Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment 2026

The problem

Building on the 2025 campaign, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina centered its 2026 Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment campaign on print people could hold on to: a printed guide, flyers, a letter, and a planning worksheet.

Each piece had to help people compare their options and feel ready before annual enrollment opened on Oct. 15. And they had to work together, so someone who picked up any one of them could find their way to the rest.

My role

As art director, I set the new look for the year and led the other designers on the team. I designed the 18-page guide, the letter, and the planning worksheet, chose and edited the photos, shaped the messaging with our copywriters, and worked with the printer to produce the guide.

A road map for Medicare

Many of the people this guide is for grew up planning trips with a folding road atlas, so we built the book around that memory. The cover is a road map of South Carolina, and the theme runs through every page: postmarks and travel stamps, a folded-map icon, faded map backgrounds, and section titles like “On the Road to Community Care.”

Inside, the guide takes readers through the decision one step at a time: what changed in their plan, simple yes-or-no questions to ask, why BlueCross, answers to common questions, a worksheet for comparing costs, and how to enroll by phone, online, or in person. Large type, plenty of space, and photos of South Carolinians fishing, golfing, and walking the beach keep it easy to read and close to home.

One look for every piece

Before design started, I made a four-page style board for the team. It set the color palette and type rules, introduced a set of South Carolina state icons, showed how the look works on billboards, postcards, and flyers, and proposed the photos. Everyone worked from the same board, so the pieces look like one campaign even with several designers on them.

The letter, worksheet, and guide work together. The letter, mailed ahead of enrollment, announces that enrollment begins Oct. 15 and links to the worksheet with a QR code, and the same worksheet appears inside the guide, so people can fill it in wherever they find it.

The result

A few thousand copies of the guide were printed for every BlueCross retail center in South Carolina and for sales reps across the state, so advisers had something to walk through with people face to face. Enrollment opened on Oct. 15, so it’s too early for numbers.