Brand identity · Design system · Strategy
Monks
Overview.
Media.Monks is Now “Monks.”
Media.Monks, a leading digital-first, data-driven advertising, marketing, and technology services company, faced an identity crisis. In 2018, S4 Capital led by Sir Martin Sorrell, acquired Media.Monks and began an aggressive expansion, quickly amassing over 40 organizations within the Media.Monks umbrella. The rapid expansion however, led to a lack of specialization and clarity. Not even Media.Monks' own clients could clearly articulate what the company specialized in anymore. Market research confirmed what many inside already suspected. The brand had outgrown its identity.
To address this, Brady Brim-DeForest, the former CEO of TheoremOne and current CEO of Formula.Monks, stepped in to redefine the brand vision and value proposition. We had just finished the Formula.Monks rebrand together, and Brady pulled me in to help shape the next phase of Media.Monks.
Our initial objective was to understand the organizational structure. With so many properties operating independently and collaborating, the need to unify properties, leadership, and branding was essential. We restructured the organization into two core groups: Marketing and Technology.
However, the existing company name, “Media.Monks,” implied a media company, and that hadn't been accurate for years. Keeping it would undermine everything we were trying to clarify. We dropped “Media” entirely. Media.Monks became Monks.
The work.
Creative
Marketing
Industry
Lead Brand & Design Strategist
Role
2023–2024
Timeline
Brand identity
Design systems
Strategy
Services
Tools
What was delivered.
I led the rebrand across its full scope, from identity and architecture to the motion language that tied it together.
The goal was an identity that could unify 34+ global properties under a single name without flattening what made each discipline distinct.
Adaptable enough to scale globally. Opinionated enough to hold together.
The dot.
Every rebrand faces a choice: build something new, or go deeper on what already exists. When S4 Capital acquired Mediamonks and the idea of The Dot became the punctuation in "Media.Monks," most treated it as a transitional artifact. I saw the foundation of the overarching system.
Brady and I spent a number of late nights ultimately going in the wrong direction, designing around The Dot instead of through it. The aha-moment came from two places: Steve Jobs at Macworld 2007, introducing three devices that were actually one, and an Apple WWDC 2013 video I've always loved, full of dot animations that pushed and pulled in a way that felt alive. With 34+ global properties converging into two core offerings, the approach needed a visual representation to show the consolidation. I sketched out a rough motion study and brought it to Brady. He understood immediately.
We pulled everything into The Dot, literally. Every brand element collapsed into it in motion, then expanded back out. It made room for each of the 34+ firms to showcase their talent, culture and craft, all while maintaining a united front. The motion language didn't need to describe the integration. It was the integration.
What we built.
The system had to remain strong across 34+ firms, two disciplines, and a platform built on AI, without looking like it was designed by committee. That was a non-negotiable from Brady.
We stripped back hard. The type system, color palette, and core components had to work across brand marketing, technology, and Monks.Flow, the company's AI-driven platform, without bending for any one of them. Minimalism wasn't an aesthetic choice. It was the only approach that could scale.
Making it stick.
Designing a brand is one thing. Making decisions that preserve decades of global brand equity while delivering a system teams can run with from day one is something else entirely. That requires a different level of care.
I leaned on Romina Kavcic's Design System standards as the structural foundation, which gave us a framework for documenting decisions and keeping the system intuitive at scale. From there, I built out a tokenized component system in Figma, something the original guidelines had never addressed, and ran an audit that surfaced accessibility and WCAG compliance gaps that required detailed testing to be resolved before we could ship.
Brady Brim-Deforest and Sir Martin Sorrell trusted us with the full scope. We delivered hundreds of pre-designed decks, templates, and training resources, ready from day one. Even with multiple business units moving toward different goals, the systems we put in place made sure every piece landed where it needed to.
Results.
The rebrand rolled out at the tail end of 2023 alongside the name change from Media.Monks to Monks and a restructure into two practices, marketing services and technology services, anchored by three go-to-market strategies. Client retention held at 92%, up from 85% the year prior. The clarity brought to the brand translated directly into business outcomes.