Security Marketing
I joined Cisco as part of their $2.7 billion acquisition of Sourcefire in late 2013. At that time I worked as the senior designer and art director of the Sourcefire marketing team with art director Chris Chon.
As part of Cisco acquisition protocol, any new company is ring-fenced for a year, and so much of the design work remained Sourcefire-centric until late 2014. After that time, we were able to access the global creative and have contact with Brand.
In 2016 Cisco brought creative director Dennis Lim on to revamp their brand look and feel. Although I didn’t report to him, he and his team’s work would inform our group’s direction for the next several years. I worked to have good communication with the Brand team, and tried to add to the body of visually consistent work propagating throughout the company.
One of the early directives from the Security group leadership was that they wanted to have visually distinct take on the global brand, while still respecting it. What this meant was up for debate, but we tried to instill our design with a subtle cues which we knew would resonate with the global security audience.
Our group created many types of collateral assets to support the marketing team, both for specific campaigns and general support. Whitepapers, datasheets, powerpoints, illustration, iconography, web and email layouts, infographics, advertisements, and more. I also approved and directed external venders who contributed numerous other assets. Below are a selection of assets from the last few years.
I was asked to design a new Cybersecurity Report series for Cisco from the ground up. It replaced the older, monolithic Annual Cybersecurity Report with a semi monthly series of more consumable documents, and led to greatly increased readership. The series exists digitally as pdfs and Turtl e-documents, but these mock ups show the printed intent. Many thanks to Ben Munroe and series editor Kari Mathisen. You can read them here.
Cisco has a presence at numerous events throughout year, including; Black Hat, RSA, Cisco LIVE, and other international events. I designed dozens of booths, signage, banners, and other supporting materials.
Below are 2 booth concept pieces I created to help communicate with the global events team.
In 2018 the Security marketing leadership decided to create a consolidated creative services group to service Security. Historically, each corporate acquisition brought a new creative team onboard, and they tended to continue service their existing client base. This led to a number of isolated creative teams operating in the same business group. Myself and Santos Vega were asked to merge our separate teams and processes into a newly branded service, one that would slowly amalgamate with other groups.
Over the spam of several months we consolidated our workflows, developed a new Workfront based ticketing system for requests, and started a unified catalog of Security graphics. We also reached out to the other creative teams to set up communication lines which could aid our long term growth. Together we co-art directed the group.
