Elizabeth Maki
Brand & Creative Lead
I build brand systems, campaigns, and content that are emotionally resonant and easy for the whole team to use, not just the designer.
How I think about brand
Brand is more than just a visual system. Great branding is how trust scales across marketing, sales, product, and content. Strong brand systems are clear and easy to implement. They make it easy for everyone across a company to be consistent - in their voice, their visuals and how they describe the product. I design brands that build trust across every team and piece of collateral. And, I create content and campaigns that connect with the core identity of a customer, not just their pain points.
Currently I’m building brand systems at inquirED focused on making the most of AI’s potential for scale, efficiency and consistency while keeping the unique work and creativity of humans at the center of the design process.
How I work
Strategy -> system -> execution. And, the devil’s in the details.
Partner with leadership to set brand strategy in alignment with business objectives.
Operationalize brand strategy for marketing and design, including where and how AI can be leveraged both in systems and design work
Translate strategy into usable systems across teams for consistency, scale, and adoption, including building AI skills and plugins that can be used across teams.
Execute on brand strategy. That means building and running content roadmaps, concepting and creating campaigns, and directing a small team of designers and contractors to make it all real.
My Work
Brand Systems
Company rebrand
Repositioned a growing education company with a trust-building brand system that scaled across products, marketing, and content.
The goal was to move from a brand that read as an educational non-profit to one that read as an authentic, innovative player in the curriculum space. We wanted teachers and education leaders to feel seen in their work and to know we were building solutions from a place of real experience in the classroom.
What I loved about this project: I love branding. I love uncovering what makes a company special and creating a story and identity that feels like it could only belong to them. I’m always surprised by what emerges and proud of the the way great branding comes back to the people who built the thing.
I also loved that when the CEO show the branding to the board, a board member asked which agency we’d used. We didn’t; it was me :).
Annnnd, I loved getting to work with an exceptional photographer to capture some custom photos that just hum with classroom life. In a market where stock photos have dominated, this was an easy win for us visually that turned into some real resonant moments that say more about our company that any number of mission statements.
Photography: Saverio Truglia
Website Redesign
Managed the redesign of inquirED’s website to align with the new brand, clarify our role as a B2B company, and stand out in a crowded ELA curriculum market, through improved site architecture, SEO/AIO and top of funnel conversion.
What I loved about this project: Turning the website from a non-profit style branding to a professional, modern website built on human connection was really joyful. It felt like hand tailoring a suit for someone who’s been walking around in an ill-fitting, off the rack jacket.
Photography: Saverio Truglia | Website build: Crew
B2B Product Branding
Launched a new B2B product with a distinct identity that balanced continuity with the parent brand and differentiation in a competitive K–5 ELA education market.
What I loved about this project: This was a fun stretch - bringing a new product into an existing brand hierarchy AND a competitive market at the same time AND keeping it all in house. I am proud of how well this product ties to the parent and sister brands while really standing on its own two feet. I loved getting to partner with and mentor product designers to build out the full suite of textures and custom illustrations for the product. And I love that the branding is built on a flexible system of textures.
Campaigns & Content
Better Together
The Better Together campaign translated Inkwell’s curriculum design philosophy into a clear, ownable idea executed across the full funnel to build trust, drive awareness, and generate early demand in a competitive ELA market.
It staked claim on high value (but unoccupied) real estate in the curriculum market - authentic, trusty-worthy and a little bit playful.
What I loved about this project: This was a chance for me to dive into a full campaign design on my own - from visuals, to messaging and positioning to production. Sometimes, after lots of strategy and planning and management, it’s really nice to roll up my sleeves and work directly on design.
More branding work
Meadow Bloom
Brand identity for a Seattle landscape designer and floralist. The goal was to capture the feeling of her work, which lives somewhere between wild and cultivated.
Basejoy
Brand identity for a B2B SaaS tool that makes database monitoring less painful for engineering teams. The brief was to make something that felt approachable and human in a category that usually defaults to dark mode and jargon.
Edwell
Brand identity for an organization building K-12 teacher apprenticeship programs. The challenge was making something that felt credible to district leaders and warm enough to appeal to the teachers and candidates they're trying to reach.
Great First Eight
Logo refresh for a product inquirED distributes exclusively. The original had a solid idea but too much going on. The rebrand strips it back to a single color palette and lets the illustration do the work.
