A Visual Language for Weather
Scaling a Rebrand for AccuWeather.
Company
AccuWeather
Role
Art Director
Internal owner of the Loyalkaspar rebrand rollout across every team. Worked with the UX team on user research, AccuWeather’s meteorologists on color systems, a senior motion designer on broadcast animation, Massive Music on the sonic identity, and outside printers and vendors on print, out-of-home, and environmental work.
Brand System
Iconography
Broadcast Graphics
Data Visualization
Out-of-Home
Sonic Identity
Print & Production
Environmental Design
Brand Foundation
Loyalkaspar delivered a new logo, a custom typeface (Solis), and a strategic repositioning. I made it operational, translating the rebrand into guidelines, templates, lockups, and photo direction standards that sales, marketing, product, and design teams could actually work from.
The Color System
The broadcast color system required sustained collaboration. Continuous user research with the UX team established what actually communicated danger to a general audience. Then many rounds with AccuWeather's meteorologists ensured scientific accuracy. The result was a perceptually uniform spectral temperature gradient, deep teal for cold and amber for warm. The danger scale became a continuous horizontal bar (Some → Moderate → High → Extreme) anchored in grayscale logic, so severity reads without relying on hue.
Before
After
Broadcast Playbook
The full broadcast template system lives in a Figma playbook I built and documented: Solis typography specs at defined sizes, grid and margin rules, component hierarchy, and legend treatments for every data type. A second round of on-air templates for weekend and 7-day forecasts, MinuteCast, and game-time earned first-round approval from leadership. It hadn’t gone to air when I left.
Severe Weather & Hurricane Icons
AccuWeather's 12 severe weather icons and full hurricane icon family are brand-unique shapes I designed from scratch. The hurricane icons came first, and the severe weather set followed. Both are still in use across every AccuWeather platform.
My team created brochures and one-sheets for the sales teams. The brochures ran 8x8" on a semigloss stock. The one sheets had to survive an office printer on letter paper without losing hierarchy.
HR came to the design team wanting a brochure for internship recruiting. I made the call to make an eight-panel map fold instead, 18x24" unfolded. The bold typography and the opening ceremony of unfolding it made a piece people were excited to interact with. Text and image alignment changed depending on how it was unfolded. I worked out the fold sequence and the specs, then handed the printer a file that accounted for creep and registration. HR came back for a second one the following cycle, created for experienced hires.
Out-of-Home
AccuWeather’s forecast runs on more than a thousand DOOH products across Firefly taxi displays, Captivate screens, pharmacies, and airports. We designed the out-of-home creative, adapted to each screen’s aspect ratio and forecast density. Still running on Captivate.
The New York Office
A full floor of roughly 12,000 square feet at 80 Pine Street. Working with an agency, I designed the layout and selected the materials and finishes, including orange accents on powder-coated metal. The brief was modularity. Lounge chairs, counter-height standing tables, variety enough that people moved around over the course of a day with a plug always in reach. The floor-to-ceiling glass needed safety manifestation, so we cut custom graphics from the weather icon set instead of standard dots. Wayfinding followed. Still in use.
Sonic Identity
AccuWeather's sonic identity came out of a partnership with Massive Music, and I served as their primary client contact. The work covered a long-form network theme, short-form app alerts, and podcast audio. I worked most closely on the severe weather alert. The brief was urgency without drama, and impossible to mistake for a routine notification. The answer was a short, gradating staccato.
Challenge
Loyalkaspar delivered a new logo, typeface, and positioning, but no guidelines or templates for applying them, and the rebrand didn’t cover broadcast graphics. The broadcast maps hadn’t changed in decades and were hard for colorblind viewers to read.
Solution
First, make the identity usable for every team through guidelines and templates. Set photo standards that show weather at its most dramatic, across stock and commissioned shoots. Hold the register constant from a broadcast map to a taxi display to a wall in the office.