Product Marketing Instructional Guides
The Brief
As a Graphic Design Intern for Sage Intacct’s product marketing team, I was asked to design a guide on creating a webinar. This guide had to be extremely specific and clear so that product marketing team members without experience would be able to follow it with minimal/no guidance at all.
I was provided with the textual content for the webinar guide but was not given any images or templates, or asked to design the guide in any specific style. In other words, I had a lot of creative freedom with this piece, as long as I stayed within the Sage Intacct brand guidelines.
Excerpt from the original webinar guide (only textual content)
Process
I started by reviewing the content for the piece. The text by itself was quite confusing, but I had to design the guide in a way that would make the process seem more simple and easy to understand.
Screenshots
I decided that supplementing the text with some marked screenshots illustrating the process would bring more clarity by showing team members exactly what to do. I then read the text carefully and followed along to gather screenshots for the most complicated steps.
Layout
To seamlessly incorporate these screenshots into the layout, I created a two-column grid and used the left side for text and the right side for visuals such as the screenshots. I also used dashed lines to show which steps were illustrated by which screenshots as well as circles, arrows, etc. to indicate points of interest and actions that were being described in the text. With the two-column layout, I was also able to keep the line length short so that the body copy would be easy to read. Overall, I wanted to create a clean layout with plenty of negative space to ensure that the process seemed simple and easy, not overwhelming.
Typography
I utilized Adelle Sans Sage, the primary Sage Intacct typeface as specified in the brand guidelines, for all of the text. I also increased the leading on the body copy to increase negative space and maintain the “open” and “simple” feel. Furthermore, to help the reader follow along, I bolded keywords within the body copy.
Colors
For colors, I utilized a minimal color scheme to once again, maintain a simple, not overwhelming, feel. Therefore, I only used the primary colors in the Sage Intacct brand for most of the design, with some additional colors for the cover illustration.
Illustrations
To help readers visualize the steps, I created some illustrations using brushes from the Sage Intacct library, which are all meant to give illustrations a bit of a rough texture. A specific style for illustrating people is also described clearly in the brand guidelines, which I implemented when creating the cover illustration.
Another Project
My manager was extremely pleased with my work on the webinar guide, so he also asked me to create another guide in a similar style, showing Product Marketing Managers how to create a product tour. Because the content for this project was different, I had the opportunity to take the style that I had already established a bit further; I created some “explanatory” illustrations to help the reader visualize the text.
What I Learned
Overall, this project allowed me to think creatively and develop a new “template” entirely from scratch that still reflected Sage Intacct’s brand guidelines. I was able to design the guides in a way that simplified both of the processes for the readers and also use a combination of various design elements and principles to visually convey a sense of simplicity.