Argus had many disruptions limiting their growth, the experience delivered and in-house capability. As their first designer, I partnered with different teams to assist the company globally. 

This is a nearly four years journey of improving internal processes and deliverables, embedding design and a more customer-focused culture in-house and engaging stakeholders globally to make this transformation possible. 

Client: Argus Media has over 1,200 staff and 20+ offices globally, and offers price assessments, consulting services and conferences for the energy and commodity industry.

Role: Senior Designer, becoming a very holistic position due to corporate needs and my multidisciplinary background (organisational/enterprise design, branding/strategic, graphic and digital design, service design and design research).

  • Challenge

    For the company: internal disruptions due to change in the leadership, inconsistent design system, a shift from a regional to a global approach, and a long list of corporate issues accumulated over the years due to lack of guidance.

    For me: new industry, challenging technical knowledge, low design maturity internally and a market-driven environment - plus an unplanned role and little direction provided.

  • Process

    I started a discovery process to understand the organisational landscape, their processes and those involved, in London and other regions. I learnt from and collaborated with experts within the company to identify needs, prioritise initiatives, facilitate implementation, and educate the team on best practices and how design could help the business thrive.

  • Outcome

    A design system with guidelines and a library developed and implemented globally, bringing cohesiveness, optimisation and value to the company.

    Design processes for Global Marketing, increasing collaboration, quality, efficiency and consistency.

    Best practices, tailored solutions and setting the ground for a more customer-focused approach.

Research - making sense of Argus

Lacking information and with no clear route to follow, I learnt from internal interactions, industry experts within the company and desk research to understand Argus’ ecosystem and opportunities.

Each project was a way to learn more, make new connections and short/long-term improvements, and raise awareness of design best practices.

From observation and insights gathered from the core and extended team, the key needs identified and initiatives taken were:

  • Two clashing design systems -> Restore the branding for a cohesive experience

  • Inconsistency globally -> Create and implement a global process for Marketing and tools to facilitate the adoption

  • Inefficiency and high cost -> Optimise and increase capability and quality

  • Low design maturity -> Educate teams, embed design in the company and raise awareness of customer-centric approach to improve offerings and results

Approach
Bringing back consistency and empowering internal teams

A consistent branding and design system are essential to establish a common language between Company <-> Customers and ensure a similar experience across all channels. Also, to work more effectively and create space for further changes.

To enable this shift and ensure adoption, I provided as many tools and resources as possible to smooth the process and facilitate the implementation: 

Design system and design library shared and adopted globally

Guidelines, how-to guides and training

Co-creation, continuously improving processes and deliverables

With this initiative, we also enhanced the collaboration across regions and cross-departments, facilitating reproducibility and giving agency and ownership to other teams too.

One team, one process

Rethinking ways of working to enable a global approach

In parallel, I was also helping Marketing achieve a global approach by collaborating with all regions, structuring and implementing design processes and creating resources to ease implementation. With this, we were able to standardise, optimise and increase productivity, and ensure quality and consistency globally.

Increasing the in-house capability and enhancing collaboration

Those two initiatives helped put the company back on track and raised awareness about design, brand compliance and its importance in helping structure and grow the business. With a solid foundation, we built from there to also reduce costs with external agencies and leverage internal partnerships.

Extra perk

I also brought to the company my capability of synthesizing complex information/data in a coherent and simpler way, making it impactful and easier to digest through visual storytelling.

Especially challenging due to the high technical level required in the energy and commodity industry and complex/systemic/new subjects such as Net Zero and the Energy Transition.

Impact

A unified global Marketing-Design process to enhance collaboration and increase in-house capability, a cohesive design system with a comprehensive design library to give agency and support to teams across different departments/regions, ensuring accessibility, quality and consistency in value delivered 

A solid foundation, embedding design in-house to increase quality and consistency in the experience across digital and non-digital channels, also reducing costs globally

Every project was an opportunity to plant and nurture the seed of a more customer-centred approach, with the company increasing the team and investments in it

Enhanced collaboration with colleagues inside and outside Marketing acting as allies in meeting brand compliance and co-creating better outcomes.