A portfolio,
and a read of what's
next.
A working session covering my portfolio, an audit of Sofar's marketing today, and what I'd build in the first 90 days if I joined the team.
How this session will run.
Three parts. Five projects walked through Problem → Audience → Approach → Design → Impact, an audit of Sofar's marketing today, and the moves I'd make if I joined Monday.
Portfolio walk-through
Four sales enablement and brand projects, plus a motion graphics reel. Each framed through real business problems, audience, and impact.
Marketing audit
A read of Sofar's content and brand presence based on what I observed online. What's working, what I'd elevate, and where a senior designer adds leverage.
If I were starting Monday
The tactical plan. First 30, 60, and 90 days. Sales enablement, data viz, motion, paid creative — sequenced for compounding impact.
Portfolio walk-through.
Five projects spanning enterprise B2B SaaS, internal storytelling at Meta, founder-stage brand work, and motion. Each one connects to a problem this role will need to solve.
Crest Data Brand Refresh.
The full visual overhaul of an enterprise cybersecurity brand.
original homepage / sales deck
screenshot]
Crest Data homepage / deck
screenshot]
The old site led with marketing-speak. The new one leads with technical clarity — product capability surfaced above the fold, with a sales deck system that lets the team assemble different stories for CISOs versus security engineers without breaking brand consistency.
Crest Data sells to enterprise IT leaders. Their existing brand and sales materials didn't reflect the sophistication of their product or their target buyer. The sales team was going into meetings with materials that undermined credibility.
CISOs, IT directors, and security engineers at enterprise companies. Highly technical buyers, skeptical of marketing-speak, who need to see technical depth alongside visual clarity.
Rebuilt the brand system first, because you can't create effective sales materials without a cohesive visual language. Then designed a modular sales deck — assemblable sections based on the prospect's use case. A CISO needs a different story than a security engineer.
Full Figma design system, responsive Squarespace site in under 8 weeks, modular sales deck, one-pagers, battle cards, product sheets.
Sofar sells complex technical products to sophisticated B2B buyers — fleet operators, marine researchers, government partners. Each audience needs a different story told through the same brand system. That modular approach is exactly what I'd bring to Wayfinder and Spotter sales decks.
Sparks Museum at Meta.
Translating buried research into a physical, scannable exhibit.
research deck / slide screenshot]
card or installation photo]
Insights that lived inside 60-page research decks became MOMA-style exhibit cards. A 30-second walk-by gave you the headline. A scannable QR code delivered the full depth. Same content, but engineered for actual human attention.
Internal teams at Meta struggled to connect with the broader story behind messaging products. Research insights were buried in decks and underleveraged in planning conversations.
Meta product, research, and engineering teams attending summit week. The bar for visual quality was extremely high — competing for attention against every other team's installation.
Designed the Sparks Museum as a MOMA-style exhibit — insights presented as cards with QR codes linking to deeper research. Blended physical installation with digital depth, layered for different attention spans.
Exhibit identity, signage, interactive graphics, storytelling layouts, walk-through video, tabloid-format cards.
Sofar runs webinars, conference booths, Decarb After Dark, the Earth Day Forum. The same principle applies — layered storytelling that gives a casual visitor the headline and a serious buyer the depth.
Meta Wiki Redesign.
Information design at the scale of an entire company's internal knowledge.
article view / dense screenshot]
Wiki article view screenshot]
Visual hierarchy that actually serves the reader. The redesigned interface reduced cognitive load with refined typography, deliberate iconography, and structured content blocks — so new hires could find what they need without learning Meta's internal language first.
The Wiki is Meta's central internal publishing platform. With content constantly evolving, the design needed to feel intuitive, consistent, and approachable for both new hires and longtime employees.
Every Meta employee. Onboarding flows for new hires, daily reference for veterans, publishing platform for teams and leaders.
Applied Meta's updated brand system across color, typography, iconography. Reduced visual clutter, prioritized accessibility, gave teams a clearer framework for organizing and publishing content.
Refreshed Wiki interface, design system documentation, content structure framework that teams could self-serve from.
The Spotter Dashboard, the support hub, internal sales playbooks — anywhere Sofar has structured content for an audience of operators or buyers, this kind of systems thinking applies. I solve information density problems, not just visual ones.
Happibyte.
End-to-end brand system for an in-development AI mental health platform.
moodboard / early sketch]
Happibyte brand mark / UI screen]
Took an abstract clinical concept — AI-assisted mental health support — and gave it a visual identity that feels warm and trustworthy enough for first-time users, while still meeting the clinical credibility bar that secured Business Finland and Helsinki Incubators support.
An in-progress mental health platform needed a visual identity and user experience that felt emotionally supportive, calming, and clinically aligned — especially for first-time users navigating mental health resources.
Three audiences with very different bars: end users seeking mental health support, clinical experts validating the approach, and investors evaluating the opportunity.
As founding designer, led end-to-end creative from naming and brand to interface design, launch collateral, and investor materials. Collaborated with the CEO, clinicians, and developers to align visuals with accessibility standards.
Brand kit, identity system, guidelines, initial UI screens, wireframes, investor presentation.
Sofar sells to scientific, regulated, mission-driven buyers. Happibyte taught me how to design for clinical credibility and investor confidence simultaneously — the same dual demand Sofar faces with NOAA, naval pilots, and shipping fleets.
Logo & brand motion.
[Brand 1 logo animation]
Add a sentence on context — what brand, what use case (loader, social intro, brand bumper).
[Brand 2 logo animation]
Add a sentence on context — what brand, what use case.
[Brand 3 logo animation]
Add a sentence on context — what brand, what use case.
The JD calls out motion explicitly — "from quick GIFs to polished motion pieces." There's an immediate opportunity to cut the existing Spotter Scout sizzle reel into LinkedIn-native shorts, animate the Wayfinder savings reports, and build motion templates that the marketing team can use without needing a designer for every social post.
Marketing audit.
An outside-in read of Sofar's marketing based on what I observed online — what's working, and the observations I'd bring as someone who builds visual systems for technical brands.
A strong content engine, with shape.
Looking across Sofar's marketing output from late 2025 through May 2026, the engine is consistent and substantive. Here's what's actually being published.
Distribution of published content categories on sofarocean.com/updates
The team is publishing consistently and across the right mix. The opportunity isn't volume — it's visual systemization, motion, and how this content shows up across channels.
Five things the team is already nailing.
Steady weekly drumbeat.
Two to three posts per week, balanced across both product lines. The "Meet the Routers" series alone has 8+ entries since March, building familiarity with the human side of Wayfinder.
Real partners, real numbers.
Berge Bulk wind-assisted, Dorian LPG 9% fuel savings, MOL Group fleet deployment, Queensland 7,000 km coastline. Each one is a procurement-grade reference.
Quarterly savings reports.
The dry bulk fuel savings cadence (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) creates a transparent rhythm of evidence. 4.5% to 5.5% across Baltic Dry Index routes is hard for competitors to match.
Peer-reviewed research is published, not buried.
Papers on wave spectra, ICESat-2 wave height, air-sea momentum saturation. This signals real depth to academic and government buyers who validate vendors through citations.
Tying product to mission, consistently.
"Building the Economic Case for Protecting the Thermal Dome," coral reef monitoring, SPREP coastal resilience in Kiribati and Samoa. These aren't just CSR posts — they're how Sofar earns moral capital with regulators, NGOs, and government buyers. The Spotter side does this exceptionally well.
Six places I'd focus first.
These are observations from someone looking in from the outside. The team likely has context I don't — these are the areas where, based on what I can see, a senior designer focused on systems and craft could make a real difference.
An opportunity to own a distinctive visual system.
Several recent posts lean on aerial cargo ship and ocean stock photos. Sofar has the IP and customer access to build a recognizable photographic and illustrative style that feels uniquely Sofar across the feed.
A unified chart and diagram language.
The acoustic spectrogram visualization challenge is a known one. A data viz system would lift every product post, white paper, savings report, and dashboard screenshot — and reduce ongoing design effort.
More motion in the feed.
The Spotter Scout sizzle reel exists. There's an opportunity to cut it down for LinkedIn-native shorts, animate data, and build looping product diagrams that meet the algorithm where it rewards.
A modular deck system for two product lines.
Wayfinder sells to fleets. Spotter sells to researchers, MPAs, navies, offshore wind. From the outside, a unified modular system that lets the sales team assemble audience-specific decks would be high-leverage.
A connected event design language.
The Wayfinder Podcast, Decarb After Dark, Earth Day Forum, OCEANS booth — each is a meaningful moment. A connected visual identity would make every event feel like part of one Sofar program.
Greenfield creative for paid channels.
For a B2B brand selling six and seven-figure deals, building a paid LinkedIn and trade-pub creative system tied to clear conversion paths (Voyage Simulator, Spotter Configurator) is high-impact work.
If I were starting Monday.
The first 30, 60, and 90 days. Specific tactics for sales enablement, content, and paid creative — sequenced for compounding impact.
Six tactical moves, prioritized.
A senior designer's job isn't a backlog — it's leverage. Here's how I'd sequence what I'd ship, building on what the team has already established.
Audit + sales conversations.
Week 1–2. Audit every customer-facing touchpoint: website, decks, one-pagers, webinar templates, social, dashboard. Talk to sales: which decks do they actually use? Where do prospects get confused? Design that isn't informed by sales feedback doesn't convert.
Days 1–14Modular sales deck system.
Wayfinder version for shipping fleet C-suite. Spotter version with audience modules: research institutions, government, offshore wind, MPAs. One brand, three to four assemblable narratives. Same approach that worked for Crest Data.
Days 15–45Data viz style guide.
Color, type, chart, and diagram standards that work across product posts, white papers, the Wayfinder savings report, and the dashboard itself. Solves the spectrogram-style problem at the system level.
Days 30–60Motion templates for social.
The Spotter Scout sizzle reel cut into LinkedIn-native shorts. Animated savings-report graphics. Looping diagrams of the three Spotter mission modes. Templates the marketing team can use without a designer in the loop.
Days 30–60Paid creative system.
LinkedIn and trade-pub creative built for testing. Two to three concept directions per audience (fleets, researchers, government, wind), each with three executions. ABM-ready landing pages tied to the Voyage Simulator and Spotter Configurator.
Days 45–75Event & webinar identity system.
The Wayfinder Podcast, Decarb After Dark, Earth Day Forum, conference booths, OCEANS — a connected event identity so each shows up as part of a recognizable Sofar program, not separate templates.
Days 60–90Sales enablement first, because that's where revenue moves. Data viz second, because every other deliverable depends on it. Motion and paid third, because they're amplifiers. The system compounds.
The team is already doing
remarkable work.
I'd love to help elevate it.
A network of 1.5 million daily ocean observations. 50% more accurate forecasts. Customer references from MOL, NOAA, the U.S. Navy, the Brazilian Navy. Sofar's substance is exceptional — and the marketing engine is consistent, scientific, and mission-driven.
What I bring is the design system thinking that scales this further — across presentations, brand, web, motion, and the channels where Sofar competes. Helping translate complex ideas into visuals that inspire, persuade, and engage. That's the role I'd be honored to step into.
Manishka Khanna · Senior Visual & Brand Designer · KayHaus Creative