Jenna Carando is a Brand Designer and Letterer at Gusto. In her role, Jenna works cross-functionally with Marketing, Environment, Sales, Product Design, and Brand Design to bring marketing materials and campaigns to life and to craft physical spaces reflective of the brand.

Gusto is software that empowers businesses to treat their employees like people, and they put their mission into practice with their own employees every day. But as the company grew to more than 500 employees, they found their workspace to be crammed and disruptive of collaboration, leading to a lack of pride in their workplace. The team had a hunch that this poor experience was having other effects, such as a lack of productivity, a poor reflection on the company's culture, and perhaps an influence on the amount of recruiting referrals — all of which indirectly impacted the business' success. So, to bring the company’s vision of empowering their employees to fruition, Gusto searched for a new workspace and assembled a diverse team to tackle the project.

In this talk, Jenna shares how she, along with a small team, took Gusto’s brand and mission and brought them to the forefront in their new office space. Learn how to measure the results of brand-focused design work, how to educate others on the impact design can have, and how a successful office build-out can drive ROI for a business.