Brand Strategy: Oracle Redwood Design System
I joined Oracle’s Brand Experience team in 2019 to help transform Oracle’s brand identity from one regarded as “old, bold, and cold,” to one infused with warmth and humanity. The result was Redwood, a brand design system with rich, earthy colors, hand-drawn textures, realistic photography, and a fresh, customer-centric voice.
Redwood Brand System
In a sea of blue and white tech brands, the Redwood brand design system truly stands out. Redwood is rooted in a global perspective that reflects our shared humanity along with Oracle’s more than four decades of experience as a leading technology company.
Every element of Redwood aims to put people at the center of one, undeniably Oracle story. By applying the brand attributes of human, sophisticated, aspirational, and intelligent as a filter, this system enhances every product, marketing, sales, and event interaction at Oracle.
I worked on the brand and UX design team that built the original Redwood guidelines in 2019 and have continued to work with my brand creative partners to both extend and refine the system. I co-lead the effort to redesign and simplify the core brand style guide, re-released in October 2024, so it’s easier to understand and use.
Key responsibilities:
Informed style guide content and UX strategy
Wrote and edited all brand system copy from 2019-2024
Lead the development of the Oracle Voice and Tone Guidelines
Co-created the standalone Redwood Photography Style Guide
Oracle voice and tone
These voice and tone guidelines were Oracle’s first. I designed them to help everyone at Oracle craft marketing and product UI copy that connects with customers in a consistently human, aspirational, sophisticated, and intelligent tone of voice.
I created and launched the initial iteration of the voice and tone guidelines along with the first release of the Redwood Brand Style Guide in fall 2019. This lightweight version offered the basics on brand tone of voice and language choices.
Soon after the first release, I started work on a more robust, standalone guide to instruct Oracle’s marketing and sales teams in how to achieve an on-brand voice. I built a cross-functional advisory team to ensure the guide would support use cases across product UX, Oracle.com, advertising, and events communications. After several months of work, I released a complete set of voice and tone guidelines in April 2020.
Key responsibilities:
Own voice and tone development, implementation, and education
Provide ongoing brand copy reviews and consultations
Run workshops, trainings, and demos
Continue to revise and refine guidelines
Champion consistency across all internal communications resources
Brand extension: Oracle AI Design system
In late 2023, as the AI technology landscape grew ever more crowded and complex, Oracle brand and product design leadership recognized the urgent need to develop a single point of view and visual identity to unify the global Oracle AI sales and marketing approach.
Following our Redwood design principles, I collaborated with brand creative CDs and leadership and our product design SVPs to build a differentiated AI narrative and style guide, released in November 2024.
Key responsibilities:
Developed the Oracle AI strategic brand narrative to gain executive buy-in on the brand and product UX teams’ recommended positioning and creative direction
Developed the Oracle AI style guide, including content strategy and copywriting
Defined the Oracle AI product naming positioning and guidelines
Review and approve Oracle AI product, service, event names on behalf of brand