Harnessing creative swag to reflect a health-tech startup's culture and lifestyle.
Turquoise Health
Turquoise Health is the healthcare industry's most comprehensive price transparency platform.
Founded in 2020 in San Diego, they build digital products that give consumers insight into the price of healthcare while encouraging competition with accessible, usable data.
TQ Summit is a week-long biannual company event for all Turquoise Health employees aiming to gather everyone in person to inform them about current projects, big changes, company goals, and plans for the nearest future. Each summit is held in a different US city than the last.
While working at Turquoise the HR department or “People Operations” department (POps) reached out to me to establish a visual identity for the event that would live on tshirts and other swag items provided to employees upon their arrival.
A straightforward metaphor of location (postage stamp) is used as the main visual element allowing for easy adaptation for each summit in their respective locations.
Due to tight turnarounds with design request from the department I established a perspective system for the tshirts’ illustrative back graphic that would would allow me to create a scene within a timely manner in between requests from Marketing and other departments.
In addition to the shirts, an array of brand stickers were also requested to greet employees as they arrived at their assigned tables.
To ensure the stickers would truly be cherished by the employees while doubling as gorilla marketing I designed each to creatively reflect the brand’s mission and its culture of fun through wordplay on health and data.
TQ Swag Store
When I was asked to design the first wave of items for the company’s new employee swag store, I knew this wasn’t about printing logos on hoodies—it was about crafting a lifestyle extension of a health-tech culture.
The challenge was to create pieces employees would actually want to spend their own money on—items that weren’t just branded, but felt like part of the modern, high-functioning life they were already building.
By drawing inspiration from high-end streetwear to throwback aesthetics with a typographic touch, we made every piece feel wearable, thoughtful, and playfully stylish. This resulted in company swag that employees were actually excited to wear—empowering them to serve as brand ambassadors without sacrificing style.
TQU
To celebrate the brand’s efforts in its release the marketing department tasked me with creating a collegiate collection for release in the TQ Swag store.
A simple request but the real challenge (fun) was identifying: what does collegiate looks like through the Turquoise brand lens?
The People Operations department regular refers to Turquoise employees and team members as “Turquees”. So naturally this would inspire the company’s internal mascot perfect for such a collection.
