Corporate Values

The challenge

Designing our comms posters for Rakuten’s company values.

Rakuten’s internal corporate communications have taken a backseat to the member experience for many years. Recent efforts have elicited the recognition that design wields greater power to influence work culture, bolster morale, instill corporate pride, inspire creativity, and motivate behavior. When asked to make a series of posters around our corporate values, I wanted our designs to feel playful, cool and smart, without taking ourselves too seriously.

I wanted a fun and editorial expression and intuited illustration as the best way to assertively distinguish our messaging from the photography-saturated member flow and also allow for uniquely elevated and curated corp comms experiences.

The challenge was that Rakuten did not yet have an official illustration style to utilize. Senior Designer Gracy McGuigan and I set out to extrapolate from the new brand conventions that had just launched a couple of months prior: our new color palette, our official typefaces, and a new icon design language: