YP Marketing Solutions (now Thryv Inc.) was a leading local marketing solutions provider in the U.S. dedicated to helping local businesses and communities grow. YP’s flagship consumer brands include the popular YP app and YP.com. YP solutions include online presence, local search, display advertising and direct marketing. YP solutions and services are backed by thousands of media consultants and customer service professionals in local markets across the U.S. with relationships spanning more than half a million advertisers.

As Art Director for the Creative Services department at YP, I was tasked with developing an entirely new visual strategy for our product line‘s family of print assets. It was understood that YP’s existing collateral were quickly becoming stale, mismatched, and overall a bit limiting to work with, for both the design staff and the end-users.

Working with my Creative Director Jay Musselwhite, I explored many, many different visual approaches and ultimately proposed a direction which relies on full-page humanistic photography emblematic of our customer base, small business owners and craftspeople at work, doing what they are best at and “leaving the marketing to the Pros at YP.” These photos employ a muted palette so that YP’s bright brand colors really stand out. For the front covers, these images all have YP’s yellow line boldly running through these workspaces, reinforcing YP’s presence in these small businesses.

For the interior section pages, these photographic subjects are revisited. For the content pages, I stripped everything down and played with big, simple geometric forms and supporting illustrations.

The design direction and imagery I developed for these were used across many of YP’s marketing tools and advertising campaigns.