Travelink
Graphic Designer / Marketing Specialist
2018 - 2020
Rebranding + Social Media Management + Graphic Design + Email Marketing + Blog Management + Copywriting
I was an internal designer and marketing specialist at Travelink, AMEX Travel for 3 years, where I found myself doing everything a marketer could do, from social media management, to corporate identity rebranding, to email marketing, to copywriting, and more. This job really taught me what it meant to be a designer in the corporate world as I learned both DTC marketing to everyday customers as well as B2B marketing for various partners, both family-friendly and luxury travel companies, such as Royal Caribbean, Delta Airlines, Micato Safaris, etc.
Travelink prides themselves as being an all service travel agency, featuring bespoke ultraluxe vacations through Privileged Journeys, Employee Vacation Services for Fortune 500 clients, Business Travel management, and family vacation services. I relished being able to work in an environment that loved travel as much as I do. I learned the power of creating designs for differing audiences and how shape visual narratives according to brand reputation.
Being on a small creative team of four people, we ran that ship like a luxury cruise director during the high season, ensuring elevated branding across all of our partnerships, maintaining consistency among all documents and digital designs, and keeping customers up to date with informative graphics.
Below are two examples of the types of projects I worked on during my tenure at Travelink. The first being a corporate rebrand, which is one of my biggest accomplishments as a designer at this company. And the second is an example of the layout projects, which showcases my ability to present information in an educational, concise manner.
Corporate Rebrand
I undertook the challenge of rebranding Travelink’s logo to fit the new 2018 AMEX logo. The goal was to create a fresh, clean visual identity and update all parts of Travelink’s brand, ditching the outdated fonts and gradient AMEX blue box for a modernized refresh. This project also meant rebranding the Employee Vacations Program, a subsection of the brand that offers corporate travel discounts to various Fortune 500 businesses who partner with Travelink.
My experience of rebranding Travelink taught me how to navigate collaborating with all stakeholders across marketing, leadership, and our partners. Aligning our new visual strategy gave me the skill of re-creating a fully functional brand system while maintaining the recognizable identity upon which the brand was founded.
Layout Design
Another part of my role at Travelink was designing a variety of print assets for our sales and marketing/advertising departments. The scope of these projects ranged from designing one sheet PDFs for various travel packages, to designing decks for sales pitches offered by Employee Vacations Programs, and to laying out editorial spreads for our partner magazines.
The sales decks and one-sheets always involved distilling a lot of information into a highly digestible format. The goal was to be able to showcase the benefits of our various travel programs, such as Employee Vacation Programs and Privileged Journeys.
For EVP, I kept the information direct so our sales team could utilize the decks to pitch to businesses who wanted to offer travel as part of their corporate benefits.
For Privileged Journeys, our luxury sector, I often had to get to know each advisor’s experience to be able to co-write and design layouts for editorials and travel packages. The PJ travel packages highlighted bespoke vacations for our higher-end clientele and showcased incredible experiential journeys that could be customized to anyone’s preferences—perfect for returning customers looking for their next adventure.
The editorials, on the other hand, were featured in both Sophisticated Living and Nashville Lifestyles magazines and spoke to their specific consumer segment. These advertorials highlighted various trips from our advisors and showcased the types of vacation experiences our travel advisors can create for clients. To drive traffic to these stories, I also designed supporting blogs posts and instagram stories, as seen below in the South Africa editorial.
