Apollo — Brand Design

Building a scalable brand system across product, campaigns, and lifecycle experiences

Two years leading brand and campaign design across product, lifecycle, and marketing surfaces, shaping how an AI SaaS platform expressed itself at scale.

The company

Apollo is an AI-powered sales platform that helps teams discover leads, automate outreach, and manage pipeline data at scale. It serves millions of users and operates as a high-velocity, product-led growth organization.

My role

Over two years, I worked across brand and campaign design and art direction to define how Apollo expressed itself across every customer touchpoint.

My focus was turning a complex AI product into a cohesive, scalable brand and campaign system — one that could flex across web, onboarding, email, and social without losing consistency or narrative clarity.

I led campaign concepting and art direction across onboarding, web, lifecycle, and social, partnering closely with marketing, product, and engineering to translate ideas into shipped systems.

This included building illustration, motion, and web design systems, as well as exploring AI-assisted creative workflows to accelerate ideation, variation, and production across campaigns.

Over two years, I designed AI-powered, end to end experiences spanning onboarding, high traffic web surfaces, product storytelling, email, and paid social, crafting cohesive journeys from first impression through activation. I partnered cross functionally with marketing, product, and engineering to rapidly prototype, test, and scale new growth ideas.

I also expanded the web and email design systems to support faster experimentation and built AI driven tools that enabled marketing teams to generate high quality creative at scale.

Over two years, I worked across brand and campaign design and art direction to define how Apollo expressed itself across every customer touchpoint.

I led campaign concepting and art direction across onboarding, web, lifecycle, and social, partnering closely with marketing, product, and engineering to translate ideas into shipped systems.

This included building illustration, motion, and web design systems, as well as exploring AI-assisted creative workflows to accelerate ideation, variation, and production across campaigns.

My goal

Apollo had strong product depth, but the value wasn’t consistently visible across touchpoints.

My goal was to build a unified, AI-native brand system where campaign storytelling, product interfaces, and lifecycle experiences reinforced a single narrative — making the product feel clear, compelling, and instantly understandable across every stage of engagement.

Apollo had strong product depth, but the value wasn’t consistently visible across touchpoints.

Contributors

Aaron Stump, Creative Director
Anton Aheichanka, Lead Designer
Brendan Walker, Lifecycle Manager
Johan Vilchez, Art Director
Manuela Moncayo, Sr. Product Designer
Min Kang, Web Designer
Raouia Boularbah, AI Expert
Spencer Ferris, Sr. Software Engineer

My responsibilities

Art Direction

Campaign Concepting

Brand Design

Illustration Systems

Visual Library & AI Workflows

Web Design

Storytelling Design

Motion Design

Lifecycle & Email

Systems Design

Cross-functional Collaboration

Onboarding Experience

Translating brand into product experience

The onboarding flow was functional but lacked momentum. It guided users through steps but didn’t communicate value quickly enough.

The opportunity was to extend the brand into the product experience itself — not just visually, but through motion, interaction, and narrative pacing as part of the brand system.

The onboarding flow was functional but lacked momentum. It guided users through steps but didn’t communicate value quickly enough.

The opportunity was to extend the brand into the product experience itself — not just visually, but through motion, interaction, and narrative pacing as part of the brand system.

The onboarding flow was functional but lacked momentum. It guided users through steps but didn’t communicate value quickly enough.

The opportunity was to extend the brand into the product experience itself — not just visually, but through motion, interaction, and narrative pacing as part of the brand system.

I explored multiple creative directions combining AI-generated illustration, photography, and motion design systems, art directing across visual territories before defining the final adaptive UI approach. Decisions around what to generate, how systems combined, and how motion should behave were central to shaping an onboarding experience that felt like a living brand system embedded in product behavior rather than decoration applied after the fact.

↑ Activation

Improved after redesign

Email & Lifecycle

Building a scalable AI-assisted lifecycle system

The onboarding email flow existed but was fragmented and static.

I restructured it into a milestone-based lifecycle system designed as a coherent brand extension, aligning communication with user progression rather than fixed schedules.

The onboarding email flow existed but was fragmented and static.

I restructured it into a milestone-based lifecycle system designed as a coherent brand extension, aligning communication with user progression rather than fixed schedules.

The onboarding email flow existed but was fragmented and static.

I restructured it into a milestone-based lifecycle system designed as a coherent brand extension, aligning communication with user progression rather than fixed schedules.

The system introduced a consistent visual and narrative language across lifecycle touchpoints, extending Apollo’s brand into email in a more structured and scalable way.

To scale production, I partnered with engineering to integrate AI-assisted generation for templates, variations, and messaging experiments, reducing manual production overhead while increasing creative iteration speed.

The system introduced a consistent visual and narrative language across lifecycle touchpoints, extending Apollo’s brand into email in a more structured and scalable way.

+18% Engagement Uplift

AI-assisted template generation via internal system

Conversion

Designing clarity for complex AI products

Apollo’s pricing structure was powerful but difficult to navigate.

Instead of simplifying by removing information, we designed a guided decision experience layered on top of pricing, helping users self-select the right plan based on intent.

This reframed pricing as a brand communication system rather than a static page, improving clarity and decision confidence.

+14%

Conversion uplift after redesign

Data Landing Page

One page, a complex product, multiple audiences

As Apollo's data offering expanded, the landing page wasn't keeping up. It was technically accurate but easy to get lost in, dense in a way that served no one, particularly visitors who weren't already fluent in the product category. Different audiences landed on the same page and left with different levels of confusion.

The instinct was to simplify. But stripping it back risked losing depth needed for technical buyers. The challenge became designing a page that could flex across audiences while maintaining a coherent brand structure.

I redesigned the page in close collaboration with product and marketing, aligning messaging, visual hierarchy, and CTAs across audience types. Generated illustrations were integrated to reinforce visual consistency across the broader Apollo brand system, giving the page a coherent identity without one-off production for every section.

Product Storytelling

Making technical features feel like human benefits

Apollo's data product had real technical sophistication, but the page was communicating features rather than outcomes. Visitors could read what the product did. They couldn't quickly understand why it mattered for them.

Working with product and marketing, I developed a storytelling framework that translated technical concepts into clearer narratives. This included modular content patterns, consistent visual systems, and structured layouts that allowed users to understand relevance before depth.

The system aligned tightly with the landing page experience so that storytelling and conversion worked together, not in parallel.

Collaborative Experimentation

Designing and testing at the speed of growth

I contributed to a structured experimentation program across high-traffic surfaces, testing both creative directions and narrative framing across campaign modules.

Key findings shaped Apollo’s evolving brand system:

• Early value framing and trust signals outperformed delayed storytelling approaches

• AI-generated photography-style creative sometimes outperformed illustration in high-scan contexts — a finding that directly shaped how we art directed and weighted visual systems across subsequent campaigns

These insights directly informed subsequent campaign art direction decisions and visual system choices.

I contributed to a structured experimentation program across high-traffic surfaces, testing both creative directions and narrative framing across campaign modules.

Key findings shaped Apollo’s evolving brand system:

• Early value framing and trust signals outperformed delayed storytelling approaches

These insights directly informed subsequent campaign art direction decisions and visual system choices.

I contributed to a structured experimentation program across high-traffic surfaces, testing both creative directions and narrative framing across campaign modules.

Key findings shaped Apollo’s evolving brand system:

• Early value framing and trust signals outperformed delayed storytelling approaches

These insights directly informed subsequent campaign art direction decisions and visual system choices.

+16%

CTR on primary CTAs

+14%

Engagement lift across tested hero variants

Design Systems Expansion

Building reusable systems for campaigns at scale

One-off design solutions slowed production and created inconsistency across campaigns.

I expanded Apollo’s design system into a modular campaign and marketing framework, enabling faster creation of landing pages, lifecycle assets, and campaign experiences while maintaining brand cohesion.

To support scale, I worked with engineering to implement AI-assisted creative workflows for generating campaign variations and accelerating production cycles.

Marketing & Social

Extending the brand into motion and scale

Scaling a consistent brand across high-volume AI marketing

Social and campaign channels required high output while maintaining a unified brand expression.

I designed an AI-native campaign system built on typography, motion, and modular visual components, allowing creative to scale across formats without fragmentation.

Each asset was grounded in product truth, translating complex AI capabilities into clear, high-signal campaign narratives optimized for fast-scrolling environments.

Scaling a consistent brand across high-volume AI marketing

Social and campaign channels required high output while maintaining a unified brand expression.

I designed an AI-native campaign system built on typography, motion, and modular visual components, allowing creative to scale across formats without fragmentation.

Each asset was grounded in product truth, translating complex AI capabilities into clear, high-signal campaign narratives optimized for fast-scrolling environments.

Scaling a consistent brand across high-volume AI marketing

Social and campaign channels required high output while maintaining a unified brand expression.

I designed an AI-native campaign system built on typography, motion, and modular visual components, allowing creative to scale across formats without fragmentation.

Each asset was grounded in product truth, translating complex AI capabilities into clear, high-signal campaign narratives optimized for fast-scrolling environments.

+22%

Social engagement lift

+17%

CTR improvement on paid campaigns

Visual Library & AI-Assisted Art Direction

Building a scalable image system across campaigns and surfaces

Campaign and lifecycle production required a consistent visual language that could scale without one-off asset creation for every surface.

Working closely with the creative team, we built and curated an AI-generated photography and illustration library, defining style parameters, art directing outputs toward brand-consistent results, and editing down to a scalable set of assets that gave the team a shared visual vocabulary across web, social, email, and campaigns.

This shifted image production from reactive and one-off to systematic, reducing production time while maintaining a coherent visual direction across every touchpoint.

Campaign and lifecycle production required a consistent visual language that could scale without one-off asset creation for every surface.

This shifted image production from reactive and one-off to systematic, reducing production time while maintaining a coherent visual direction across every touchpoint.

Campaign and lifecycle production required a consistent visual language that could scale without one-off asset creation for every surface.

This shifted image production from reactive and one-off to systematic, reducing production time while maintaining a coherent visual direction across every touchpoint.

What I'd do differently

Shift earlier toward system-level design

The design system unlocked significant speed, but was introduced reactively. Earlier investment would have reduced fragmentation across campaigns and lifecycle touchpoints.

I’d also establish stronger baseline measurement before experimentation to better connect brand and creative decisions to downstream impact, especially where clarity drives performance indirectly.

The design system unlocked significant speed, but was introduced reactively. Earlier investment would have reduced fragmentation across campaigns and lifecycle touchpoints.

I’d also establish stronger baseline measurement before experimentation to better connect brand and creative decisions to downstream impact, especially where clarity drives performance indirectly.

The design system unlocked significant speed, but was introduced reactively. Earlier investment would have reduced fragmentation across campaigns and lifecycle touchpoints.

I’d also establish stronger baseline measurement before experimentation to better connect brand and creative decisions to downstream impact, especially where clarity drives performance indirectly.

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