Rebranding a $247B investor for global clarity

Led the rebrand of a $247B global investor through a scalable, accessible design system that improved efficiency, unified teams, and strengthened global perception.

2021-2022

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan

OTPP is one of Canada’s largest pension funds, managing over $247B in assets with a global investment footprint.

Scalable Design Systems

Accessibility

Brand Strategy
Leadership

Outcome

Established a scalable brand system that streamlined how OTPP communicates, improved design efficiency, and aligned teams around a shared vision of clarity and trust.

Why It Mattered

Led the rebrand of a $247B global investor through a scalable, accessible design system that improved efficiency by 30%, unified teams, and strengthened global perception.

Results

30% faster content delivery through reusable templates and design tokens
Global adoption across digital, print, and environmental touchpoints
Improved brand trust and consistency across internal teams
WCAG 2.0 AA compliance achieved across all brand assets

Overview

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is one of Canada’s largest pension funds, managing over $247B in assets with a global investment footprint.

The challenge was more than visual. OTPP’s brand had become fragmented across teams, channels, and regions. Inconsistent tools and messaging created inefficiencies internally and a diluted perception externally.

This project redefined OTPP’s identity for a modern global audience. It delivered a scalable, accessible brand systemthat unified communication, improved efficiency by 30%, and aligned the organization around a shared vision of clarity and confidence.

Challenge

The legacy brand system had reached its limits. Asset creation was slow, inconsistent, and difficult to maintain. Content owners lacked the tools to work efficiently, while the brand no longer reflected OTPP’s credibility as a forward-looking global investor.

We needed to rebuild the brand from the inside out — a system designed for clarity, accessibility, and scale, empowering every team to create confidently and consistently.

My Role

As Manager, UX and Creative, I led a five-person internal brand team and partnered with two external agencies (EXT and Authentica) to define and deliver OTPP’s new design system.

My role was to shape the creative direction, facilitate alignment across Legal, Communications, and Member Services, and collaborate directly with the C-suite to ensure the new brand system reflected both the business strategy and the organization’s evolving global identity.

I guided discovery and validation through UX and brand audits, stakeholder interviews, and hands-on workshops that aligned executives and creators around a shared vision of what the brand could be.

Strategy and Approach

We approached the rebrand as an enterprise-wide design transformation, not just a creative refresh.

Through UX and brand audits, we identified the key breakdowns: unclear ownership, accessibility gaps, and inconsistent tone. From there, we focused on three guiding principles:

Clarity over complexity. Simplify visual and verbal systems to make the brand universally usable.
Design for accessibility. Ensure compliance with WCAG 2.0 AA across all brand assets and platforms.
Build for scale. Create modular components and governance tools that empower internal teams to produce consistent, on-brand content.

We ran collaborative workshops to test typography, color contrast, and tone, ensuring accessibility and cohesion across digital, print, and event touchpoints.

The new design system was built with flexibility in mind, supported by documentation and templates that streamlined asset creation for all teams.

Tony possesses an incredible talent for translating complex ideas into creative and aesthetically compelling design solutions that significantly influenced both our team’s dynamic and the success of our projects.

Joe Smith, Manager, OTPP

Results and Impact

The brand transformation achieved measurable outcomes across both perception and performance:

30% faster content creation through reusable templates and design tokens
Global adoption across digital, print, and environmental platforms
Improved brand consistency and accessibility (WCAG 2.0 AA compliance)
Increased internal trust and engagement with brand tools and governance
Elevated brand perception as a modern, globally recognized organization

The system continues to evolve as a foundation for OTPP’s broader digital and communications strategy.

Leadership and Influence

My leadership approach centered on inclusion and alignment. I brought stakeholders into the process early to co-create, rather than simply review, brand direction. This built trust and accelerated adoption.

By developing onboarding tools and training materials, I helped teams understand why design decisions mattered: strengthening brand literacy and internal advocacy.

I also supported executive storytelling by presenting the new brand system through a roadshow across global offices, ensuring that every region felt part of the transformation.

Through this process, I helped shift the organization’s view of design from a service function to a strategic capability that drives clarity, confidence, and connection.

Get in touch

Learnings

Bringing stakeholders in early doesn’t slow you down: it builds better systems. This project reinforced the power of intentional UX leadership: listening early, aligning often, and delivering systems that serve both design and business outcomes.

"This wasn’t just a rebrand. It was an enterprise transformation through design."