Some of my favorite work at Coursera never had a big launch.

It was the culture work: heritage month campaigns, identities for our employee resource groups, our company values, and dozens of small things that made the company feel like a place. None of it was a single project. Together, it was how people inside and outside Coursera saw who we were. Here's a look back at some of it, from 2017 to 2021.

Heritage months, with the people they celebrate

Every campaign started the same way: one sentence about what we're celebrating, the feeling we want people to leave with, and three pillars to build from. Then we built it with the community it was about.

Black History Month. In 2021, after a year of protests against racial injustice, people wanted to learn from Black leaders making change right now. With our BOLD employee group, we celebrated Black excellence across our own community: learner stories, a collection of courses by Black instructors, and new partnerships with Morehouse College and Howard University.

To show learners flourishing, I layered their clothing with flowers and plants chosen for each person: Daniel loves to wear pink, Mary-Brenda had a bouquet in her room during our video call, Paulina walks past a field on her way to work, and Bravin's last name means "green leaf." The campaign brought 45,000 new social followers and 36,000+ course enrollments, and sent the best-performing email of the month.

Bravin's last name means "green leaf." Daniel loves to wear pink.

Mary-Brenda had a bouquet in her room during our video call. Paulina walks past a field on her way to work.

Women's History Month. I led it two years running. In 2021 we focused on agency, women defining success on their own terms, like Sandra, who went from restaurant management to IT: "I proved them wrong."

Sandra: "I proved them wrong." And Women in Tech.

Asian Pacific Heritage Month became a full case study of its own. Read it here.

Identities for our communities

I designed identities for four of Coursera's employee resource groups.

Mental Health Allies. In late 2020, a few of us started Coursera's first mental health group. I was a founding member, helped look at what support already existed, and designed its identity for a launch at a company all-hands in May 2021. I turned the Coursera C into a cast of faces with every kind of mood, plus check-in cards like "Today I'm feeling… meh." It made a hard topic feel human.

The Mental Health Allies cast.

Every kind of mood, and a check-in card.

Queersera and Women@. For Queersera, our LGBTQ+ group, my first pass played with the Coursera logo, but it didn't feel joyful enough. So I went with a friendly, rounded wordmark in every color of the rainbow. Later I added a "Love without limits" mark for the group's motto, which went on stickers, t-shirts, and Pride socks people actually wore. I also designed a logo and t-shirts for Women@.

First explorations, and the final Queersera wordmark.

Love without limits.

Identities for Queersera and Women@.

Values you can carry around

I designed an icon system for Coursera's five values, built from the C: a graduation cap for "Learners first," a rocket orbiting it for "Maximize impact," a sprout growing from a brain for "Learn, change, grow." The icons had to work as tiny Slack reactions and as posters, and they became enamel pins too. When everyone went remote, I designed rebranded Zoom backgrounds so the brand showed up behind every Courserian on every call.

The five company values icons.

Rebranded Zoom backgrounds.

The small stuff

Long before the rebrand, I was the designer people came to for the small things: values screensavers and cards for every desk, welcome cards for new hires, make-a-thon posters, a brand team sweatshirt, and stickers.

Two of my favorites came out of internal make-a-thons:

Project Celebrate (2017). For an internal make-a-thon, two teammates and I made thank-you, birthday, congratulations, and welcome cards, plus a "certificate of awesome," all built on puns on our four values at the time: betterment, deep honesty, solidarity, and boldness. Then we put a chest on every floor with the cards, envelopes, rubber stamps of the values shapes, and colorful pens, so Courserians could celebrate each other. The cards sold out.

She Speaks. For another make-a-thon, three teammates, our Women@ group and I paired each company value with the words of a woman who lived it: Eleanor Roosevelt for boldness, Malala Yousafzai for solidarity, Simone Biles for betterment, and Audre Lorde for deep honesty. In three days, we hand-lettered and designed posters for around the office, stickers to hand out, and screensavers for the conference-room TVs.

Hand-lettering by Emily.

The welcome card.

"In deep honesty, you rock!" and "It's your day, be bold!" Hand-lettering by Emily.

The certificate of awesome.

Custom rubber stamps.

She Speaks: four values, four women. Hand-lettering by Emily.

Hand-lettering by Emily.

The values as stickers.

None of these were big launches. But together they were the culture people saw every day, and the best of it was made with the people it was for.

More Coursera work: the rebrand, Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Grace Hopper Celebration.