A client who's the largest wine and spirits distributor in the U.S. seems like a slam-dunk to design fun, engaging internal communication for.

It's a lot harder than it seems! We're still talking about very dry concepts people don't enjoy reading. These materials usually look like a thick black and white text-heavy manuscript written in legal jargon. Communicating financial concepts like vesting through liquor-related metaphor was a fun challenge.

Let's take a look at some examples:

Cover for a series of mailers about smart investing.

Inside spread of one mailer, explaining how your money grows over time with your 401(k).

Inside spread of another mailer, visually explaining how vesting works.

So, do you know what an SPD is? If you work in corporate America, you've likely gotten one every year, but like most of us, didn't bother to read it, because it's so HORRIFICALLY BORING to even look at.

This client, though, was really going the extra mile to help employees understand their benefits. I think I may have had the honor of designing the coolest SPD in history — these things are usually black and white Microsoft Word documents with no imagery. I actually got an ART budget and free license to make it as long as it needed to be, with COLOR printing. That's a luxury in the world of SPD design. Seriously.