Spotlight: Lorenzo Turner, senior visual designer
As part of the extended marketing team, Sharecare’s design team works across the company to ensure our visual assets are engaging and align with our brand identity guidelines. They work diligently with other teams to ensure that visual content from Sharecare — whether it be on social media, Sharecare.com, or in marketing materials like presentations and one-pagers– not only looks like it should but evokes the emotions and actions we want to convey to our audiences.
This month’s Employee Spotlight is Lorenzo Turner, a senior visual designer based in Roswell, GA. He shared many interesting insights with us – from some of his personal artwork and favorite Sharecare projects, to his favorite cosplays and comic books, and even a little bit about going back to school using Sharecare’s tuition reimbursement benefit. In fact, Lorenzo recently made the Dean’s list at the Art Institute of Atlanta, where he’s pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic and web design, taking his creative ideas and all-star skills to new heights.
Put your hands together in recognition of Lorenzo’s recent scholastic achievement, as well as his 5-year work-aversary at Sharecare – which he’ll officially reach in September.
* * *
Can you tell us about your role?
As a senior visual designer at Sharecare, I’d say most of the company’s outward-facing visual assets cross either my or my team’s desks in some capacity. We work on a wide range of outputs: from social media graphics, mailers for members, and web banners to conference materials like wraps and layouts for exhibit booths, or brand elements like logos… a little bit of everything.
Our team uses a lot of the programs in Adobe creative suite; everything from Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. For projects we’ve done that have included motion graphics, we use After Effects; basically that whole family of design software. We’ve also adopted Canva to make it easier to collaborate with other teams and help them create their own visual assets with a more unified brand voice across our different channels.
Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on?
Two immediately come to mind. The first project is our 2019 “Resolve to Evolve” social campaign that focused on helping people make attainable New Year’s resolutions to better their health and well-being. Our team had fun thinking outside of the box, throwing around ideas, and ended up going with a few different pieces. We ultimately created different creative images for both an internal campaign and an external one. The most memorable design was an image of a person that could be seen as a couch potato, slowly moving into action and evolving into an active person. I illustrated that piece, and a fun fact behind the final product is that I was my own model for the image, because I didn’t have a reference to use.
My other favorite was before the pandemic, when we were working on the promotion of the Sharecare Heartbeat Festival with the Atlanta Hawks, which included a lot of interesting motion graphics. I think that that was probably one of the better campaigns that we’ve had, and I had a lot of fun using a more illustrative style for the graphics that we created for the project.
Can you talk about your journey to Sharecare?
I’m originally from Huntsville, AL and I moved to Georgia to attend the Art Institute of Atlanta. Once I graduated with my associate degree in 2006, I went straight into the workforce to get real-world experience and plunged right into the industry. I worked for a few publications as a graphic designer – CLIK Magazine, Kontrol Magazine, Atlanta’s Urban Socialites Magazine. Unfortunately, with the digital age, a lot of publications either went online or completely went under, and that’s when I moved into sports marketing.
I worked for EB Corporate and EB Sports Tours and did a lot of graphic design work initially for their corporate events. I definitely feel like a lot of what I’ve done in the past in sports marketing has helped with the work I’ve done on our partnership with the Atlanta Hawks. From sports marketing, I then shifted more towards UX/UI design at Georgia Power, where I helped reimplement their mobile app and redesigned the website to give both a fresher, more modern look. From there, I came to Sharecare.
Congratulations on making the Dean’s list this semester! What’s it like being back in school?
It’s been interesting being back at the Art Institute of Atlanta as an adult; I’m definitely seeing my education and experience through a different lens. It’s given me a new sense of creativity and I feel like now I have so many ideas and concepts in my mind. I’m in the program to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic and web design. I’ve been able to push myself with my assignments because I already know a lot from working in the industry, so I always challenge myself to see how I can be more creative and out of the box. For my artist portfolio, I’m leaning into my strengths to make my coursework either more unique, or just blow it out of the water.
I also think Sharecare has been amazing with the educational assistance program for employees. Essentially, tuition funding is granted based on your academic performance. Every semester, once final grades are posted, you get a stipend with an amount that varies depending on the grade.
What do you love about working at Sharecare?
Design is another form of language and I enjoy being able to take a message or an experience and then bring it to life, so that it conveys everything that either Sharecare or a client is looking to articulate. Storytelling in a way that people might not have initially thought of is something I enjoy as a challenge, especially to package information in such a way that people want to read and engage. During the beginning of the pandemic, it was rewarding to figure out how to make COVID-related content interesting enough for people to want to dive in and learn more while also relying on facts, figures, and numbers. That’s probably the most fulfilling part of my job: the gratification of people actually interacting or engaging with the message.
Is there a personal piece of art that you’re particularly proud of?
A few years ago, I did a painting sort of off the cuff of a model that was up and coming at the time in fashion – his look was sort of Grace Jones-esque. It’s a colorful piece of his figure in blue and then the rest of the colors were intended to create a more of an abstracted aurora borealis approach. I think that’s probably my last finished piece.
What’s something not a lot of people know about you?
Something people don’t typically know about me is I’m a cosplayer and a costumer, and I also enjoy comic books. Over the last few years, I’ve created a few costumes and props to attend comic book conventions, sci-fi conventions, and the like. I’ve always loved Marvel and X-Men has always been my go-to – like prior to all the movies. Cyclops was one of my first Marvel cosplays, as well as Captain Marvel, which I based on the comic book suit. I think my first-ever cosplay was Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp.
When it comes to a comic book recommendation, Brian Michael Bendis has been a favorite storyteller mine, so I have a lot of his comic runs. He did a run of a Black female superhero, Naomi. The closest reference point I have to compare her to is almost like Wonder Woman meets Superman, but her powers are very different. It’s a really good comic book run.
