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Self-Service Tooling · F&G

Self-Service Tooling

  • Frees designers
  • Scales output

Most design requests at F&G weren't design problems. They were the same brand rules applied again and again: this icon in that color, this photo at that size, this ad with a partner's logo. I built tools that apply those rules themselves, so the people who need the asset can make it without waiting on a designer.

All projects

At a glance

Designer output multiplier: one icon becomes every brand color, theme, and format
28x
Partner ads, instant — no design queue
3 languages × 4 templates
  • Self-service tooling
  • SVG.js
  • Template systems
  • Brand guardrails

The challenge

Routine requests filled the design queue: icon variants, image crops, branded backgrounds, and co-branded partner ads. Each one followed rules that never changed, and each one still waited for a designer. Requesters lost days, and designers spent their time repeating work instead of designing.

Adding a review step wouldn't fix that, and neither would more documentation. The rules were already written down. What was missing was a way to apply them without a designer in the loop.

The idea

Build the guardrails into the tool instead of enforcing them in review.

If a tool can only produce brand colors, approved sizes, and approved layouts, its output doesn't need a designer to check it. Each tool below started from the same question: what does a designer check on this kind of request, and can the tool make that check unnecessary? The answers came from Aspire, F&G's design system, so the tools and the system stay in agreement.

Four tools

  1. Icon generator

    One icon goes in. Every on-brand version a team could ask for comes out, ready to use.

    Before
    Each color, theme, and format was a separate designer request.
    Guardrail
    The tool only outputs the seven brand colors, so every variant is on-brand.
    Result
    A 28x designer output multiplier.
    AI's role
    • Extracting icons that had been inlined as SVG into separate, standalone files.
    • Testing that the generator's logic produced exactly what it was supposed to.

  2. Image cropper

    Teams crop their own images to the sizes each channel needs, instead of sending every crop to a designer.

    Before
    Every crop joined the designer queue.
    Guardrail
    Only approved sizes and ratios are available, so the output fits where it's going.
    Result
    Crops are self-serve, with no queue.

  3. Pattern-fill generator

    Built with SVG.js, it uses F&G's branded murals as source material and generates fills for anything that needs a branded surface: signage, video backgrounds, SharePoint headers, and social graphics.

    Before
    Each branded background was custom work from a designer.
    Guardrail
    Patterns come from the brand's own murals, so everything the tool makes is on-brand by construction.
    Result
    One tool covers signage, video, intranet, and social.

  4. Co-branded ad builder

    Partner agents build their own co-branded ads from four templates in three languages, ready instantly. Read the full ad builder case study.

    Before
    Every partner ad was a multi-day wait in the design queue.
    Guardrail
    Agents fill in locked templates. Layout, type, and color aren't theirs to change.
    Result
    3 languages × 4 templates, with no design queue.

What it meant for the team

Every request a tool handles is one a designer never sees. The queue got shorter, the people asking got their assets faster, and the output stayed more consistent than hand-made versions, because the tool can't drift from the rules the way a rushed request can.

The same approach shows up in my other work. The dynamic rate sheets remove designers from rate updates entirely, and the digital underwriting guide turns 100+ pages of tables into a few inputs.

The results

  • One icon becomes 28 on-brand files: a 28x designer output multiplier.
  • Image crops and branded pattern fills moved out of the design queue and into self-serve tools.
  • A multi-day partner ad bottleneck replaced by instant, on-brand output in 3 languages.