette of blues and oranges felt corporate and stiff, and their print materials needed well-thought out typography.
Finally, their imagery wasn’t communicating “I want to work with these people,” so it needed a ton of attention.
“Maria is the perfect partner for a business without in-house design resources! She helped us level-up our visual design with empathy, flexibility, and authentic enthusiasm for our brand. And we came away empowered with the tools we needed to carry our visual brand forward in the long-term.
Maria's design work is impeccable, but what really stands out is the way she works with clients. Maria has a distinct ability to understand your brand, see the humans behind it, and create something tangible that truly connects. In short, she's an absolute joy to work with. ”
Becky Thomas
Brand Marketing & Communications, Mac’s List
The Solution
We started with a full-scale brand audit, looking from a new emotive perspective. This included printouts of materials the client had marked up with question marks, highlights, and cross-outs — much like a job seeker would do during their search. Combined with our own internal research, the brand audit helped us develop a list of qualifying terms for how we wanted people to feel when they looked at the Mac’s List brand:
- Light, not heavy
- Fun!
- Adding in a color with meaning
- Approachable typography
- Hand-drawn elements to add a personal touch
- Photography that feels real and inclusive
Drawing upon these qualifiers, we made these actionable by:
- Expanding their color palette — The existing pairing of blue and orange was brightened by yellow and green, both which signify new beginnings. The result was an expanded palette that warmed everything up with a contemporary look and feel.
- Streamlining their typography — We found a print font along with a new typeface for callouts that lent a more friendly feeling.
- Providing clear art direction for photography — Since photos are a strong foundation of the brand, they should be used to bring the values of authenticity, empathy, approachability, and friendliness to life. Images reflecting diversity, inclusiveness, confidence, and casual vibes are preferred — including gray hair, beards, tattoos, and wrinkles!
We successfully delivered a new brand book, sales sheet designs, and social graphics — including hand-drawn illustrations that mimicked those same markups, scribbles, and scratches from the brand audit that looks just like a job seeker highlighting research, crossing out dud job leads, and circling networking opportunities.
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