General Assembly: Brand ID

Established in early 2011 as an innovative community for entrepreneurs and startups, General Assembly’s mission is to create a global community of individuals empowered to pursue the work they love. GA offers educational programs on the most relevant skills of the 21st century (from web development to UX design to business fundamentals to digital marking) on nine campuses across four continents.

Having spent the greater part of my career as a consultant  in brand and product/service innovation, I welcomed the opportunity to help the founders transform GA from a nascent idea into a reality. For close to ten months, I worked closely with them, using our internal conversations and additional user research as inspiration for the visual, verbal, and spatial brand identity. 

Post-launch, I continued my tenure in-house, and as with most early-stage employees, was required to wear many hats including shaping our educational programming in design and leading projects to better understand opportunities for online education. In my time there, I managed a talented team of writers and designers (graphic, spatial, product) to keep our brand in lock-step with the business as it grew and evolved.

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GA’s creative team included: Alex Proba (graphic and spatial designer), Jessica Karle (graphic designer), Jon Troutman (product designer), George Bixby (product designer), Aaron Perlman-Price (brand editor). Frequent collaborators included: Adam Pritzker (cofounder), Angie Lee (head of marketing), Craig Samoviski (head of photo/video production), Andrea Steele (architect).