Extract Talent Rebrand & Brand Guide

Situation: I was approached by Nancy Newman, founder of Extract Talent, to help her rebrand her company and online presence. This project happened in the middle of the pandemic, when there was still a lot of uncertainty about health and economic policy changes and their impacts on her industry, oil and gas. Her team needed to strengthen their ties to transformative leaders in the energy field and relied on me to make their value proposition clearer to prospective candidates and clients. She wanted the new brand and website up within two months.

Approach: With COVID lockdowns in full effect, I developed a two-day agenda for our fully remote team to cover everything from their value proposition to their business model and even scripted their website. She brought in her whole team for the event and we went through several exercises to have total clarity about their business, their customers, and what they wanted to say to them.

With all this information in hand, I hired the talented graphic designer, Von Glitschka, to help us design a logo that complemented Extract Talent’s new identity. In parallel, I partnered with Sarah Weidner to develop and document a design system for future vendors/employees. After hours of conversations with Nancy to ensure my understanding of her story and brand philosophy, I got to work on copy for the website as well as other graphic design elements I knew would be used throughout her social media and email campaigns. We went with Squarespace as the site host because I knew Nancy wasn’t going to have a dedicated web developer to support her after our project together. It took a little custom CSS/JS to make it fit the design, but wasn’t too much trouble.

View the Brand Guide

Outcome: Nancy was thrilled with the new brand elements, especially the illustrative and elusive “purple squirrel.” We got everything shipped within our two-month window and Nancy was able to start her social media campaign without delay. Extract Talent has since moved on from Squarespace for hosting their site, but the brand endures years later and clearly was a good investment. It’s been incredible to see her business get new life with new partners, clients, and purple squirrels!

Responsibilities: Marketing Consulting, Project Management, Copywriting, Graphic Design, Web Design, Virtual Facilitation

Technology Used: Miro Whiteboarding, Adobe Xd, Illustrator, Photoshop, Maxon Cinema 4D, Redshift, Squarespace, Custom CSS/Javascript