A Legacy Firm Finds Its Voice
Client: Milliman
Role: Creative Director
Milliman had been around for 75 years. The work spoke for itself, but the brand had no voice.
When I joined, the company had no unified positioning, no tagline, and brand guidelines too thin to guide anyone. Practices operated independently, marketing materials varied wildly, and the visual identity lacked the depth to scale across a global firm with 4,000+ professionals in 20+ countries.
The challenge wasn't a rebrand. It was building the brand infrastructure that should have existed all along.
Our Agency partner, Agenda, developed a visual identity rooted in the logo. My job was to make it usable at scale. We rebuilt the guidelines from the ground up, documenting font hierarchy, grid logic, and graphic language so in-house, agency, and practice teams could execute consistently. We built templates for high-volume work, expanded the system to cover internal audiences and ERG branding, and developed a distinct illustration style for flagship editorial content. The work won a Transform Award for Best Visual Identity in Professional Services.
When I joined, the team was two people, outsourcing most of the work to an agency, while focusing on low-complexity projects. Today it's a nine-person in-house operation, delivering over 800 projects a year across campaigns, video, editorial, experiential, and collateral. Milliman Brand Central, the brand portal we built, supports this scale by giving everyone access to guidelines, assets, and self-service templates in one place. 715 monthly users, 103k+ annual downloads, and a 4x year-over-year increase in engagement.
Once the visual identity gave Milliman a consistent look.
The positioning gave it a voice.
"Solutions for a World at Risk" connects Milliman's mission (protecting the health and financial well-being of people everywhere) to a clear "how." It captures the complexity of the problems the firm solves and the confidence clients need from the people solving them. We expanded the guidelines, designed assets, redesigned the website, produced a brand anthem video, developed content, and built a champion network of leaders across the firm to drive adoption.
