SWG Leadership

Stephanie Wood Group, known as SWG, is an executive coaching and leadership development firm based in Indianapolis. They came to me in May 2024 looking for graphic design support on client-facing deliverables. Steph Wood is the founder. Lauren Slevin runs operations. Jessica Tomasino handles finance and back-office work. Diep was a creative partner who came in late in the engagement to pick up files. SWG is the only non-church client I have written up as a formal case study. They found their way to me through my church work but the deliverables were entirely corporate.

How we started

Steph reached out on May 15, 2024 with a clear scope. Three deliverables to start, billed hourly, with the goal of moving to a monthly retainer on July 1. The three pieces were a playbook for one of their clients, HMH Leadership, plus two SWG-branded sales documents: a proposal and a capabilities booklet. The HMH playbook was the most complex of the three. It needed to communicate mission, vision, values and cultural characteristics, a strategic plan with four pillars, guiding principles, and a leadership brand piece that was still being developed on June 4. Steph's brief had a nice phrase I held onto: the purpose of the document was to "simply and visually communicate the reason for each piece of work as well as the connections of the pieces."

We scheduled a Monday phone call to kick off (Friday was my day off), Lauren shared an old SWG workbook InDesign file so I had the color, icon, and typography vocabulary in front of me, and I started building.

The work

The HMH Leadership playbook was the spine of the engagement. We iterated through mission and vision pages, a strategic pillars layout, a cultural characteristics treatment that had to weave together values and behaviors, and a leadership brand section that landed after their June 4 internal workshop. Jessica fed me the content drops as they finalized. Lauren handled the design feedback and corrections. We did multiple rounds on the cover page, the leadership chart, the four-pillars layout, and stock photo selection. By late summer the playbook was in solid shape and Jessica was coming back for an update with more HMH content.

In parallel I built the SWG proposal document and the SWG capabilities booklet (sometimes called the four-page capabilities document). Both were sales-facing, so the brand had to read polished and trustworthy. The capabilities booklet went through a proper editorial pass with Lauren feeding me client logos, four-pillar examples, screenshots, and corrections. By July and August we were also revising the HMH Leadership Brand and Playbook as new content came in.

A specific moment

The handoff at the end of the engagement is the moment I remember best. In October 2024, Diep at SWG emailed asking for the Illustrator files for the Executive Coaching, All Leader Development, and Executive Team Development pieces, including the original linked images. SWG was clearly moving the IP in-house or to another designer. I sent everything over clean. A few months later, in January 2025, Jessica reached out for end-of-year prep and a missing W-9 so they could issue my 1099. I sent the W-9 the same day. That's a clean, professional close, and I appreciated that they cared enough to chase me down on the paperwork.

Where things stand

The active project work ended in fall 2024. The targeted July 1 retainer never converted to a monthly arrangement; we stayed hourly the whole time, which suited both sides given the project-specific nature of the deliverables. Final touches and file handoff ran into October 2024. SWG is a closed engagement. I would happily take on another project from them if they came back, but I am not actively pitching. The work is a useful portfolio anchor for any future corporate playbook, proposal, or capabilities document a client might need.