Visual Design
As the primary illustrator and icon sommelier. I contributed many visual assets used across Cvent products. The major project I worked on was upgrading our design system illustrations and icon library to use semantic tokens to support our Brand and Themeing efforts.
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Role: Designer
Project focus: Revamp illustration and icon library
Shipped 2024
Introduction
A major Cvent business need is to provide themed experiences across a multitude of solutions. Keeping visual styles consistent throughout the event life cycle.
Problem
Planners can't customize icons in the event app. How can we offer smart defaults while enabling personalization?
Our goals
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Create a theming system for easy, consistent customization across colors, fonts, and components.
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Ensure it works seamlessly on both web and app platforms.
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Help planners deliver a branded experience with minimal effort.
My Process
1. Take inventory
We took inventory of all the illustrations used on our Attendee Hub platform. Eliminating redundant ones and combining similar ones.
By identifying our most important illustrations, we had a lean list of what we needed for v1.
2. User testing
We conducted a survey that presented participants with 10 image set options to provide feedback. Images were presented in a randomized order.
We used Optimal Workshop survey tool and recruited participants through the Alida research panel.
Key takeaways
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We were able to identify 4 clear choices from respondents.
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Respondents most frequently described their event theming as “professional”, “modern”, and “welcoming”, with “professional” scoring significantly higher than all others.
3. Find a vendor
We understood that it would be hard to create hundreds of new icons and illustrations from scratch. So we looked into different library services and cross-examined which ones could supply us with a diverse collection of both.
We ended up going with Streamline. Licensing and 1000 icons and 3 illustration styles.
4. Define styles
We wanted our first release to cover a wide range of styles, work well when paired with the icon packs, and align with planner expectations.
5. Setup repository
By the end of all this, we had accumulated over XX total assets. We created a new library to host all of them without bloating our component library. The illustrations were organized by style and type, making it easy to find by designers.
Solution
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Created and manage a new repository for themeable assets.
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Found a vendor to license new assets.
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Created the missing assets that the vendor couldn't supply us with.
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Collaborated with our design system team to create a new color token system that we would pair with these assets so that they can work in light, multi-color, and dark modes.
Follow up
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Created and manage a new repository for themeable assets.
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Found a vendor to license new assets.
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Created the missing assets that the vendor couldn't supply us with.
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Collaborated with our design system team to create a new color token system that we would pair with these assets so that they can work in light, multi-color, and dark modes.
Reflections
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Created and manage a new repository for themeable assets.
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Found a vendor to license new assets.
-
Created the missing assets that the vendor couldn't supply us with.
-
Collaborated with our design system team to create a new color token system that we would pair with these assets so that they can work in light, multi-color, and dark modes.