The Smartsheet brand works as a living system. Logo, color, type, illustration, and photography are separate components, but each inherits the same core principles, so work made by different hands in different markets still reads as one brand. The system carries real constraints: type is checked for contrast, color is governed centrally so one change propagates everywhere, and the logomark behaves differently in the app than in marketing. That shared source of truth is the point. It lets contributors move fast without drifting off-brand.
My Team
Due to reductions in marketing, I’m currently acting as the interim design manager.
The Brand System
The bento concept is personal to me. A bento is a Japanese meal built in compartments, where rice, fish, and vegetables each hold their own space yet balance into one plate. Nothing is crowded, nothing is lost, and the care shows in the arrangement. Our grid follows the same logic: every element sits in a defined compartment, distinct but in proportion, composing a layout that reads as a whole.
The timing mattered. Smartsheet was expanding into Japan and opening a Tokyo office, and my Japanese-American roots shaped a system that felt native to that market and gave the Tokyo team a piece of the brand they could speak to directly. A rare alignment of system and culture, with room left for the team to build on it.
OOH
London, Tokyo, or Chicago, the work adapts to its market while the system underneath stays constant. Same compartment logic, same sense of proportion. Different teams, different audiences, unmistakably Smartsheet.
Note
The brand continues to evolve. The Smartsheet app and its bento-inspired language remain the foundation.
Brand Video Studio
I wanted to scale our live video productions, so I pitched an in-house studio that could scale production and make being on set feel like a brand experience.
With a $60k budget, I designed a broadcast-quality space with programmable lighting, integrated audio, minimal visible cabling, and a quick-change set system.
Ten months later: 30+ productions without a single rental, a 650% year-over-year lift in output, and 300% ROI in cost avoidance.
Animation
I joined Smartsheet as this campaign was greenlit, stepping in to steer pre-production art direction and animatics with our agency partner, Herd of Shepherds.
The premise was a bet: work management doesn't have to look like work management. No office b-roll, no UI demos. Bold, painterly animation and emotional storytelling running across TV, digital, and social. In a category that markets in screenshots, we shipped a feeling. That's what made Smartsheet impossible to mistake for anyone else.