Machine view

POL KLEIN
Senior graphic design and art direction.
Identities, campaigns and the pages people actually see.

WHAT I MAKE
- Brand identity and guidelines.
- Editorial and report layout.
- Campaigns for print, social and email.
- Data visualization and infographics.
- Websites and interfaces.
- Motion graphics and video.
- Templates and asset libraries.
- Typography and print production.
- Photo and illustration art direction.

HOW I WORK
- More than fifteen years designing for global health, humanitarian and philanthropy organizations.
- Subjects that take a paragraph to explain, for audiences who give them a second.
- Identity systems that hold across twenty offices, campaigns that run in several languages, and templates a communications team can use without calling me.
- Teams of one to four people, and up to twelve with agencies and freelancers at the International Rescue Committee.
- I still open the files.

TOOLS
- InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects daily.
- Figma for interface work.
- HTML, CSS and JavaScript when a build needs it.
- AI in the production lane, for variations, cleanup and comps. Type, color and the final crop stay by hand.

WORK

1. PSI, 50th anniversary. Global health, 2020.
   What I made: I led the refresh of PSI's brand for its fiftieth anniversary, working with the CEO and communications director and the agency Design Army. I set the art direction from PSI's five-year strategy and gave the agency a full creative brief. My team and I made the templates and the localized versions for all 55 countries, and I led the guidelines and the website redesign.
   Result: the brand is still in use today, individual giving nearly doubled, and the 50 Forward mark was retired after its year.

2. International Rescue Committee. Humanitarian, 2022.
   What I made: video-first campaign creative and the templates and brand resources behind it, updated brand guidelines, website design, and the UX and accessibility work across the web presence. The brand was also extended for South Korea.
   Result: the system carried the Rescue Dinner, the IRC's flagship annual fundraiser, which raised over $30M across online giving and the event.

3. HIAS. Refugee protection, 2025.
   What I made: a brand audit, then a refreshed identity and the guidelines, templates and asset library behind it. My team produced the annual report, direct mail and collateral in house, on a nonprofit budget.
   Result: engagement and fundraising rose 15% in Latin America and Europe.

4. Maverick Collective. Philanthropy and women's health, 2021 to 2022.
   What I made: brand architecture inside the PSI family for a program where women invest a million dollars or more to launch public health programs, then the pattern system, the type, the website art direction and the print.
   Result: one seed program attracted over $110M in follow-on grants and donations.

5. Adolescents 360. Adolescent health, 2022.
   What I made: the identity, the guidelines and the report layouts, including the charts, for a program that had to feel like it belonged to young people and hold up with funders.
   Result: several million dollars in new funding, which extended the life of the program.

6. Orb Media. Journalism and environment, 2018.
   What I made: at Graphicacy, the infographics, data visualization and web design for a worldwide investigation into plastic in drinking water, built for phones first.
   Result: the awareness campaigns exceeded their advocacy targets.

7. Palladium, then the Futures Group. International development and policy, 2009 to 2015.
   What I made: advocacy campaigns, booklets for ministries, infographics, motion pieces and an interactive tool built on UN population data, for programs in 35 countries. I took most of the work through print production myself.
   Result: the flagship program, worth $250M over five years, was re-won and continued as Health Policy Plus.

NOTES ON THE CRAFT
- Type across languages: a system is tested by the longest word, not the best headline. Two weights a country office applies correctly beat six applied at random.
- Templates: a grid starts its real work after the designer leaves. Master pages carry the decisions, and every layout keeps a place for the thing nobody planned for.
- AI: useful in the production lane, kept out of the decisions. Writing brand rules precise enough for a tool to follow is the same precision a designer needs in their first week.

CONTACT
- Email: pol@polklein.com
- Site: design.polklein.com