Action Analytics has high stakes presentations that need fast answers.
Busy, but attentive
Action Analytics is a consulting firm that specializes with data systems development with a focus on the most efficient means for companies to get their data organized so teams can make better decisions for trends and various metrics. As a consequence of this position, Action employees, called Actionauts, need to have densely packed information readily available to dispense to their clients. Fast information, with clear, understandable methodologies are essential and therefore design solutions for informational hierarchies are mandatory.
Clear language, clearer imagery
Action depends on consistency and cohesiveness to achieve their goal. Most of my branding decisions are based off of finding the most effective way to build presentations and animations that help convey the various complexities that Actionauts are delivering to their audience.
Action often relies on Tableau for its data visualization so often designs have to best integrate to the needs of complex diagrams. Often I work with analysts directly to see how their presentations best convey the message they want to have.
To build a better brand guide
Action often has design needs that go outside of the limited brand guide they had previous to 2023. A good portion of my initial work at Action was building out and improving the documentation to make it not just a brand exercise, but adaptable to the wide variety of content and narratives the teams at Action were creating for their clients.
From icons, social campaigns, to extremely specific bespoke presentations for clients, the data often offered use cases that needed new designs, new exceptions to rigid rulesets offered in earlier drafts, and solutions to more complex design problems not yet anticipated by Action themselves. A core benefit of my work was the years of experience adapting other brand guides to better fit the needs that clients had that moment instead of the ones that initially inspired them.
Whatever Action needed, from a new series, to last-minute merch requests for the conference season, I made sure that the brand was represented in a way that made others want to get involved.
Google Keynote Animation
Google’s Challenge
High value presentations extend beyond in-person or online meetings. At Google Developer Studios (GDS), developer advocates (DAs) wrote hundreds of scripts and educational tutorials for various Google products to expand sub-brand market share and provide valuable tools for new developers within the Google Cloud ecosystem.
The biggest challenge was taking simple, almost napkin-sketched concepts and ideas into deliverable, cohesive animations that distilled deeply complicated subjects matters into easy-to-digest moments that were as engaging as they were entertaining.
Major Brands, Little Time
DA’s often worked across multiple brands, each requiring specific KPIs along with conflicting schedules. My job was to manage these inbound series and design systems within systems to make templates easier to use, faster to produce and more effective to new DA’s or even new animators.
This was not just a visual design challenge; this was a workflow optimization mission. Often Google’s sub-brands had style guides that offered clarity in some production outcomes, but not others. My role was to interpret these inbound gaps, find ways to fit solutions within the timeline allotted, all the while handling inbound productions from other parts of the cycle with other brands.
It was a fine balance with an empathetic approach: getting to know your DA’s was essential, having meetings early on set the stage for success down the road. You had to always remember that systems still have people.
Work Faster and Smarter
One of the biggest objectives that came with this process was finding ways to make the sticker sheets GDS used to be easier to animate. So I built character sheets from the ground up and built new ways to animate them quickly within presentations themselves. This helped bridge the gap between high-value and high-demand; larger more complicated animations required storyboarding and an animator. These Keynote solutions were meant to offset the animation work-load of the team while still delivering a high value product. All on time and under budget.
By prioritizing these character profiles, I could adapt the team to pivot towards more advanced animation requests from producers. I hosted sessions with the illustrators and animators to make sure that cross-collaboration happened, ensuring that layers, masking and other elements made the transition from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe After Effects much more seamless.
Using Keynote to blend diagrams with illustrations helped us produce hundreds of videos per year, while saving tens of thousands in production costs.
Overnight Results with Long Term Benefits
When I started work at Google Developer Studios in 2019, keynote production took over two weeks longer than when I left in 2025. Many projects were out-sourced, which created synchronization issues across teams. Finding solutions to templates that adapted to the various brands was essential, and getting DA’s to see drafts of videos sooner helped pave the way for better long-term and cost-effective results.
It required knowing the process from start to finish. I not only know layout and design, but I know animation and video production. I can coordinate with experts in each and every discipline and find the pathways to success between the gaps.
It is essential to listen before you speak, to understand before you do. Listening to Developer Advocates’ goals and priorities to Keynote animations was essential to discovering the best way to optimize each. In the years at GDS I became an expert at this.
Building better templates made this possible. Each sub brand had peculiar quirks to their animations that had to be documented and shared with outside vendors. Building steady templates from the ground up with a unified process. Even allowed for keynote presentations to have a light and dark mode based on the information (or hosts) presenting.
This saved tens of thousands of dollars per month, and hundreds of hours of production cycles a year. It gave DA’s more confidence in our team’s work while helping us deliver better quality videos that felt unified and cohesive.
“You’re the most effective Keynote designer I’ve ever met, and I worked at Apple.”
-My Direct Reporting Creative Director at GDS