When Marci Allen joined Armour as the Senior Graphic Designer, her first priority was to make sure that design had a seat at the table.

“Shortly after joining Armour, I sat down with leadership to walk them through examples of good and bad design,” says Allen. “I wanted them to understand how design can really affect what customers think about a company and how willing customers are to stick around and learn more about our products. That’s why it’s so important for any company to invest in good design and branding.”

This type of proactive, design-led thinking helped Allen advance to the role of Creative Director and Demand Generation in just three years. Armour is a leader in cybersecurity — a topic that is top of mind for many organisations in the digital age. Known for its powerful cloud security offering, one challenge for Armour comes in explaining the technology behind its offer and how it stands apart from the competition.

With a focus on strong design, Allen and the rest of the Armour creative team use Adobe Creative Cloud for teams to find new ways to make cybersecurity understandable and exciting for customers.

Consistent branding across channels

One of the first jobs for Allen was to oversee Armour’s new brand design. “When looking at branding, it’s important for me that it reads well across all channels, from tiny social media icons to big banners in event spaces,” says Allen. “We want to have consistency to elevate our brand and raise our profile over other security companies.”

The Armour design team uses Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries to create visual brand guidelines, collecting approved colours, logos and other images in one location. Allen can set administrative rights, limiting who can add, delete or download assets in the library to maintain central control over the assets. The brand library is then shared across the company so that teams always have access to the correct branding, whether they’re working on a blog, event banner or internal newsletter. The response across the company has been overwhelmingly positive.

The design team also creates libraries for specific projects, such as new product announcements, to collect all necessary assets in one location. Libraries improve collaboration because designers don’t need to worry about sending bloated zip files to coworkers or keeping track of the latest logos for a project. Allen estimates that using Creative Cloud Libraries saves three to five hours per project. When onboarding new employees, libraries also accelerate the learning curve by providing everything that they need to know about Armour and its branding.

“We have a small team of five in-house staff and eight contractors,” says Allen. “Adobe Creative Cloud for teams gives us flexibility over the licences so that we can quickly bring on extra hands as needed. I just ask IT to assign a licence to someone else in the marketing department and they can get it done in minutes.”

Experimenting with creative design

Adobe Creative Cloud for teams touches almost every creative deliverable at Armour. Designers use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for the logos, images and diagrams that form the background of the Armour brand. Images are also pushed out across social media and email campaigns delivered with Marketo Engage.

The website acts as the primary source of information about Armour and how to address the complexities of cybersecurity. Potential customers can download case studies and white papers laid out with Adobe InDesign. Videos provide a deeper look into Armour, from demo videos where a member of the creative team walks audiences through features of the platform, to interviews and webinars, all edited using Adobe Premiere Pro.

One of the biggest benefits of working with Adobe Creative Cloud apps is how the ease of use promotes experimentation. The customer experience designer on the website team uses Adobe XD to quickly prototype new website and landing pages to demonstrate how users can interact with an UI module and to show animations. The team also appreciates how they can use plugins to speed up the design process, such as finding profile images or pulling text from Google Sheets.

Adobe Spark has become a fast favourite of the social media lead, as he can use the built-in templates to quickly create images, graphics and animations to find the best way to convey information in seconds.

“We love how Adobe Creative Cloud constantly rolls out updates,” says Allen. “We don’t have to wait for full version upgrades every few years. Instead, we can start using the new features and quality-of-life improvements as soon as they’re available.”

Rethinking collateral in the digital age

Allen is leading the charge at Armour to rethink how the company creates and communicates information in a digital-first world. Cybersecurity information can be technical and change quickly. Rather than having highly detailed diagrams and long videos, Armour is looking at ways that it can break down information into bite-sized chunks. Smaller, interactive diagrams give Armour’s customers a deeper understanding of cybersecurity threats and how to protect their organisations. Shorter videos, which are developed and updated faster, can better reflect the changing digital landscape.

Armour typically attends cybersecurity conferences and events, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a growing trend toward virtual events. For in-person events, the creative team designs banners, booths and print collateral using Creative Cloud apps—an approach they plan to continue once onsite events resume.

Digital events require a slightly different approach. Armour’s virtual booths need to make a big impact in a small space as visitors scroll past. At an in-person event, a team member might walk someone through a brochure or an on-screen demo. The digital information needs to find other ways to catch visitors’ attention with bite-sized information and interactive graphics that prospects move through on their own.

“Whether we’re looking at a digital event or a new product launch, we want to determine the best way to deliver ideas,” says Allen. “Sometimes it’s a white paper, but other times it might be a video, a blog or an interactive diagram. The key is creating something that is clear and impactful and will make people want to read more about cybersecurity. Adobe Creative Cloud for teams gives us all of the apps that we need to find the right way to connect with our customers.”

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