Airbnb: Studio 888
Building an Internal Creative Infrastructure As Airbnb scaled, so did the complexity of its storytelling. Executive reviews were high-stakes, cross-functional, and increasingly fragmented—insights lived across decks, teams, and formats, making alignment difficult and slowing decision-making at the highest level. The opportunity was not simply to improve presentations. It was to design an internal system that could translate business and product insights into clear, executive-ready narratives—while maintaining brand rigor and strategic coherence. To address this, Studio 888 was founded—a multidisciplinary design team embedded within the Marketing organization and built to operate at the intersection of brand, product, and executive leadership.
Client
Airbnb
Deliverables
Internal Brand Stewardship Executive Storytelling Creative Direction for Internal Events Wayfinding Systems Cross-Functional Partnerships Environmental Design
Year
2024
Role
Design Lead
From Ad Hoc Support to Institutional Infrastructure Studio 888 was conceived as more than a creative service function. It was designed as an internal storytelling engine—one that reframed complex inputs into structured, decision-ready outputs. As a team, we established a shared standard for executive-facing narrative structure, design principles tailored to how Airbnb’s Executive Team evaluates and approves work, repeatable templates and visual systems that streamlined clarity without sacrificing craft, and a centralized knowledge base capturing institutional context. Rather than responding asset by asset, the team codified a framework for executive communication—transforming fragmented inputs into holistic narratives that supported alignment across product, marketing, and operations. This work required both design fluency and organizational literacy: understanding not just how to present ideas, but how leadership processes them.
Designing the Employee Experience As Studio 888 evolved, its mandate expanded beyond executive-facing materials into the physical environments where Airbnb employees gather, learn, and align. We applied the same narrative rigor used in executive storytelling to the design and production of brand-level signage, wayfinding systems, and internal programming at Airbnb HQ. The objective was to elevate everyday employee touchpoints into cohesive, intentional brand experiences. This work included environmental graphics and large-scale brand installations, wayfinding systems that clarified navigation while reinforcing brand tone, spatial storytelling for product launches, company milestones, and internal campaigns, and branded programming moments designed to align teams around shared strategy.
Rather than treating signage and programming as operational necessities, we approached them as opportunities to reinforce culture. Hierarchy, typography, messaging cadence, and spatial sequencing were all designed to ensure clarity while maintaining emotional resonance. The result was a more immersive and coherent employee experience—one where strategy, culture, and brand expression converged in the physical space. Studio 888 became a connective layer between insight and environment, shaping not just what employees heard, but what they encountered and internalized.
Impact & Growth What began as a focused internal design function evolved into a trusted partner for executive decision-making and company-wide alignment. The impact was measurable in three ways: increased clarity and efficiency in executive reviews, greater narrative cohesion across cross-functional initiatives, and elevated production quality and strategic rigor for live company moments. Under guidance of myself and my PgM co-lead, the team scaled in scope and influence—expanding from presentation design into strategic narrative development and experiential execution. At its core, Studio 888 demonstrates how design can function as organizational infrastructure: building systems that transform complexity into clarity, align leadership around shared narratives, and translate strategy into lived experience.
