The Patagonia of software

As brand design lead at Aurora Solar, I interpreted the brand, implemented, and poked holes in the brand system. 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 a constantly changing industry which required a lot of flexibility and ingenuity.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 popular in places like Germany, now referred to as balkonkraftwerk.