Spectrum
Spectrum
Overview
- Holiday campaign toolkit
- Email design + production
- Email direction concepts
- Web header imagery
What We Did
The Outcome
The Premise
One brand, two engagements, years between them. The same client surface at two different moments of its own evolution.
Charter Communications, doing business as Spectrum, runs one of the largest cable, internet, and mobile networks in the United States. The kind of brand whose creative output is measured in millions of impressions per campaign, where every email, banner, and ad has to hold up against scale that flattens weaker creative on contact.
We worked on the Spectrum account twice, through two different agencies, years apart. The work below is split into the two engagements. Different briefs, different deliverables, different agencies, same brand.
Two Engagements
Therum served as a creative partner in both engagements. With Rapp in 2019: art direction, motion design, and visual storytelling for the holiday campaign. With Lift Agency in 2024: visual system development for the standing email program, leading design for the sends, a new email direction and header imagery for web pages. Across both, Therum functioned as the connective layer, maintaining brand integrity and visual evolution over time.
Lead designer · Rapp Brief: A holiday visual toolkit for Spectrum, every consumer surface that wasn’t email, with full creative freedom inside the brand boundaries. Produced: Print flyers and large-format posters · IG stories · in-feed social · animated web banner ads. Held: Brand consistency across the holiday system, Spectrum guidelines plus supplied seasonal elements, carried across print, social, and web. Shape: A single, concentrated seasonal push.
Lead designer · Lift Agency Brief: The standing email program, producing the sends and concepting the direction the program would grow into. Produced: Day-to-day acquisition and TV Select Plus sends · a new email direction across two competing brand systems · header imagery for web pages. Held: Brand consistency across the standing send schedule, the same system holding from one send to the next. Tooling: Designed in Adobe XD, carried into Figma as the team migrated.
Each engagement began with research and visual calibration to align on tone and intent.
With Rapp, we explored color, energy, and storytelling through motion, focusing on how Spectrum could express connectivity and optimism visually.
With Lift Agency, we applied a systemized design approach, building reusable assets, templates, and layouts optimized for accessibility, clarity, and scalability across digital channels.
This two-phase approach allowed the brand to evolve naturally: emotion first, then system.
Across Both Engagements
Motion-based campaign assets and digital art direction for the 2019 holiday campaign with Rapp: flyers, large-format posters, social posts, IG stories and animated web banner ads. Email design and production for the 2024 standing program with Lift Agency, a new email direction across two brand systems, and header imagery for web pages.
What stayed the same across the years: the standards a brand at Spectrum's scale enforces, legal, deliverability, accessibility, brand consistency. Email creative for a national media brand isn't free design space; it's design inside a fairly tight box.
What changed: the brand language, the program scale, the agency partner, and the tools the team used to ship. The 2019 holiday work was a single big push. The 2024 email suite is a continuous program. Different rhythm, same client.
Each engagement carried its own brief, deliverable list, and the work that came out of it.
2019 · Holiday Campaign Toolkit · Rapp print · social · web. Lead designer on the holiday visual toolkit for Spectrum, with Rapp. The brief: take Spectrum's brand guidelines and supplied holiday elements and carry them across every consumer-facing surface that wasn't email, landing-page graphics, paid ads, social posts, IG stories, flyers, and large-format posters. Full creative freedom inside the brand boundaries. The campaign in context, the holiday system carried across a large-format poster, an Instagram placement, and an in-feed social post. Animated GIF banner ad sets that ran across the broader campaign. Tall vertical units. The 2019 holiday visual toolkit at a glance, the campaign across print, social, and web.
2024 · Email Design + Web Headers · Lift Agency standing program · rebrand-era email. Years on, a different studio, a different scope. With Lift Agency, the work ran on two tracks. The first was the standing email program, producing the sends that keep a national CRM moving, at the volume and consistency a brand Spectrum's size demands. The second was concepting a new creative direction for that email, built on Spectrum's rebrand, pushing the updated brand language into layouts the program could grow into. Alongside the email work, we produced header imagery for web pages. All of it was designed in Adobe XD, then carried into Figma as the team migrated. Producing the standing email program end to end, new-customer and welcome acquisition offers plus TV Select Plus upsell sends, built to the brand system and adapted across offer and price variants. The everyday email creative: the same template logic holding from one send to the next. Spectrum was running two branding agencies on competing brand systems at once, and the email program had to hold in both. We designed against each in parallel: an angular, geometric system (chevron framing, hard-edged blocks, explored across four layouts in light and dark) and a flowing ribbon system (the “Live Life Unlimited” wave). Same offers, two brand languages. The geometric direction, chevron framing, hard-edged blocks. Four layouts, each built to hold in light and dark. The second agency’s direction, the flowing “Live Life Unlimited” ribbon as the brand signature. Same offers, a softer, motion-led system. Header graphics for Spectrum web pages, in the angular system, the over-the-fold imagery that set the tone for each page.
A visual language that grew stronger and more adaptive across time
Spectrum’s visual language became stronger and more adaptive across time. The early motion work with Rapp established emotional resonance, while the later system work with Lift Agency enabled long-term scalability. Together, the two engagements expanded Spectrum’s reach, consistency, and creative continuity.
Two Rounds, One Brand
Returning to a brand years later is its own creative test. The work has to be sharper, the brand has moved, and the only thing carrying the through-line is our own taste.
Most case studies are one engagement. This one is two, and showing them on the same page lets the work speak to scale, to consistency, and to the specific creative skill of returning to a brand surface and not making it look like the last time you were there.
engagements · 2019 + 2024
agencies · Rapp · Lift Agency
channels · print, social, email, web
years apart · same brand, two creative moments
- Next TV (via Yahoo Finance)Charter's Spectrum Launches ‘Life Unlimited’ Brand Platform to Counter Wireless Competition
- TheDesk.netCharter rolls out more-transparent, all-inclusive prices on Spectrum services
- Light ReadingCharter launches 'Life Unlimited'
- Charter CommunicationsSpectrum Announces Unprecedented Customer Commitment, Free Internet Speed Lifts, New Bundled Pricing and Unveils New Brand Platform 'Life Unlimited'