Brand Design principles

What are the purpose of principles?
‍Principles serve as an effective way to short-circuit debate. They ground us in a common vocabulary and set of preferences that help guide the design decisions we make. They shouldn't limit creativity, but rather focus creative energy on the areas where divergent thinking matters most.

‍How do we use them?
‍✅ We repeat them: Repetition is key to principles remaining top of mind.
✅ We integrate them into our work: Through touchpoints like crits, reviews, and project sign off.
✅ We leverage them in our critique: We use them to tether and prioritize feedback.

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Design for humans

Why this matters: We design for People teams and the humans they support. We want them all to feel supported and empowered. By prioritizing representation, optimizing for clarity, and considering our audience at all times we build trust in Lattice and set people up for success.

Tactics:

• Use diverse and inclusive visuals of people in illustration, photography, and the customers we feature.
• Prioritize accessibility within our brand guidelines, media creation, and adhere to WCAG standards for web development.
• Reduce cognitive load with clarity over clutter.
• Create a connection with conversational, optimistic, and supportive copywriting.
• Make decisions with customer goals and pain points top of mind.

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Connect the dots

Why this matters: As brand designers, we’re the through-line connecting customers, products, and project goals. Our cross-functional role enables us to provide broad context, make strategic connections, and create design solutions that feel seamless.

Tactics:

• Contextualize and educate to help people understand the full picture.
• Approach projects with a campaign mindset (where applicable), consider what can be repurposed, how it relates to previous or future projects, and how to champion a unified story.
• Push projects beyond the brief when we see opportunities to provide more strategic, holistic or evergreen solutions or to meet project or customer goals more effectively.

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Create with intention

Why this matters: A good start makes a good end. Having clear strategy and goals at the beginning allows for design to be successful beyond aesthetics. When crafting a solution, the intentionality behind colors, hierarchy, visuals, or content should be directly tied to the pre-established goal.

Tactics

• Get clarity at the brief phase and unify expectations with partners at the kickoff.
• Use templates and guidelines to create a consistent brand experience and thoughtfully evolve the design system when needed.
• Don't be afraid to say "no" — prioritize strategic goals over aesthetics.
• Use testing, metrics, and customer research to both inform and validate design solutions.

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Delight don’t distract

Why this matters: We want to build connections with people to ensure their experience with Lattice is meaningful. We do this by celebrating their accomplishments, ensuring they feel supported in their work, and respecting their time. We recognize that their work matters and don’t want to impede their progress.

Tactics

• Use illustrations and iconography to provide clarity, not as ornamentation.
• Use appropriate levels of celebration and encouragement — congratulatory text, a simple illustration, or use of color or layout may be most effective.
• Reinforce actions we want people to take, and provide context.
• Motivate people in moments that might be difficult or require more effort and attention.

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