The Patagonia of software

As brand design lead at Aurora Solar, I interpreted the brand, implemented, and filled in the holes where an outside agency did not foresee gaps. This meant a redesign of trade show booths, the website, print and digital ads, pitch decks, and even art directing proprietary brand photography. This design role evolved numerous times to reflect the macroeconomic market and the ups and downs of what many in the industry call “the solar coaster."

Aurora's brand toes the line between sleek and earthy. The design is minimal but incorporates the bright colors of a sunset as the main brand colors. As we implemented the brand into the final designs, we went through several design iterations to find where that line is.

Digital advertising at Aurora included social media, sponsored media through solar industry publications, display ads, Google ads, and paid social. When rolling out the new brand, I created templates for both social media and ads that were used as the basis for all ads moving forward. To keep copy writers and designers on the same page, I created a copy guide so that writers got a sense of size and what could fit in any given digital dimension. This streamlined the process between marketers and designers.

Brand designers at Aurora collaborate with the product design team by creating product integrated artwork and in-app up-sell advertisements. I also contributed to the product by designing parts of Aurora Solar's sales proposal software.

The sheer number of presentations created at Aurora meant a good template was the only way to assure quality and consistency across the entire company. The presentation style maintained the sleekness of the brand and incorporated unexpected layouts with floating blocks of text or images to create variety. This style reflected the design-forward aspect of the software product.

Solar trade shows are the flagship of the solar industry where solar companies go to show off new products and connect with customers. Aurora showed across North America, Germany, Australia, and Spain, adapting to the restraints and budgets of each convention center. While some booths came with pre-built walls like in North America, others allowed the freedom to choose layout and materials like in Germany. These projects required collaboration across large time zone differences. The booth at Solar Solutions in Germany was a collaboration with Aurora and the architects at Tulp Design in Munich.

Like many tech companies, Aurora produces plenty of merch for it's employees and customers. Quality over volume, was however, the main goal of all the materials we produced. We prioritized products that were embroidered or screen printed and suppliers that were American-made.

As a lead generator at trade shows, we conducted live screen printing, allowing attendees to choose one of 6 designs that were printed on the spot. These designs leaned into the science and engineering side of solar to reflect the accuracy Aurora is known for.

A large arm of Aurora's marketing funnel was educational materials like blog posts, downloadable books, and printed guides. These materials pushed Aurora into the thought leadership space to become a trusted voice in the solar industry. The materials were informative, well-written, and highly designed. Consistent with the design of presentations, books and publications were templated with floating blocks of text to create variety and have the high-end feel of a magazine.

Every marketing campaign at Aurora differed in scope and media buy. The materials designed for a campaign could consist of digital ads, organic and paid social, print advertising, email signatures, landing pages, and events.

Empower is Aurora's yearly conference that is highly coveted for being informative and up to date on the latest solar trends. Always on the cusp of the latest technology, the Empower 2024 campaign used AI imagery to reflect the AI design features in Aurora. The image that was generated in Midjourney was a reference to the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, replacing the monolith in the scene with a solar panel.

Aurora On Tour is a traveling solar happy hour event to get to know customers.

With the help of a few Aurora developers, I set up a solar-powered server at my home to power Aurora's website. I temporarily hosted a portion of Aurora's website from a solar-powered battery. The website used as little bandwidth as possible to reduce power usage by reducing image size and removing unnecessary code. The page was able to remain online for several weeks with a 100 watt solar panel and a 12 volt battery. This was a simple solar set-up that included only a solar panel, a charge controller, a battery, and a microinverter. The website was hosted on a Raspberry Pi. The solar panel was mounted on my balcony in a style that is becoming more popularin places like Germany, now referred to as balkonkraftwerk.