Role
I was hired by Morningstar as a Design Intern to design various internal and external documents, presentations, advertisements, and event pieces for their Equity, Credit & Research teams.
Challenge
This was my first design job and I immediately hit the ground running with onboarding and initiatives. As the sole design resource embedded on multiple teams during my time, I had to adapt and accomodate for client needs extremely fast, which was overwhelming at first but I got better at it.
Process
After working closely with design leads, project managers, financial analysts, and other stakeholders, I'd brainstorm concepts and present designed artifacts in a timely fashion. I'd then incorporate their feedback, iterate, review, and publish/launch the pieces they needed for clients.
Timeline
2 Years, May 2010 - June 2012
"It is quite clear that Dan is extremely passionate about his work and he truly does a phenomenal job. Dan put together materials for my group on a tight deadline and made sure it was exactly what we wanted. He is diligent and very precise with his work. It is a pleasure working with him and I am very confident that Dan will exceed expectations in any future role."
Todd Serpico, Director of Global Business Development, Morningstar
Graphic and Print Design
Analyst Research Center User's Guide
Scope
After being embedded on a small Equity Research team as a sole design resource, my first assignment was to redesign a user guide for our popular internal tool, the Analyst Research Center (ARC).
Auditing and Gathering Resources
I went to work auditing the existing user guide for visual and hierarchy inconsistencies and crammed content, which were a common occurance in a lot of analyst-driven work. This is when I learned about past complaints with content being difficult to read, giving me a good sense on what to solve for. From there, I was given new content and FAQ's for the latest version of ARC, coming from empathy and interview sessions with users of the tool.
Construct Grid and Hierarchy
With this new content, I started constructing a grid in InDesign. Morningstar had a great resource of existing templates and grids to start with, and I ultimately chose a customized 4-column grid. I then planned out a base visual hierachy:
- Title, subtitle, short descriptor
- Snapshot/image of the ARC tool
- Image guide callouts
- FAQs and descriptive content
- Footer with page number/context
Review, Iterate, and Publish
After several rounds of internal feedback and iterations with my team, senior designers, and analysts, we published the ARC User's Guide for print and PDF/digital use.
Management Behind the Moat Ad
Scope
While on a different Equity & Credit team, I was tasked with designing a full page ad for the Management Behind the Moat conference, featured in our magazine Morningstar Advisor.
A Different Approach
After getting the content, I wanted to stress the following elements: event title, year, and location. I also wanted to explore an alternative design language and theme. Morningstar had a comprehensive design guide, filled with typography, color, layout & grid standards for many mediums, and traditionally our ads were more native with its surrounding pages. On the contrary, I approached this with the notion that we should make it stand out and immediately contrast with a lot of our lighter-themed pages.
Construct Grid and Hierarchy
With InDesign, I came up with a grid that emphasized content on the top and left hand sides of the pages, allowing for viewers to scan left-to-right and then top-to-bottom easily. A hierarchy emerged:
- Title, year, location
- Description
- Bullets, micro details
- Participant list
- Company logo
Review, Iterate, and Publish
During review, stakeholders questioned the need for such a large departure from our conventional ads. Ultimately, I argued that upon learning from viewership, this design could pave way for more deviation and experimentation in the future. After some tweaking, we published the ad.
Equity & Credit Resource Center Banners
Scope
On that same Equity & Credit team, we began to notice a problem with the location of all our printed documents: We didn't have a central place for other teams and clients to refer to and grab them for further use and research. In each team's pod, there was an empty desk called "the island", usually reserved for free work and one-off meetings. We had an idea to dedicate and callout this space for our various printed resources. I was tasked to design a banner that would immediately grab the visitor's attention for this area.
Design & Purpose
Morningstar had a library of fun iconography, elements, maps, and other design artifacts to play with. I chose to use our map and some financial-specific iconography to cater to our more global clientelle that would come in often. Against our bright orange, I laid out this map with masked elements and the title "Equity & Credit Resource Center". After printing and placement of the banners, they certainly didn't go unnoticed.
Oil & Gas Insights Monthly Report
Scope
One of my last running projects at Morningstar was working on data visualization and layout adjustments for our monthly Oil & Gas Insights report. The report was originally designed by my manager and was handed off to me after he moved to a different team. Each report had different ways of portraying data, and my challenge was to consistently design new but familiar ways of presenting it.
Process
Every section of the report had different layers of data. The content would be sent to me via Excel and I data-merged into an InDesign template, which saved me a lot of time to design charts and graphs. A lot of the data sent to me had to be visualized based on its context and purpose:
- For time-based data, use a bar or line graph
- For percentages, use a pie or donut graph
- For countries and locations, use our map graphic
- For complex or compounding data, use a table
- For spectrum, use a plot graph
Approaching it this way helped me visualize and design around the data.
Review, Iterate, and Publish
Once my team signed off on it, I'd send it to our Sectors team for review. Usually we'd go through a couple rounds of layout iterations and then I'd export it as a printable PDF for our clients.
Various One Sheets
Background
One sheets were everywhere at Morningstar and used frequently for bite-sized information. Whether as stacks of paper in resource centers, PDFs attached in emails, or in widely-used publications, designers found them as great ways to experiment with graphic design and data visualization within our brand and design system.
Scope
Looking back, I designed a lot of one sheets for many different occasions and purposes. Anything from events, to investor portfolio previews, to geographical representation, I worked on them for various teams and stakeholders. Some were templates that I'd just fill with new data, and some were completely new design ideas. Overall, they were great sandboxes for trying out new layouts and approaches in design.