Good ideas are only the beginning.
I'm Shannon Koy. I lead brand, communications, and creative work for organizations with complex challenges and ambitious goals.
Part strategist, part creative, part organizational problem-solver. I like thoughtful ideas, talented people, and the satisfaction of seeing good work make it into the world.
Featured work
Building a stronger brand from the inside out
Led enterprise brand strategy and governance initiatives to strengthen brand consistency, establish shared standards, and align teams across a complex organization.
Making a complex transit system easier to navigate
Led a multi-year website transformation to simplify the customer experience, improve accessibility, and connect Bay Area transit riders with essential services.
More than getting the word out
From organizational change to public education and reputation management, I led communications that connected business priorities with the people they affect.
Changing behavior is the hard part
Turned behavioral research into a citywide public safety campaign designed to challenge assumptions and encourage safer driving across San Francisco.
More work
Connecting the digital dots
Led enterprise digital asset management implementation and website modernization strategy, connecting brand, technology, and customer needs through shared systems and cross-functional leadership.
Keeping a familiar brand moving
Evolving an established regional transit brand through integrated campaigns and a recognizable visual identity connecting with millions of riders.
Creating a fresh perspective
Used audience research and brand positioning to guide a refreshed identity, digital experience, and more cohesive communications approach.
Finding the people who care
Crafting a sustainable communications roadmap for Family & Children's Services department and leading the development of a social marketing campaign to recruit potential caregivers for teenagers in need.
Creative explorations
Independent projects, creative collaborations, and ideas worth pursuing.
Green Team
Less waste. More imagination.
At Rosa Parks Elementary School, I helped develop a repeatable program that puts students in charge of making their school a little greener.
Through hands-on installations, creative campaigns, and ready-to-use materials, the Green Team gives the student leadership council a framework for engaging their peers. Projects have included a life-sized whale filled with lunch waste, a “Reduce the Use” pledge campaign, school cleanups, and alternative transportation initiatives.
The idea was to make sustainability visible, participatory, and easy for the school to carry forward—long after any one project was finished.
Postal Collage
A little art. A lot of letting go.
There's something wonderfully unpredictable about making art with people you've never met—and having no idea what they'll do with it next.
I participate in the Postal Collage Project, an ongoing mail-art collaboration founded by Marty McCutcheon and organized through Berkeley Commonplace. Each artist starts a collage, sends it through four other artists, and eventually receives it back, transformed by five different creative perspectives.
My piece, At First Waft, explores the tension between manufactured pleasantness and the messier, less controllable textures of the natural world. I used layered, repurposed materials to create something tactile and deliberately imperfect.
The finished work was exhibited alongside hundreds of other collaborative pieces in Berkeley. The experience was as much about trusting the process, and other people's creative instincts, as the object itself.
Art of Hope
A reason to come together.
This participatory art project was created with students at Rosa Parks Elementary School while schools were closed to in-person instruction.
Students expressed their feelings through personal art and words. I assembled their handmade drawings and statements of hope into a giant on-site display of art kites, symbolizing a new beginning together.
The installation attracted attention throughout the neighborhood and brought students and families back to campus to share a moment of hope.
Play On!
Theater magic, without the theater.
A series of imaginative, at-home theater kits from Bay Area Children's Theatre, combining original audio stories with mailed activity packs, illustrated materials, and hands-on play.
I worked with the BACT creative team to develop the visual system and design the printed kit materials, from concept through production.
