2022 in Review: Industry Dive Design Department
About Industry Dive: We keep business leaders up-to-date with the latest trends in their industry. Over 12M business leaders across 26 industries read our 29 publications. We also help marketers tell stories that create connections, enhance trust and drive leads.
Industry Dive’s design department has 21 staff and three teams, each with its own focus and org structure:
- studioID Design: A content marketing creative agency that serves Industry Dive’s clients
- Brand & Marketing Design: An internal brand studio that oversees all brand and marketing design at Industry Dive
- Product Design: A team of product designers who oversee the UI and UX of all Industry Dive publications and products
Every month, the whole department comes together to share wins from the last 30 days.
In December, we hold a final “year-in-review” session and reflect on the progress made by each team.
Below are highlights from our 2022 year-in-review.
Team 1: studioID Design
studioID is Industry Dive’s global content studio.
Like many other modern media companies, Industry Dive generates a significant amount of its revenue by offering content marketing services — and targeted content distribution — to marketers.
Hundreds of marketing teams work with studioID to develop custom-branded content and distribute it to the 12+ million business leaders who read Industry Dive’s 29 business news publications.
“studioID Design” is the design and multi-media arm of studioID; it’s essentially a full-service creative agency.
It is a team of 11 visual designers, illustrators, art directors, front-end designers, and project managers led by Director Chelsea Ennis Podesla.
Here are a few of studioID Design’s wins from 2022…
Completed over 1,200 client creative projects
In 2022, studioID Design completed over 1,200 client creative projects — from illustrated infographics for Waze to on-location video shoots for Merck in Switzerland.
Enhanced studioID’s ability to provide multi-media services to Industry Dive’s clients
Over the course of the year, studioID Design significantly enhanced Industry Dive’s ability to provide animated and live-action photo and video services to its clients.
Learned to efficiently build custom websites for studioID clients
studioID Design partnered with Industry Dive’s engineering department to create a custom marketing website for DirecTV.
Read more about the studioID Design team:
Team 2: Brand & Marketing Design
The Brand & Marketing (BAM) Design team is Industry Dive’s internal brand studio, a group led by Senior Director Michelle Rock.
Here are a few of BAM’s 2022 wins…
Helped the company attract new hires and new clients by building a better IndustryDive.com
At the beginning of 2022, the BAM team built and launched a new IndustryDive.com website.
BAM handled all of the design and web development using Webflow. This was the team’s first Webflow site, and they were learning how to use the software while building.
BAM also coordinated all of the content creation with departments across the company, and I did the copy editing.
Saved Industry Dive tens of thousands of dollars a year by building a tool to automate the creation of 1,000s of visual assets
It takes hundreds of hours a year for full-time and contract designers to create visual assets for Industry Dive’s editorial virtual events, lead promotion campaigns, audience growth campaigns, social media campaigns, and other marketing efforts.
Importantly, Industry Dive is not a single publication; it’s a large portfolio. This means our work gets multiplied by the number of publications Industry Dive has — 29 at the end of 2022. Need a new set of ads? Multiple that by 29.
In Q4 of 2022, BAM created a tool to automate the creation of a significant amount of this tedious work. BAM still has to routinely create new design templates for the tool and maintain the custom software, but the repetitive design work is automated. This means the team needs to outsource much less graphic design work.
The tool will save Industry Dive at least $25,000 in 2023. The savings will also scale with the growth of the company.
Made it easy for clients to see the types of content we can create for them by building a portfolio site
During the fall of 2022, BAM built and launched a portfolio website to showcase completed studioID client projects. BAM handled all of the design (UI/UX) and web development, again using Webflow.
This content portfolio provides existing and prospective clients with examples of branded content from dozens of successful studioID campaigns. BAM also tailored the portfolio to fit into Industry Dive’s sales process.
Improved our branded content promotion by creating new email blast templates
BAM created new email blast templates to help our marketing department promote studioID client content — e.g. eBooks and webinars — to our readers. BAM handled all of the design, email development, and email testing.
Industry Dive will send millions of emails to readers using these new templates in 2023.
Helped attract prospective clients by building a brand experience at Content Marketing World
BAM developed physical signage and custom swag for Industry Dive’s booth at the 2022 Content Marketing World conference. The experience drew in visitors and helped our sales reps book meetings with clients.
Helped recruit potential hires and promote the Industry Dive brand by capturing new images of staff at work
BAM sourced a Washington, DC-based photographer and coordinated a photoshoot of Industry Dive employees at work in the company’s new West End office. Any photos we had were outdated (pre-pandemic) and from a time when the company was less than half its current size.
These photos are being used on IndustryDive.com to help recruit new staff and for PR purposes.
Improved brand consistency by developing a comprehensive logo system for all Industry Dive products
BAM created a logo system to ensure brand consistency across all Industry Dive products — both existing and future. This new product logo system also dovetails with our publication logo system.
Read more about Industry Dive’s Brand & Marketing Design team:
Team 3: Product Design
The Product Design team works closely with Industry Dive’s product managers and software engineers to improve the UI and UX of the company’s digital products.
They focus on three key areas of work:
- Marketer/Advertiser Value
- Readers/audience growth
- Internal Tools/CMS
Until October 2022, this team was led by Product Design Director Natalie Forman.
Here are a few of the product designers’ 2022 wins…
Gave Industry Dive’s DiveWire clients greater visibility into their press release campaign performance
Responding to customer feedback, the product designers created new features — including a campaign performance report — for DiveWire, Industry Dive’s press release distribution service.
The performance report allows customers to see daily updated visibility metrics and track the performance of their press releases over time.
Helped promote Industry Dive’s email newsletters and sponsored content by designing new web ad templates
The product designers created new, branded web ad templates to promote Industry Dive’s email newsletters and studioID’s client content across our 29 publication websites.
The ad templates are coded and responsive; the design changes to accommodate the device screen size of the reader.
Helped capture more reader demographic info, increase signups for related newsletters, and increase downloads of sponsored content
When a reader signs up for an Industry Dive newsletter, we ask them to share demographic information, let them sign up for related newsletters, and offer them the chance to download sponsored content — e.g. an eBook about a topic in their industry.
By experimenting with a new one-column, step-based form layout, the product designers were able to improve all three metrics. They increased sponsored content downloads by over 20% and related newsletter signups by a similar percentage.
Helped readers see and follow big storylines in their industry
“Storylines” was a feature we launched across our publication websites in 2021. The goal was to contextualize one-off news stories and help readers follow stories as they unfold.
In 2022, the product designers increased the visibility of “Storylines” on Industry Dive publication sites; they added a Storyline carousel to every article that’s part of a Storyline.
Helped the newsroom more easily publish industry “Trackers”
A “Tracker” is a special article format that helps our readers keep up with a specific topic — e.g. healthcare worker strikes or biotech M&A.
In early 2022, the product designers created a feature in Industry Dive’s Content Management System to make it easier for the newsroom’s 100+ journalists to create a Tracker article.
Until this feature was built, each Tracker had to be manually coded by the newsroom’s two news graphics developers.
In the nine months since the launch of this feature, the Dive newsroom has published over 20 Trackers. These stories have driven hundreds of email newsletter signups and a significant number of page views.
