The Challenge
Build a world-class icon system that brings Morningstar’s brand to life and empowers every team to use, adapt, and grow it with confidence.
The Solution
Morningstar’s world-class iconography system—800+ icons, 9,000+ assets, and effortless search—has become a foundational, flexible, and scalable cornerstone of the brand’s design system.
The Impact
Morningstar’s new iconography system transformed fragmented pieces into a powerful, scalable toolkit that drives consistency, speed, and brand voice.
The Outcomes
Launched across six major releases.
Streamline
32 categories with 10,000+ meta tags enabling fast search and discovery.
Optimized
Deployed across three libraries.
Enabling fast & easy on-brand
content creation.
My Role
In 2024, Morningstar leadership sought an iconography system as cohesive and scalable as those of Google or IBM. At the time, assets were scattered, inconsistent in design, and difficult to search. I was tasked with leading the project—serving both as the system’s architect and as an advocate for its adoption across the company.
Discover
- Validated the existing visual language to solidify tone, style, and perspective for iconography.
- Conducted competitive analysis of blue-chip companies’ icon systems and where Morningstar could differentiate.
- Collected 2,000+ icon requests through 20 workshops and direct feedback channels to understand the demand for icons across the company.
Define
- Identified major gaps in categories like ESG, sustainability, charts, portfolio building, and finance.
- Established the blueprint for icon construction, detailing padding, keylines, stroke rules, breaks, and corners.
- Facilitated three expressions of every icon for greater flexibility and versatility.
Develop
- Construction – rules for creating new icons consistent with the system.
- Usage – do’s and dont's for color, expressions, enclosures, and compositing.
- Built sophisticated workflows to handle large-scale production and QA of assets.
Deliver
- Released the icon set across three in-app libraries for seamless access and updates.
- Adobe for Marketers Figma for Designers Website for Sales.
- Transitioned from static AI files to dynamic, always up-to-date libraries.
- Released 9,000 + assets and 800+ unique icons.
The Challenge
Morningstar lacked a unified motion design system—resulting in inconsistent quality, no shared framework, limited accessibility, and no common language to express its unique perspective.e, adapt, and grow it with confidence.
The Solution
I led the creation of the Morningstar Motion Framework and UX Motion Guidelines—a scalable system grounded in our brand principles that gave teams clear standards, tools, and resources to design motion that is useful, logical, precise, beautiful, and human.
The Impact
The Morningstar Motion Guidelines and UX Framework turned motion from a fragmented practice into a strategic, brand-defining system—complete with a scalable framework, shared vocabulary, and accessible resources that made motion a core part of the brand and user experience.
The Outcomes
A unified motion language across marketing, product, and video.
Reusable templates, presets, and libraries sped up delivery.
Designers, marketers, and developers could adopt motion with ease.
Through mentoring and sharing, motion became core to the creative culture.
My Role
Ensuring consistent motion across marketing, video, and digital products was a major challenge for a company of Morningstar’s scale. As Lead Designer, I developed the Morningstar Motion Framework and UX Motion Guidelines—a scalable system rooted in our brand principles that equipped teams with clear standards, tools, and resources.
Framework & Taxonomy
- Established a shared vocabulary for different types of motion (micro-interactions, page transitions, storytelling animations).
- Positioned each animation along a tone spectrum—from tactical to emotional—depending on its purpose.
- Defined motion as a purposeful tool: always enhancing comprehension, navigation, or delight
UX Motion Guidelines
- Created clear standards for applying motion across
product interfaces.
- Introduced tokens and presets to streamline implementation and make adoption easier for developers
- Documented best practices for micro animations, page transitions, and storytelling experiences. Positioned each mirco-animations along a tone spectrum—from tactical to emotional—depending
on its purpose.
Tools, Resources & Asset Library
- Built a motion toolkit with ready-to-use animated assets (logotypes, lockups, lower-thirds, typography presets).
- Delivered templates and presets to reduce inconsistency and speed up production.
Program Building & Culture
- Ran workshops and discovery sessions with cross-functional teams to identify needs and roadblocks.
- Socialized the framework with a Motion Share Program—a work-share initiative to foster collaboration and culture.
- Mentored animators and designers to proliferate the practice of
on-brand motion.
- Developed a roadmap for evolving standards based on user feedback, industry trends, and new technology.
The Challenge
Morningstar needed an automated system to power seven global events and generate thousands of branded assets on demand—scalable enough to handle high-volume production, flexible enough for regional customization, and efficient enough to free creators from repetitive tasks.
The Solution
The Automated Production System (APS) is an end-to-end framework for high-volume, repeatable campaigns—enabling swappable content, built-in customization, and unlimited output at scale.
The Impact
APS transformed Morningstar’s design process—replacing manual, repetitive asset creation with an automated, scalable, and high-quality system. Saving countless hours and money on prodction.
The Outcomes
Across the MIC campaign and events.
Streamlining file creation, customization, and delivery.
Allowing localized, tailored creative.
Eliminating manual production.
My Role
To operationalize APS, I built an Automation Playbook—a repeatable framework for identifying, planning, and launching automation projects.
Partnership & Alignment
- Secured buy-in through demo sessions and discovery meetings.
- Identified opportunities for automation within global event workflows.
Automation Assessment
- Defined vision and OKRs for automation.
- Outlined governance and responsibilities.
- Conducted high-level assessments of campaigns and grouped them into use cases.
- Built business cases with KPIs and expected returns
Project Preparation
- Prioritized automation opportunities by overlap and scalability.
- Created a detailed roadmap with required resources
(Minimum Viable Product (MVP), creative, technical support).
- Anticipated integration needs for new tools or vendors.
- Secured resources and launched a pilot.
Project Prodction
- Designed/redesigned processes for automation. Prioritized automation opportunities by overlap and scalability.
- Deployed sprints to build and refine APS.
- Conducted beta testing and soft rollouts.
- Iterated with feedback, fixed bugs, and launched the final product. Secured resources and launched a pilot.