Design + Systems Thinking. From Brand Identity to Enterprise Architecture.
Twenty years of creative work across brand, print, digital, packaging, surface design, and complex platform implementation. Below is a selection of projects that show how I think, what I build, and why it holds together.
Enterprise Systems / Implementation
Southern University – Enterprise Web-to-Print
PageDNA Platform | HBCU Campus Community of 8,500 | Baton Rouge, Louisiana | 2025–2026
A fully branded, self-service print ordering storefront built for Southern University and A&M College — one of the nation's leading historically Black universities. Serving approximately 8,500 students, faculty, and staff across five product categories, the system puts brand-governed print ordering in the hands of non-technical users through variable-data templates, live proof previews, and a clean checkout flow. Delivered through a complex three-party implementation involving university IT, a facilities partner, and Konica Minolta's AccurioPro Flux production workflow.
Southern University and A&M College (SUBR) — one of the nation's leading historically Black universities — needed a centralized, brand-governed print ordering system for its Baton Rouge campus community of approximately 8,500 students, faculty, and staff. The goal: replace a fragmented manual print request process with a self-service storefront that non-technical users could navigate independently, while maintaining strict brand consistency across every product.
As Implementation Manager and Production Designer for PageDNA, I led the end-to-end design and build of the PAW Print & Post Copy & Mail Center Storefront — from catalog architecture and template design through user experience configuration and vendor workflow integration.
The Scope: The catalog covers five product categories — Business Cards, Stationery, Booklets, Copies & NCR, and Large Format — with multiple format variants within each category. Every template is variable-data driven, meaning users enter their own information (name, title, department, contact details) and see a live-updating proof before approving for production. Brand elements — the Southern University logo, color system, and institutional typography — are locked at the template level, ensuring every order that leaves the print shop is brand-compliant regardless of who placed it.
The Challenge: This was a complex multi-party implementation involving the university's IT infrastructure team, a facilities management partner (ARO), and Konica Minolta's AccurioPro Flux production workflow solution on the hardware side. Coordinating across three organizations with different priorities, availability, and technical knowledge created real project risk — including IT-side blockers that threatened the timeline.
Rather than waiting for the group to self-organize, I built a direct working relationship with the Konica Minolta technical lead — leveraging a prior shared implementation using the same workflow solution — and drove the catalog build and template configuration forward with minimal client-side input. The result: a complete, launch-ready storefront delivered despite significant coordination challenges.
The Experience: The user flow moves from product selection through variable-data customization, live proof preview, proof approval, and order submission — all within a branded, intuitive interface designed for users who are faculty members and administrators, not designers or print professionals. The proof approval modal shows front and back of each product simultaneously, with explicit cost acknowledgment before submission, reducing errors and reprints.
Scope: Enterprise SaaS Implementation · UX Configuration · Variable Data Template Design · Brand Governance · Multi-Party Vendor Coordination · Catalog Architecture · User Experience Design
Institution: Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Campus Population Served: ~8,500 (7,000 students, 1,500+ faculty and staff)
Platform: PageDNA Web-to-Print SaaS
Production Integration: Konica Minolta AccurioPro Flux
Enterprise Systems / Implementation
Enterprise Web-to-Print Systems
PageDNA Platform | Fortune 500, Healthcare & Higher Education Clients | 2013–Present
Building brand-governed print ordering systems for distributed teams who aren't designers — at the scale of hospital networks, university campuses, and national school districts. Each implementation requires translating complex organizational structures into intuitive self-service storefronts where brand compliance is built in, not bolted on. 78+ implementations and counting, including Norton Healthcare, Plano ISD, Loyola University Maryland, and Southern University Baton Rouge.
Large organizations have a print problem that's rarely talked about: distributed teams ordering business cards, stationery, signage, and collateral from a dozen different vendors — inconsistently, expensively, and almost always off-brand. Web-to-print solves that. My role at PageDNA has been to design and build the systems that make it work for real people in real organizations.
The Scope: Since 2013 I've led 78+ enterprise web-to-print implementations for clients including Norton Healthcare, Plano Independent School District, Loyola University Maryland, and Southern University Baton Rouge. Each implementation involves designing a fully branded storefront, building variable-data print templates, configuring the user experience for non-technical end users, and coordinating with print hardware vendors, IT infrastructure teams, and client stakeholders simultaneously.
The Design Challenge: Enterprise web-to-print is fundamentally a UX problem disguised as a print problem. The end users — hospital administrators, school district office managers, university department heads — are not designers. They need to order brand-compliant materials quickly, correctly, and without training. Every template, every product category, every icon and interface decision has to anticipate a user who has never seen the system before and may never use it again.
What Makes It Work: Variable-data templates lock brand elements — logos, color systems, institutional typography — at the template level, while exposing only the fields a user actually needs to fill in. The result is a self-service system where brand compliance is built in, not enforced after the fact. Live proof previews show users exactly what will print before they approve. Budget tracking, SSO integration, and multi-division approval workflows add the organizational infrastructure that enterprise clients require.
Notable Implementations: Norton Healthcare — enterprise storefront serving one of Kentucky's largest healthcare systems across multiple divisions and facilities, including a custom signage system for hospital sign shops with Python-built variable templates featuring real-time Braille translation — rendering correctly in both on-screen proofs and print output files, requiring custom font file configuration at the platform level. Plano ISD — a decade-long engagement that grew to include budget tracking integration, custom SSO configuration, and template systems tailored to school-specific needs now replicated across other school district clients. Loyola University Maryland — higher education implementation with department-level brand governance across an entire university system.
Scope: Enterprise SaaS Implementation · Variable Data Template Design · UX Configuration · Brand Governance · SSO & Active Directory Integration · Budget Tracking Systems · Multi-Party Vendor Coordination · Client Training & Documentation
Book Design / Award-Winning
Feisty Righty – Book Cover Design
Independent Publishing | 2× Gold Medal — IPPY & Nebraska Center for the Book | 2023
A memoir about surviving aggressive breast cancer deserved a cover that balanced raw honesty with quiet defiance. A year of close collaboration with the author produced a design that won two national gold medals — IPPY Autobiography/Memoir and Nebraska Center for the Book — and demonstrated that independent publishing can achieve the same level of craft as any traditional house.
Feisty Righty is Jennifer D. James's memoir of surviving aggressive breast cancer at 41 — 247 days of chemo, surgery, radiation, and the journals she kept through all of it. The title itself tells you everything about the book's tone: Feisty Righty was her name for the tumor in her right breast — darkly funny, defiant, and completely human.
The Design Problem: Medical memoir is a crowded category with predictable visual conventions — hospital imagery, soft photography, pastel palettes that signal vulnerability. We wanted none of that. This was a book about fighting back with humor intact, and the cover had to carry that same spirit — strength without aggression, personality without levity, humanity without sentimentality.
The Process: The engagement involved deep collaboration with the author to understand her experience and what she wanted readers to feel before opening the first page. Multiple visual directions were explored before arriving at the illustrated approach that became the final cover — chosen specifically to give the subject matter warmth and accessibility without softening its impact.
The Result: Feisty Righty won two national Gold Medals for cover design — the Independent Publisher Book Award in Autobiography/Memoir, and the Nebraska Center for the Book award — validating that independent publishing can achieve the same level of craft and editorial judgment as any traditional house.
Scope: Book Cover Design · Illustration · Typography · Art Direction · Long-form Client Collaboration · Independent Publishing
Brand Identity / Packaging / Campaign
Alpine Currant – Outdoor Lifestyle Brand
Speculative Brand Concept | 970 Creative | 2025
A self-directed brand exploration asking: what happens when rugged alpine environments meet refined design sensibility? Built entirely without a client brief — identity, color system, typography, packaging, pattern design, and campaign direction — every decision had to be justified by strategy rather than preference. The result is a complete brand system with a point of view. Rugged by nature. Refined by design.
Most brand projects start with a client brief. Alpine Currant started with a question: what happens when rugged alpine environments meet refined design sensibility? Without a client to defer to, every decision had to be justified by strategy alone. That constraint made it one of the most rigorous creative exercises I've undertaken.
The Brand Premise: Alpine Currant is a speculative outdoor lifestyle brand built around the idea that serious outdoor enthusiasts don't have to choose between performance and taste. The target audience is the person who pushes hard on the trail and knows how to chill at the end of it — Zone 3 Tough. Knows how to chill. That tension between rugged and refined runs through every design decision, from the stacked stones logomark to the color palette that pairs Pine Green and Sea Glass with a Currant Pink accent that surprises without jarring.
The System: The brand was built as a complete system from the ground up — logomark, logotype, six lockup variations including app icon formats, a five-color palette with defined roles for each color, a typography system pairing Commissioner and Montserrat, a surface pattern designed as a brand element rather than decoration, packaging and hangtag design with brand voice copy, a gift card system, and a campaign direction under the Zone 3 Tough platform. The tagline — Rugged by nature. Refined by design. — emerged from the brand strategy and runs through every touchpoint.
The Process: Starting without a brief meant building the brief first. Market positioning, audience definition, competitive landscape analysis, and brand personality development all preceded any visual exploration. Visual territories were developed and evaluated against the strategic framework before a direction was committed to. The result is a brand that holds together not because the pieces match, but because they all answer the same strategic question.
Scope: Brand Strategy · Logo Design · Identity System · Color & Typography · Packaging Design · Surface Pattern Design · Campaign Direction · Art Direction · Tagline Development
Editorial Design / Brand Stewardship / Creative Direction
E+E Leader – 10 Years of Creative Direction
Global Sustainability Media Brand | 2014–2024
A decade of brand stewardship across an entire media ecosystem — from the original identity through a full 2024 rebrand. Owned the visual language across primary brand, sub-brands, awards programs, editorial publications, digital advertising, events, and podcasts. The challenge wasn't just designing well — it was keeping a complex, multi-channel brand coherent through ten years of growth, ownership change, and category evolution.
Ten years is a long time to steward a brand. Long enough to see it graduate from a newsletter with an awards program into a full media ecosystem with an international audience, live events, podcasts, and a multi-category awards program recognized across the sustainability industry. Long enough to know when it's time to stop refreshing and start rebuilding.
The Relationship: I was originally hired in 2014 by the publication's founder to design email campaigns in Mailchimp. Over the following decade that role grew to encompass the full creative direction of the brand — primary identity, sub-brands, editorial design, digital advertising, awards program visual systems, event materials, podcast branding, and eventually a comprehensive 2024 rebrand under new ownership. The evolution from email designer to creative director wasn't appointed — it was earned through a decade of showing up, delivering, and understanding the brand more deeply than anyone else in the organization.
The Brand Challenge: Environmental and energy media is a category where credibility is everything. The visual language had to communicate authority and rigor without feeling bureaucratic — sophisticated enough for C-suite sustainability executives, accessible enough for the broader professional audience the publication was building toward. Every design decision was evaluated against that tension.
The Awards System: One of the most complex creative challenges of the engagement was building a color-coded visual system for the awards program as it expanded into multiple categories. Each category needed its own identity while remaining clearly part of the same family — a brand architecture problem that required both design and systems thinking to solve.
The 2024 Rebrand: The rebrand was initiated under new ownership — two women who had worked alongside me for years before acquiring the publication. Rather than a prescriptive brief, they gave me creative latitude informed by a decade of shared context. I approached it as an architectural problem first: mapping every program, product, and touchpoint before touching the visual system. The result was a brand that finally caught up to what E+E Leader had become — not a newsletter that grew, but a media brand that had been growing all along.
Scope: Brand Identity · Creative Direction · Editorial Design · Sub-brand Development · Awards Program Visual System · Digital Advertising · Email Design · Podcast Branding · Event Materials · Brand Rebrand · Long-term Client Stewardship
Surface Pattern Design / Illustration
OneLittlePrintShop – Surface Pattern Design
365+ Patterns | Spoonflower | Surtex with Finch & Foxglove Artist Collective | Licensed Artwork
An independent pattern design practice built over years — botanical collections, folk illustration, geometric systems, and licensed commercial work shown at Surtex. Each collection is developed as a complete design system with multiple colorways, scale variations, and coordinating prints, designed to live on fabric, wallpaper, and product at commercial scale.
Surface pattern design is where my illustration background, design systems thinking, and love of making things by hand all converge. OneLittlePrintShop is the independent pattern design practice I've built over years — not as a side project, but as a serious creative discipline that informs everything else I do.
The Practice: 365+ original patterns designed and published on Spoonflower, spanning botanical collections, folk illustration, geometric systems, conversational prints, and nature-based motifs. Each pattern is developed as part of a cohesive collection with multiple colorways, scale variations, and coordinating prints — designed to work together as a surface design system, not just as individual pieces. Collections are named and positioned as a design house would position a seasonal line, with titles like Butterfly Studies – Signal Wing, Botanical Rebellion – Rebel Noir, and Riviera Swim – Candy Coast.
Commercial Work: Selected work has been licensed for commercial production and exhibited at Surtex — the premier surface design trade show — through the Finch & Foxglove global artist collective. Surtex connects surface designers with manufacturers, licensors, and product companies seeking original artwork for fabric, wallpaper, stationery, home goods, and apparel. Exhibiting there requires work that meets commercial production standards across repeat accuracy, colorway development, and scale flexibility.
The Connection to Brand Work: Pattern design isn't separate from my brand and identity work — it's an extension of the same thinking. Developing a pattern collection requires the same discipline as developing a brand system: establishing a visual language, building rules for how elements relate to each other, and creating something that holds together across multiple applications. The skills transfer directly, and the sensibility it develops — an eye for rhythm, repetition, and visual harmony — shows up in everything from color palette development to editorial layout.
Collections Include: Butterfly Studies – Signal Wing · Catbird Folk – Blackberry Bramble · Electric Summer Club – Lemon Fizz · Botanical Rebellion – Rebel Noir · Riviera Swim – Candy Coast · Canopy Folk – Vintage Cider · Canopy Folk – Yeti Violet Sightings · Sweetheart Folk – Love Sloths
Scope: Surface Pattern Design · Repeat Pattern Development · Colorway Design · Collection Development · Illustration · Commercial Licensing · Trade Show Exhibition · Surtex
Thank you for taking the time to view my work.
Loveland, Colorado | 970courtney@gmail.com | linkedin.com/in/courtneybethkeller