When I first approached the redesign, I knew it needed to be anchored in The Dot. Born out of the S4 acquisition, when Mediamonks became Media.Monks, The Dot had evolved into more than a graphic element; it was the connective tissue of the brand. After a few late-night conversations with Brady and a stack of design explorations, I kept circling back to that Steve Jobs moment in 2007: “An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator … are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone.”

At Media.Monks, we were consolidating over 40 properties into just two core offerings. The solution? We pulled everything into The Dot, literally. What came out of that was a motion language that captured the spirit of integration and ultimately set the tone for the visual identity that became Monks.

Designing a brand is one thing. Redesigning a global one, including the style guide, identity, tone of voice, slide templates, and full rollout across a multi-billion dollar agency network, is something else entirely. From the start, we knew the only way this would scale was through structure. I leaned on Romina Kavcic and her excellent Design System Guide as the foundation. It gave us a framework to stay organized, document decisions, and build something that felt both intuitive and future-proof.

That meant defining a tokenized system in Figma to manage component variables, something the original guidelines never addressed. Along the way, I also uncovered gaps in accessibility and WCAG compliance. These were not small oversights, so I introduced a set of documented standards to bring consistency across the board.

To keep it all clean, we implemented a clear file and folder hierarchy for easy navigation and version control. Long term, I would like to transition the team away from Google Drive and into a proper digital asset management system. That one is still on the wishlist, but it is coming.