Utility communications have long favored safe, predictable design choices: muted colors, conventional layouts, and forgettable imagery. The rationale is understandable. Utilities are trusted with essential services where safety, compliance, and clarity matter. In an industry where reliability is paramount, bold design can feel risky.
But what if that caution comes at a cost? What if audiences interpret generic design as a lack of effort, attention, or understanding? A better question is: What does a specific audience need to notice, understand, and act on?
Tacoma Public Utilities has spent the past several years challenging the notion that utilities must choose between credibility and creativity. Through parks branding, multilingual communications, customer assistance materials, youth education programs, and compliance publications, TPU has used design as a strategic tool to improve accessibility, strengthen belonging, and build stronger connections with customers.
“We manage public resources and answer to our ratepayers. Design isn’t just decoration. It’s one way we communicate safety, build trust, and show we serve them responsibly through our communications,” said LaTasha Wortham, TPU utilities deputy director, customer experience and external affairs. “Investing in strategic creativity helps provide clarity, accessibility, and connection. Our customers deserve communications that respect their needs and intelligence while reflecting on our organizational values.”
The strategic philosophy: Values-driven design
Our approach to creativity didn’t emerge from design trends or a desire to stand out. It is grounded in organizational values: safety, respect, customer focus, belonging, and integrity. These values shape what we communicate and how we communicate it. They help determine whether a message calls for color and energy or clarity and restraint. TPU also relies on four brand tones—human, dependable, empowered, and thoughtful—to guide communication decisions. Together, these values and tones provide a framework for intentional communication.
Utilities don’t need to choose between credibility and creativity. Bold and restrained communications can both be effective. What matters is which approach best serves the audience and the message.
To support consistent decision-making across the organization, TPU developed a refreshed brand guide that documents organizational values, brand tones, visual standards, and audience-centered communication principles. This discipline transforms creativity from personal preference into intentional decisions. The goal remains the same: helping people understand information, connect with services, and see themselves reflected in TPU communications.
Six examples: Strategic creativity in action
Tacoma Power Parks rebrand: Designing for the audience
Before the rebrand, Tacoma Power promoted its parks by using hydro project names such as the Cowlitz River Project and the Nisqually River Project. Most visitors don’t come to learn about hydroelectric infrastructure. They come to camp, hike, fish, and recreate. That disconnect created a communications challenge: How do you market recreational destinations while still connecting them to Tacoma Power?
The team created a unified Tacoma Power Parks brand, retaining the successful “Play all day, Stay all night” slogan while introducing a distinctive visual identity, refreshed maps and brochures, illustrated landscapes, and updated kiosk signage. Individual parks’ stickers now also celebrate each location while reinforcing the connection to the broader park system.
“The individual park logos were around for years, but they didn’t always make it obvious to visitors that the parks were connected as one system,” said David Collins, TPU hydro project manager, Nisqually Hydro Project. “The refresh wasn’t just about updating logos. The unified brand helps visitors understand that relationship. No matter which park people visit, they should know what to expect in terms of customer service, quality, and overall experience.”
The rebrand extended beyond logos and signage. New brochures, maps, other visitor materials, and recent stickers have created multiple opportunities for people to interact with the brand and recognize the connection between individual parks and the broader Tacoma Power Parks system. Within the first week of launching the new park stickers, visitors were already asking how they could collect all four designs, an early indication that the refreshed brand was resonating, according to Chad Chalmers, TPU hydro project manager, Cowlitz River Project.
U* – Utilities & You newsletter: Evolving without losing identity
Since launching in 2007, TPU’s U* – Utilities & You newsletter has evolved from a quarterly direct-mail publication to a bill insert and, most recently, a digital publication. Each transition presented the same challenge: How do you preserve a publication’s identity while adapting to a new format? Rather than reinvent the newsletter, TPU’s communications office refreshed its design at each stage with diverse imagery, intentional color, and contemporary typography. The publication also expanded its accessibility by adding Spanish translations during its bill-insert phase and Korean translations after moving online.
The result is a publication that has maintained a strong readership and earned multiple industry awards over nearly two decades. The focus on customer relevance, accessibility, and engagement has remained consistent.
Customer solutions: Designing for access
Like many utilities, TPU offers billing assistance programs for customers facing financial hardship. Historically, communications about those programs focused on function: eligibility, deadlines, and application instructions. Over time, TPU recognized that effective assistance communications require more than information alone. They must also help customers understand the program is intended for them.
To better connect with customers, TPU redesigned its assistance materials to include bilingual content, diverse imagery, plain language, and intentional use of color. The goal was to make materials more welcoming, accessible, and easier to navigate.
“Creative design plays a critical role in helping customers understand that a program is intended for them. For many customers, especially those facing financial hardship, utility assistance can feel overwhelming or stigmatizing,” said Tasha Moore, TPU assistant division manager, customer services’ customer solutions. “When materials are visually engaging, easy to understand, and welcoming, they capture attention and help customers quickly identify key information and next steps.”
Welcome wraps: Designing for belonging
Not every communications challenge calls for bold colors, dramatic graphics, or highly visible design. Four pillars in TPU’s lobby display “Welcome” in eight languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean, Khmer, Ukrainian, and Twulshootseed, the language of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.
This project intentionally takes a quieter approach. The pillars use standard brand colors and a neutral palette that respect the space’s architectural character and the experience of those entering it. Many visitors come to the lobby to seek assistance, resolve service issues, or navigate financial challenges. In that environment, dignity and comfort matter as much as visibility. The languages themselves carry the message.
Sometimes living your values means knowing what not to do. In this case, bold visual treatments would have competed with the message rather than supported it. The goal was not to draw attention to the design itself. It was to help people feel welcomed, represented, and respected.
“Bilingual communication and diverse representation are also essential because our community is diverse,” Moore said. “Customers should be able to see themselves reflected in the materials we create and access information in a language they understand.”
RailCards: Designing for learning
Tacoma Rail’s most popular youth education activity is a site tour at the Port of Tacoma. Students can climb into the tower overlooking the rail yard, explore the caboose, and try the train simulator. But not every classroom or youth group can make the trip.
That created a challenge: How do you bring a hands-on rail experience into a classroom? For years, Tacoma Rail staff brought photos of locomotives and freight into schools and delivered interactive presentations. The information was valuable, but the format lacked the tactile and visual engagement that made the tours memorable.
The answer became RailCards, an educational card game inspired by the freight moving through the Port of Tacoma. The design uses bold color, simple visual cues, and gameplay to make rail concepts approachable. As students build trains and make strategic decisions, they learn rail terminology, freight types, and the role rail transportation plays in the regional economy.
Water quality report: Designing for compliance
Compliance communications are often viewed as exercises in information delivery. The priority is accuracy, not engagement. Tacoma Water’s annual Water Quality Report challenges the assumption that compliance documents can’t also be visually compelling.
Each year, the report’s design reflects regulatory water quality requirements and the broader story the utility wants to tell about its water supply. For the 2025 report, that story focused on Tacoma Water’s two primary water sources: the Green River watershed and the utility’s groundwater well system. Alongside required water quality information, the report uses storytelling and imagery to help customers understand where their drinking water comes from and the infrastructure and natural resources that support it.
“We want customers to understand not only what’s in the report, but why it matters to them,” said Valerie Lorfeld, TPU senior communication analyst. “Design helps us organize complex information, create visual entry points, and connect customers to the story behind their drinking water.”
To draw readers into a highly technical document, the report blends illustrations with photography. The illustrations were created from original photographs of Tacoma Water facilities and the Green River watershed, transforming familiar utility infrastructure and landscapes into artwork that supports the report’s narrative. Photography complements those illustrations with images of Tacoma Water employees and native plants found throughout the region, helping connect customers to the people and environment behind their drinking water. All imagery is rooted in authentic elements of Tacoma Water’s system, reinforcing the report’s educational purpose and credibility.
Breaking beige: When creativity drives results
The impact of audience-centered design can also be measured. According to TPU’s customer satisfaction survey, advertising awareness increased from 50% in 2023 to 57% in 2025. Thirty-nine percent of customers who see TPU news stories report feeling more positive about the organization afterward, strengthening trust and improving perceptions.
Positive perceptions of environmental responsibility also increased, rising from 56% in 2024 to 60% in 2025. The largest gain occurred among customers who receive multiple services, with an increase of 7 percentage points.
While many factors contribute to customer perception, the results align with TPU’s investment in refreshed parks’ communications, updated newsletter formats, environmental storytelling, and other customer-focused communications efforts.
The brand guide as a decision-making tool
TPU developed a refreshed TPU Brand Guide to provide a shared framework for creative decision-making. Beyond logos, colors, and typography standards, it documents the organization’s values, brand tones, visual standards, and audience-centered communication. The guide creates consistency across teams while giving communicators flexibility to make audience-centered design decisions aligned with TPU’s values. It also gives teams permission to move beyond familiar utility design conventions when a different approach better serves the audience.
“Many of the decisions I make between restrained and bold design have to do with the tone of the communication and the audience we’re trying to reach. What are we trying to say, who are we saying it to, and particularly the feeling we want to invoke,” said Darlene Lewis, TPU graphic arts specialist. “Our previous brand guides also really narrowed our ability to use color because we were limited to a simple core palette. Now that we’ve opened the door to using extended palettes and have homed in on our divisions’ common brand traits, we have more flexibility to make braver creative decisions that are strategically aligned with content and based in our utility’s values.”
Takeaways for utilities
Utilities don’t need to choose between credibility and creativity. The examples in this article are connected not by a particular visual style, but by a commitment to audience needs. The lesson is not that every utility should adopt a more colorful brand or pursue more ambitious design. The lesson is that communication is most effective when it is intentionally aligned with organizational values, customer needs, and business goals.
When customers can easily understand information and see themselves reflected in communications, trust and engagement often follow. Creativity is not the opposite of reliability. When grounded in purpose, it becomes another tool for helping utilities better serve their customers and communities.
Beyond beige
Customer expectations continue to evolve, and utilities face increasing pressure to communicate complex information clearly, transparently, and effectively. For TPU, the challenge isn’t simply keeping pace with changing communication channels. It is continuing to find meaningful ways to connect customers with the services they rely on and the people behind those services.
“We know that today, everyone is competing for attention. Utilities are no exception. If we want our messages to connect with customers and communities, we have to communicate in ways that stand out and resonate. Bold color and intentional design are tools that help us do that,” said Erin Babbo, TPU senior manager of communications. “That doesn’t mean being flashy, tacky, or over the top. It means being purposeful, using design strategically to capture attention, improve understanding, and make information more accessible and memorable for the audiences we serve. Strong design helps important messages cut through the noise and ensures customers engage with the information that matters most.”
The tools and tactics will evolve, but the goal remains the same: helping customers understand information, connect with utility services, and build trust. TPU’s experience suggests intentional design isn’t a departure from utility values. It’s one way those values become visible to the people utilities serve.
