Brand Illustration System

Illustration has the ability to represent reality in a way that is familiar yet delightfully unexpected. Photography can’t always convey complex ideas or show layered processes and systems. That’s why most tech companies rely on the power of illustration to bring those ideas to life in an approachable and relatable way.

Deliverables: Illustration Exploration, Creative Direction, Pitch Deck, Style Guides, Component Based Design Library, Hosting Creative Workshops

Role: Project Owner, Art director, Lead Designer

The Challenge

The Mindbody brand had used illustration for years but never adhered to a brand-wide style, resulting in a variety of illustrations across several touchpoints. Consistency was lacking and a need for an identifiable illustrative style across all brand touchpoints had become a priority.

The Process

Defining the system’s criteria and principles before exploring illustration styles, was a top priority. With the proper guard rales in place, I was able to start developing the illustration style and library.

Defining the Criteria

Rules of Engagement

Principles

The Solution

The approach was to create a user-friendly, component-based illustration system that can be shared across all design departments. I populated the library with several vector personas, objects, and scenes. The resulting library can be layered and expanded almost endlessly.

A Component Based Library System

Creating the library in Figma gave me the ability to easily share out the design system and color library. The illustrations can be fully customized and recolored to suit each designer’s needs.

Style & How to Guides

After I had populated the library with enough illustrations for creatives to hit the ground running, the next step was to onboard all of the internal design teams. I hosted a few workshops where I presented a deck explaining the evolution and process of this system and discussed the guides you see here step by step. All the designers then had time to pressure test the library in the workshop by making their own net new assets.

Applying the new illustration system to the business homepage.

The illustration system was quickly put to use and applied to the new business homepage. I was tasked with concepting and illustrating the main section of the page that outlined the key value propositions of the software. Along with designing and illustrating the icons that a user would select to self-identify.