Brand Toolbox

A Digital Asset Management platform

For over a decade, from June 2004 to July 2014 and again from April 2015 to December 2018, I had the opportunity to join the team at synrg to build a new product from the ground up: Brand Toolbox. A Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform, this solution was designed to be the central hub for a brand’s digital assets—from logos and images to videos and documents. Our primary goal was to provide a secure, scalable, and intuitive system that would help companies maintain brand consistency, save valuable time, and streamline their creative workflows.

This case study details my role in designing and implementing a first-of-its-kind digital service that was central to this new policy, highlighting the unique challenges of building a public service from scratch.

The challenge & the solution

From its inception in 2005, Brand Toolbox began as a basic HTML portal for Australia Post’s brand guidelines—a simple website that provided options to download logos, templates, and imagery. Over the next decade, this basic website evolved into a robust, cloud-based Digital Asset Management platform. Before Brand Toolbox, many companies were managing their digital assets through a fragmented system of shared drives, email chains, and physical storage. This led to a host of problems: teams were using outdated logos, brand consistency was a constant struggle, and designers were wasting hours searching for the right files.

We saw an opportunity to solve these pain points by building a centralised, cloud-based platform. My role was to not only design and develop the user-facing product but to also bring its value to life through a comprehensive marketing strategy. The solution was a platform with a clean, intuitive interface that allowed users to easily find, share, and manage all their brand assets from a single source of truth.

Brand Toolbox home page, including quick links to major sections, “how to” guidelines, and options to print or add pages to “My favourites”.
On-page download component. Provide members with important brand guidelines information, whilst allowing them to easily download brand assets.
Asset details allows members to download, add files to existing or new albums that could be shared or downloaded later.

Key responsibilities & impact

As a core member of the team, I was involved in every stage of the product’s development, showcasing a wide range of skills.

  • Product development: I was responsible for designing and developing new features for the platform, focusing on creating a seamless user experience for both administrators and end-users. My work included everything from building the core asset management system to implementing advanced search and filtering capabilities.
  • Marketing & content creation: To bring the product to market, I took the lead on creating the Brand Toolbox promotional video. This project was an all-encompassing creative endeavor where I handled:
    • Storyboarding & scriptwriting: I crafted a narrative that explained the problem and showcased our solution in a clear, compelling way.
    • Animation & design: I created all the animations and motion graphics, bringing the product’s features to life visually.
    • Voiceover & music: I recorded the voiceover and composed the original music to create a polished, professional final product that resonated with our target audience.
A complete creative project for Brand Toolbox: I handled the script, animation, voiceover, and music to bring the product to life.

I worked with a variety of enterprise-level brands, including:

Amcor
Australia Post
Australian Unity
Catholic Care NT
Federation Centres
HCF
Linfox
Melbourne Water
Origin
RMIT University
StarTrack
Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation
Toll
Transdev
Yarra Trams

Lessons learned

The Brand Toolbox project taught me valuable lessons about the importance of holistic product development. It highlighted that a successful product requires more than just great code or a beautiful design; it needs a compelling story that connects with its users. My work on the promotional video, in particular, solidified my understanding of how creative content can be a powerful tool for marketing a product and communicating its value.

Conclusion

Brand Toolbox stands as a testament to what a small, dedicated team can achieve when given the freedom to build a product from the ground up. By blending intuitive design with a robust feature set and a clear marketing message, we created a product that not only solved a major business pain point but also empowered users to maintain brand integrity and efficiency.

Visit Brand Toolbox website ↗

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