Liaison/NI:

Enterprise Brand Rollout Across Print and Digital Collateral

Production design support for a year-long rollout of rebranded marketing materials following NI’s transition from National Instruments to a modernized global identity.

Company

Liaison / NI
Liaison, an Austin-based marketing agency and longtime client, brought me in to support a large-scale brand rollout for NI (formerly National Instruments). NI is a global leader in software-connected, automated test and measurement systems used by engineers to validate products and accelerate development. In 2023, NI became part of Emerson, where it continues to operate within Emerson’s Test & Measurement business.

Overview

Industry: Automated Test & Measurement

Timeline: Apr 2020 – Jan 2021

Team: Liaison project manager, NI internal design team, production design support

My Role

Production Designer

I helped bring NI’s rebrand to life across a large volume of customer-facing marketing materials, translating a newly launched brand system into clear, consistent, production-ready collateral across formats, teams, and languages.

Supported a large, multi-stakeholder brand transition
Applied new brand guidelines across brochures, white papers, and related collateral
Maintained consistency across a high volume of assets over time
Adapted layouts for translated and multilingual versions
Worked as an extension of Liaison and NI’s internal design team during a complex rollout

Project Summary

NI had undergone a major strategic and visual shift, and the new identity needed to move beyond launch-level branding into the company’s everyday marketing ecosystem. That meant a large body of existing collateral had to be updated accurately, consistently, and efficiently so the new brand could feel real across customer touchpoints.

Working within a broader rollout led by NI’s internal team and agency partners, I focused on applying the new system across brochures, white papers, and other supporting assets—helping extend the refreshed brand into practical, customer-facing materials.

National Instruments - NI Marketing collateral

The Challenge

The challenge was not creating the identity from scratch, but making a newly launched brand system work across a high volume of real-world marketing materials.

There were hundreds of collateral pieces in circulation, and multiple designers across agency and internal teams were working within the same evolving guidelines. As the rollout progressed, the team identified limitations, made adjustments, and refined how the brand functioned in practice. That made the process highly collaborative and fluid, requiring precision, flexibility, and clear communication across formats, content types, and translated versions.

The Strategy

The approach was to treat the new guidelines as a working system rather than a static set of rules.

I studied the new brand standards, gathered the necessary shared assets, and applied them consistently across the materials assigned to me. Just as important, the production team maintained close communication with NI’s internal team so that updates, adjustments, and decisions could be carried through consistently across the broader rollout. The goal was not only to redesign individual pieces, but to help the new identity feel cohesive across the full marketing library.

The Process

Phase 1: Learning and Interpreting the New Brand

The first step was getting familiar with NI’s updated visual language and understanding how the new guidelines were being applied across the broader rollout. Because multiple teams were working from the same system, it was important to stay aligned on the core elements—typography, color, imagery, layout structure, and overall brand consistency.

Selected brand guidelines created by Gretel in partnership with NI, establishing the visual system applied across the broader marketing rollout.

Phase 2: Rolling Out the System Across Collateral

I used the established system to update a wide range of customer-facing materials, including brochures, flyers, handbooks, and white papers. The work required balancing consistency with flexibility, adapting each piece to its content while keeping the overall brand experience cohesive.

Phase 3: Adapting for Multilingual and Technical Content

Many of the materials required extra production care, whether due to translated content, layout expansion, or dense technical information. I adapted files for multilingual versions and worked within content-heavy formats while maintaining clarity, consistency, and production quality across the system.

Results

While I was not responsible for measuring performance outcomes, this work played an important role in helping NI’s new identity show up consistently across day-to-day marketing materials.

Helped extend the new NI identity into real customer-facing collateral
Supported a year-long rollout across a broad range of materials
Maintained consistency across formats and translated versions
Helped bridge high-level brand strategy and everyday marketing execution
Contributed to a faster, more cohesive rollout by supporting the internal team at scale

Reflections

This project reinforced that successful rebrands do not end with guidelines—they succeed when the system can be applied clearly and consistently across the full marketing ecosystem.

It also gave me valuable experience working inside a large-scale enterprise rollout, where communication, adaptability, and precision mattered just as much as design execution. I learned a great deal about multilingual production, high-volume InDesign workflows, and how strong internal systems can help distributed teams move quickly while staying aligned.