Micah Johnson
Senior Designer + Art Director
This campaign generated a 10% brand awareness lift in New York, with 470M impressions in 2021–2022. The ads were featured on an array of platforms around Hudson Yards in New York: static and animated newsstands, bus shelters, sidewalk digital displays, and digital displays in Grand Central Station and Chelsea Piers. The campaign's original design was developed by Moving Brands, and I made the top left animated format to allow for larger messaging while adapting the boilerplate to the array of applications and platforms, refreshing with content on a regular basis in tandem with the in-house creative processes and timelines. Ultimately, I would complete many dozens of deliverables at each quarterly or semiannual refresh, in large-format print sizes, and static and motion digital formats.
While with First Republic, I was responsible for interpreting business ask and design systems into on-brand assets. The ask for this specific example was to develop an infographic that could be customized by wealth managers using a platform called Seismic, which would output a one-off custom flyer explaining the hierarchy and functions of wealth managers, as tailored to a specific client's needs. The example given to me as guidance by the business lead was a tiered pyramid of labeled boxes connected by a system of bidirectional arrows to specify particular services, client service representatives, and their relationship to one another. Upon reflection and experimentation, I found the asked-for infographic solution to be overly complicated, perhaps "too visual", and not in line with typical First Republic collateral and branding. I asked more questions from the stakeholder, and decided to propose (alongside many infographic solutions) this branded textual flyer that simply stated the proposed services that would be useful to the client's particular situation and relevant contact information, while incorporating aspects of the established design system. In the end, this proposed solution was chosen by the creative leads and gladly approved by the stakeholders.
As part of my function with First Republic, I would support the social media team by creating content. This particular example was a campaign made by a designer and creative lead team, and my contribution was to create animated deliverables based on storyboards with content variations at an array of resolutions and aspect ratios. I proposed animation solutions based on the storyboards and iterated with the designers until a final was settled on, then interpreted the content into the various sizes. The resulting deliverables were featured on retail LCD signage and on the array of social media platforms.
As part of a brand guideline and design system, proprietary typefaces were developed specifically for First Republic, by Dalton Maag. The goal was to create ownable type unique to First Republic that would be used across all branded materials, while being optimized for digital finance. My function within this process was to give feedback and guidance, within a team of creative directors and VPs, to Dalton Maag over about seven months time in weekly or biweekly Zoom meetings. The process was mapped out and scheduled beforehand, but the creative process was largely fluid, governed by consensus, and open to individual interpretation, with often wide differences of opinion. In the beginning stages, I wrote a long internal email specifying what I thought the type should look like based on my familiarity with the brand, the peculiarities I had experienced with the existing typefaces, supported by an array of inferences, opinions, ideas, and so forth. This was met with vocal support and many of the ideas endured or appeared in the final typefaces. The design and feedback process, which was of course supported by the entire team and the expertise of the typographers, varied from theoretical to technical, historical, branding, and so forth. The result was a balanced and contemporary sans serif optimized for finance and digital applications, an expressive display weight serif typeface with characteristics unique to First Republic, and a text weight serif to be used at small sizes, all in both static and variable formats.
For this project, I was asked to iterate on a legacy infographic to bring it into alignment with current brand guidelines. The far left shows the original artwork, and progresses from left to right to show my thinking, with simplification and modernization of the artwork and its content.
I was reading on architectural styles and saw that many contemporary architectural styles are characterized as "parametric" due to how they are defined. Looking into it a little deeper I came across a photograph (pictured top right), and it made me think that it could be adapted to the retail spaces of First Republic, perhaps with the eagle icon inscribed, in a concurrent effort to strengthen the brand. I messaged the creative VP and he was highly supportive of the idea and asked if I could make a full-size prototype to socialize the idea, inexpensively using approved vendors. Being a large organization without an org chart, I was however familiar with the architect team and reached out to several architects to find fabricators who could handle such a job and how technically it could be produced. Through correspondence with several identified vendors and colleagues I was able to focus on an schedule of prices using different materials and vendors, with internal teams to iterate and model the artwork. However, by that time we were in cost-savings mode for the year and the project was put on hold. Still, it remained a supported idea for bringing the retail spaces into a more contemporary vocabulary. I also tested this using generative AI (Midjourney, bottom two images), and found several more compelling options that could successfully support a future state of the retail brand.
This was the chosen solution (of many proposed) for a more premium debit card packaging for First Republic. I was asked to explore how to package a debit card in a way that would be special, yet remain a standard mailing. Researching led me to propose and narrow down options based on ideas, photographs, and the like, finally reviewed by the creative and business leads. Once a general idea was focused on, I was asked to create a document including dielines that could be used to price production, as seen here.
With Madeleine Corson Design, I was brought on to complete the environmental graphics package for the San Francisco Public Safety Campus since the designer on the project was moving on. Much of the drawings and specs were in place, however many revisions were needed, sign types and specifications to be defined—a small portion shown here—in addition to all the administrative steps to complete the project. I worked with the creative director, representatives from the City of San Francisco, the design and engineering architects, fabricator, and construction lead to reach final construction documents, review and approve fabricator submittals, complete the punch list for documentation purposes, and archive all project documents and communications in an accessible manner. More info
With Madeleine Corson Design, disparate rough sharpie tracings by a previous designer were given to me, which I merged and refined into a cohesive vector artwork, which was further modeled to reach the final logomark seen here, used to represent Mark Trujillo's namesake wine out of St. Helena. More info
This pilot project for First Republic was to develop a template direct mail piece for regional ultra-high-net-worth prospects, this in particular for the Portland region. I worked with a senior art director to develop the piece, including conceiving and specifying many illustrations custom to the region, a cover blind embossed with artwork of the target region, the internal layout, accompanying postcards of the regional illustrations, as well as sourcing the small size rigid mailer and automatic labeling. The project initially produced several million in deposits for the Portland location, the piece was deemed a success, and the template rolled out to additional regions.
This piece for First Republic Private Wealth Management was to reimagine an existing biannual newsletter into what the art director conceived as a magazine format. I worked with the art director to develop the template, as well as doing the production for the first few issues of the magazine.
One of my first projects with First Republic was to develop a design system and template documents for the many one sheets that would be produced in-house and by vendors, using the brand expression as it existed at the time. Shown here are a few pages from that document, based on explorations done with the creative lead. The result increased both productivity and consistency across assets and designers, while also providing a building block for later design systems.