Design archive
I've never separated the words from the design.
For the first 20 years of my career, I turned complicated information into something people could act on. These pieces demonstrate what that looked like in practice, and what it taught me about communicating with employees.
- 01
Internal communications · Walmart eCommerce
Tool Talk newsletter
A weekly newsletter for the e-merchandising organization, covering workflow and tooling changes for employees who depended on 40+ tools to do their jobs. The spring 2020 issues carried COVID-19 partner guidance and our price gouging policy alongside a category showcase and a riddle.
Why it matters now: Three decisions in this newsletter still shape how I work. A linked table of contents at the top, so a busy reader self-selects instead of scanning the whole thing. Operational content people had to read, paired with content they wanted to read, which is how a recurring channel keeps an audience. And a companion live session, Tool Talk Live, so this was a system rather than a broadcast.
- 02
Stakeholder buy-in · Walmart eCommerce
IGNITE: learning and development rebrand
Brand guidelines for the internal learning and development team, presented as a deck that opens with a question rather than a logo: how do we tell our story? IGNITE, and the line "spark your development," came out of it.
Why it matters now: The second slide explains my process. Employees perform best in a predictable environment, and inconsistency creates uncertainty and stress. That is an employee experience case, not a brand case, and it is still how I get buy-in for anything that looks cosmetic from the outside. The color section cites research rather than taste. The photography section specifies images that mimic real Walmart.com offices, so employees recognize themselves. Every choice is defined by the audience. That is what holds up when a stakeholder pushes back.
- 03
Employee enablement · Walmart eCommerce
MBTI participant guide
Participant materials for MBTI sessions with new merchant hires, built on the IGNITE system. Type framework, discussion spreads, a fill-in action plan, and appendices.
Why it matters now: One spread does the heavy lifting. “What Type IS” sits directly across from “What Type is NOT,” ruling out the reading that MBTI measures skill or intelligence before anyone can arrive at it on their own. That is the same move as naming what is not changing in a change announcement, and it is the step people skip. The guide then closes with an action plan the participant fills in, including their manager’s type, so the session produces a conversation instead of a handout.
- 04
Complex information · FICO
Products and solutions book
A 138-page reference book covering FICO’s full product portfolio, built inside FICO’s existing brand guidelines, organized by vertical, and rebuilt every year. Dense features and benefits tables sit facing single-question cards: “Did you know 19 of the top 20 auto lenders work with FICO to help shape their roadmap?”
Why it matters now: Every spread runs at two speeds. The left page is reference material a salesperson digs into. The right page is one question designed to pull them in. That is the same call I make deciding what belongs in a Slack message versus what lives on the intranet as the source of truth, and it is why 138 pages was a hierarchy problem rather than a design problem. It was also rebuilt annually, which taught me that a maintained document and a finished document are two different things.
- 05
Measurable outcome · Oracle
The Executive's Handbook to Modern Digital Commerce
A long-form executive handbook structured in numbered parts, with a persistent corner tab so a reader always knows where they are in it. Built on cited statistics and an interview with an outside industry analyst rather than on Oracle’s own claims. It converted at 15% against a 5% goal.
Why it matters now: The title names the audience, not the product. And the piece leads with an outside expert, because an executive discounts a vendor telling them what to think. Internal communications has the same problem in a different costume: employees discount the company line, so the most persuasive voice is usually a peer, a manager, or a customer rather than one more leadership email. Three times the conversion target is the earliest evidence I have that this works, and it is why I still reach for someone else’s voice when a message needs to be believed rather than just received.
- 06
Multi-channel campaign · The Bay Club
Augie's Quest campaign
Concept and design for The Bay Club’s campaign supporting Augie’s Quest, the ALS research foundation, running across print, in-club digital signage, web, social, and apparel. It raised $100,000 in six weeks.
Why it matters now: The concept took Augie Nieto’s line, “I focus on what I can do and not what I cannot do,” and turned it back on the member as a question: what can you do? Then every channel answered it differently and concretely. Signage at the point of purchase asked for a dollar. Social asked for a post worth five. That is the architecture employee communications runs on: one idea, one action per channel, phrased in the language that channel is actually good at.
My full design archive, including print, digital, and presentation work for Oracle, FICO, Stitch Fix, Levi's, SAP, and others, lives at susiedeckerdesign.com.
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