Yoojin Seol

Imagine

Work

Role: Art Director & Designer
Taking in the brand strategy, I explored concepts for a rebranded illustration style, presented work to stakeholders in brand and marketing, and designed the new brand illustration system and library.

Programs: Figma, C4D, Redshift, Photoshop, Illustrator

Head of Design: Alan Roll
Creative Director: Susan Payne
Art Direction & Design: Yoojin Seol, Natasha Fedorova
Motion Designer: Daniel Pragoyo
Web Designer: Virginia Van Keuren, Jordan Puga
Created at Airtable.
Airtable Illustration Rebrand

Airtable is a collaborative database platform that allows users to organize and manage their data in a flexible and intuitive way.

Through brand illustrations, we can show Airtable’s features and possibilities that empowers teams to build their own solutions and workflows.





Click click



I’m excited to show you some of my favorite illustrations!
Projects were for product launches, web, conferences, field events, sales decks, social, blog, emails, ebooks and more.
You can find some of illustrations live on Airtable.com or Airtable.com/platform








1. Before the rebrand


Previously, Airtable’s illustrations were colorful, delightful, friendly, and revolved around showing collaboration through playful interactions of diverse characters. 

While it was delightful, Airtable shifted their marketing and sales strategy to focus more on leaders in enterprise companies. So, the brand and its illustrations also had elevate to resonate with enterprise audiences. 

Another part of the strategy was also to be more product-focused and showcase our robust product UI.


    2. Exploration!

    and temporary limited-edition solutions 
    I absolutely cherished these five months of exploring Airtable’s brand style. It was an exciting time to be brought on board. 
    I focused on:

    • Diving deep into learning about Airtable brand and product, marketing strategy and messaging, and competitive analysis.

    • Exploring how to create an unique illustration system that kept the delightful charms from the previous illustrations while evolving to be enterprise-ready. 

    • All while creating interim illustrations that would still be familiar to our users but continue pushing it towards the new direction!





    Here’s the deck that summarizes the explorations with the strategy:
     




    Click to zoom, and click the arrow to advance the slides.




    Overall, we valued illustration as ways to represent ideas and abstract concepts intuitively, tell stories, help audiences understand the bigger picture, see possibilities, and feel excited about innovative ways to work.
    Some ways to elevate the illustrations were to: 

    • Give the characters more realistic proportions and facial expressions
    • Introduce depth to spaces and create a space where we’re inviting the audience to imagine new possibilities about the future of work
    • Add specificity to abstract shapes, aligning them closely with Airtable's product UI and features. 




    Here are some of my favorite illustrations from the exploration era. 






    4. The Rebrand ✨


    There was great response to the 3D direction so we decided to head into that direction!

    I also developed the Brand Illustration System with a Illustration Library on Figma and Airtable where our team and XFN teams could access illustrations easily and be more informed about the process and best ways to work with our team. 

    The system was flexible and scalable so that other designers could apply to other campaigns, emails, ebooks, events, conferences, socials, and more, on Figma, without even opening a 3D program.

    I started out as the only 3D artist, but I mentored other designers and animators who were new to and interested in 3D & C4D. This helped unlock a new skill in their career and helped scale our team's output. 

    Here are the official brand illustration system guidelines!