River Brandon

While leading the design team for eBusiness, we started our initial effort to create an enterprise design system, beginning with a responsive web toolkit. The ultimate goal of our work is to establish a design-ops platform for all of Travelers, which will enable improved quality of design, faster delivery to market, and better collaboration across functions. Our initial phase of work was completed with the support of several vendors, after which I transitioned to the role of full-time product owner. I am responsible for setting the vision for the platform, managing prioritization of the work, and identifying various operational needs in order to create a scalable solution for the enterprise.

As the leader of the design division of our practice, I supported our design leads and product designers across multiple portfolios. eBusiness is a shared enterprise division, partnering with other lines of business in to define and build shared enterprise capabilities, such as our agent service portal, self-service platforms for customer account management, and employee-facing systems for customer support. My focus was on advancing the maturity of the practice, establishing new shared approaches, and setting up design operations to make our team more efffective and our work more consistent. I also served as a point person for collaboration with other enterprise functions, such as marketing, and helped to establish our enterprise-wide Experience Design Center of Excellence.

As Experience Design practice lead for Travelers Personal Insurance, I was responsible for partnering with our delivery leads in order to establish design strategy and deliverables across a $50 million dollar annual IT investment. This included quote and issue systems for agents, self-service web apps for customers, back office systems, as well as working with the enterprise partners to set design standards and best practices.

I led digital campaign strategy and creative development for the LEGO Star Wars campaign in the in-house advertising agency. My responsibilities included content strategy, creative direction, and interface design for the franchise site, as well as collaboration with stakeholders and vendors to create video games, animations, and online interactive experiences.

I designed and helped to launch FanNation.com, which acquired by Sports Illustrated Digital within our first year. We worked closely with SI and Time Interactive for several years, creating custom web experiences for various properties. We also established a client service business creating custom online fantasy games for NFL.com, NBA.com, NASCAR.com, NHL.com, and others. I led creative direction, experience design, and front end development across all projects.

I established this design studio as part of a group of graphic services businesses, and was responsible for developing the business, creative direction, and execution. We provided design services, including web site design and development. Clients included Hasbro and Parker Brothers games, Top Flite, and LEGO Systems.

At this boutique firm I was responsible for managing a small creative team on projects such as web sites, product catalogs, advertising campaigns, and identity programs. I oversaw a web developer, web designer, and print production designer for all phases of projects from concept development to production. Clients included Craft athletic wear, Eastern Skateboard, and Atomic Snowboards.

My wife and I started this design studio and put ourselves through a crash course in running a design services agency. Clients ranged from my alma mater, to a local arts studio, to action sports brands. We also dove into web and interactive design, teaching ourselves HTML in the early days of the medium.