Scaling a founder-led healthcare brand into a cohesive patient education and marketing system

Role: Contract Brand & Communications Designer (5–10 hrs/week)
Scope: Patient Education System, Social Templates, WordPress Page Templates, Sales Materials
Audience: Parents of children with autism, caregivers, internal teams

The problem

  • Founder (also the Creative Director) had built a strong brand identity but lacked bandwidth to execute
  • Avela needed to rapidly produce patient education and marketing materials to support launch
  • No dedicated designer to translate the established vision into consistent, scalable outputs
  • Complex health information needed to be communicated clearly to parents in an emotionally sensitive context

Objective

  • Execute the founder’s brand vision with precision and consistency
  • Build a pipeline of patient education materials to support marketing and workshops
  • Develop reusable templates to reduce ongoing production friction
  • Maintain clarity and calm design in a complex healthcare environment

Constraints

Founder-Led Creative Direction: Needed to execute faithfully under an established creative vision. Balance autonomy with alignment to the founder’s standards.

Audience Sensitivity: Materials designed for parents of children with autism. Required visual softness, clarity, and low cognitive overload.

No In-House Developer Support: Designed WordPress page templates without dedicated developer collaboration. Required structured, repeatable design patterns for easy implementation.

Solutions

Patient Education System: Created workshop materials and parent worksheets. Designed interactive, fillable PDFs for bedtime routines and guided exercises. Structured complex information into step-based, digestible formats.

Digital & Marketing Templates: Built reusable social media template system. Designed WordPress page templates with defined type and color patterns. Created App Store visuals and one-page sales sheets. All assets aligned with the founder’s original brand framework while enabling rapid content production.

White papers

Designed white papers as strategic sales collateral, translating clinical insights into structured, credibility-driven documents that supported lead generation and positioned Avela as a trusted authority in autism care.

Highlighted pages. Can provide full documents upon request.

One page sales sheets for insurers built in Figma

Brand icons on a budget

Working within budget constraints, I identified and evaluated scalable icon templates from Creative Market, presented options for approval, and customized the final selection to integrate cohesively into Avela’s established brand system.

Reusable social media template system built in Figma

WordPress

Structured WordPress page templates and established brand guide system in Elementor editor for non-design staff to make changes.

Educational (psycho)graphics

Designed clear, clutter-free infographics using strong hierarchy, minimal visual noise, and consistent styling to support fast, intuitive understanding of complex information.

Interactive parent worksheets

Designed calming, easy-to-follow education materials for parents of children with autism, using structured layouts, soft visual language, and step-based guidance to reduce overwhelm and support confidence at home. These have fillable sections in Acrobat that the care staff and parents can fill out together in a zoom appointment and then save for future reference.