Communications Department Design
Building the operating structure behind public communication
Before the City of Cleveland Heights had a formal communications department, communication work was happening everywhere.
Departments needed public updates. Leadership needed language. Residents needed information. Events needed promotion. Public meetings needed support. Social media needed attention. The website needed updates. Internal staff needed a way to request work. The city needed records, standards, and a more organized way to move information.
What was missing was not effort.
What was missing was structure.
As Communications Director, I helped build the city’s first formal communications department: defining roles, responsibilities, workflows, recurring work, public-facing routines, and the practical tools needed to make communication function across departments.
This work was not only about creating an org chart. It was about making communication visible as operational work — something that needed ownership, routing, standards, documentation, and enough authority to do the job properly.
Project details
Client: City of Cleveland Heights
Role: Communications Director
Work: Department design, role definition, workflow development, public update routines, internal request processes, visual standards, publication support, department coordination
Result: Helped establish the city’s first formal communications department and created practical tools for managing public-facing communication across departments
What the department needed to do
The work had to support two directions at once.
Externally, the city needed to explain decisions, services, events, projects, emergencies, and ongoing work to the public.
Internally, staff needed a way to route requests, prepare materials, coordinate updates, manage deadlines, and understand who owned which part of the communication process.
A communications department could not just be the place where graphics were made or posts were published.
It had to become the place where public-facing information was organized before it went out.
What was built
A department structured around two directions of flow:
outward communication (what the city needs to say)
inbound community relations (what residents are asking and experiencing)
One side handled what the city needed to say.
The other helped track what residents were asking, reporting, and experiencing.
Core functions
Media & Public Information — releases, advisories, Q&A, corrections
Government TV — live meetings, captions, searchable archive
Social & City News — structured updates and feedback loop
Design & Accessibility — consistent, readable, standards-based materials
Community Relations (MAC) — intake, routing, tracking, and follow-through
Each role was defined as part of the department’s daily work, not as a separate one-person lane.
System behavior
weekly City News cadence as a single source of public updates
a new website as the primary place residents could return for current information
social and email pointing back to the same information
intake tracked, routed, and closed through a centralized process
approvals structured to prevent conflicting or incomplete messaging
City News — System in Practice
Supporting structure
These established expectations for response, routing, and consistency across departments.
The department did not start with hiring.
It started with defining how communication works.
Once the structure existed, the roles followed.
Once the roles were filled, the system could operate.
I am no longer with the organization.
The team built during that period remains in place.
Why this mattered
A communications department is not made real by naming it.
It becomes real when the work has a place to go, a person responsible for it, a process for moving it, and standards that survive past one urgent deadline.
This project shows the kind of work Frances Eugenia Design brings to organizations that have outgrown informal communication but do not yet have a working structure in place.
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