CASCIONE ADVOGADOS
Role: Designer & Marketing Strategist
Duration: 2019 to 2026
Scope: Visual identity, editorial design, web development, video production, event branding
Team: Led a team of 3, within a 5-person marketing function
Cascione is a full-service law firm based on Faria Lima, in São Paulo, spanning 20 practice areas. Law firms have a well known brand challenge: the product is invisible and the competition converges on the same visual codes. In this particular case, there was not only one firm to differentiate, but also 20 practices inside it that each needed to stand apart from the others.
Over seven years I built the visual language of a firm that thinks differently from traditional practice in a market where looking different is itself a liability. It was imperative that innovation be legible as competence, not as risk. My role encompassed everything from brand management and content creation to team coordination and strategic marketing initiatives, supporting the firm’s growth and market positioning in the competitive legal services sector.
Creative Direction & Brand Management
- Complete Visual Identity: Managed all graphic design materials, institutional presentations, and brand communications
- Editorial Design: Designed and laid out two legal article books, handling everything from cover design to internal layout
- Marketing Materials: Created comprehensive marketing collateral including brochures, legal guides, newsletters, and institutional documents
- Brand Consistency: Ensured cohesive visual communication across all touchpoints and departments
Legal work isn’t visual
There is no product shot, no location, no process to document. Arbitration, tax structuring and competition law are arguments, and arguments do not photograph. The visual interest had to come from the content itself, through typographic hierarchy, layout and diagrams that gave the text structure and made it feel visible, since a relationship is usually easier to draw than to describe.
The content was almost always dense, footnote-heavy and structurally repetitive, and each text needed its own support system to hold attention without losing precision. Nearly every piece got a format built specially for it, while still reading as part of the same whole.
Everything in house, on purpose
Design, layout, filming, editing, motion, photography and front-end all stayed with me and the team rather than going to agencies or production companies. The reasons were control and range. It was important that the decisions held all the way from concept to the final file, without a handoff in the middle that could compromise them. And working this way meant a book, a landing page and a video series in the same season, which is the kind of variety most design jobs do not offer. Lower production cost was something the firm got as a side effect, along with the ability to make things on tight deadlines.
Editorial: two books, deliberately quiet
Two books of legal articles, designed end to end from cover to internal layout, built as a matched pair so they read as a collection. They are the most conservative pieces in this case, and that was a decision. Legal books are consulted, not read through. The reader arrives looking for one argument in four hundred pages, and an authorial layout system would be something else for them to decode first. The work went into getting a technical academic format exactly right rather than into making it distinctive: type sizes that hold across hundreds of pages, footnotes that stay out of the way, structure the reader never has to learn. Here, restraint was the correct answer.
Everything else
40+ institutional presentations, sector newsletters, brochures and guides, on top of the day to day output across all 20 practice areas.
A design system for a firm with 20 practice areas cannot be a single template. It has to be a set of rules loose enough that each area of practice can feel like itself, and tight enough that they are all visibly the same firm.
Internal communications
A significant and less visible strand of the work was made for the people inside the firm rather than for clients, so they would feel good about where they work in their daily lives through design. It was one of the few places where making something beautiful was the whole and sole point.
Video Production & Content Creation
- Complete Video Production: Filmed, edited, and produced all video content for the firm’s YouTube channel and LinkedIn page
- Documentary Production: Created a mini-documentary on arbitration, showcasing complex legal concepts in accessible formats
- Annual Retrospectives: Produced animated year-end review videos combining motion graphics with institutional messaging
- Content Strategy: Developed video content that positioned the firm as a thought leader in the legal industry
The documentary is the clearest case of the no-object problem. Arbitration is a private, adversarial process with nothing to show. The film was built from historical material assembled as collage.
Events
Branding for 10+ events, from seminars to client functions. Several pieces stayed in circulation well past the events they were built for.
Digital Strategy & Web Development
- Website Management: Continuously updated and enhanced the firm’s website structure using PHP development
- Technical Implementation: Added and removed sections, optimized user experience, and maintained technical functionality
- Landing Pages: Designed and developed custom landing pages for events and special initiatives
- Digital Presence: Oversaw the firm’s complete digital marketing ecosystem
Designing and implementing in house meant we could have what we needed up and running as fast as the situation demanded, instead of going out to a developer and coming back approximate.
Leadership & Team Development
Team Coordination Evolved from individual contributor to team coordinator, managing creative projects and workflows while maintaining direct reporting relationship with Marketing Manager.
Strategic Partnership Worked closely with senior management to align marketing initiatives with business objectives and firm growth strategies.
It was seven happy years working with people I admired in a job where there was always something new to make.
Learn more about Cascione Advogados on cascione.com.br.
