Personal anecdote
Opportunity to collaborate with best engineers , my daughter's
favorite project
favorite project
The project manager organized a kickoff meeting with the Go team, typically attended by a developer advocate or marketing personnel. Expecting a casual meeting, I didn't prepare much. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the suggestions and encouragement from the engineers present in the meeting. Their support boosted my confidence, and I felt eager to impress. Later, I discovered that I had been conversing with none other than the head of the Go team, Sameer Ajmani, and distinguished engineer Russ Cox. Determined to excel, I immersed myself in the project and got good feedback in the end.
Working from home, my six-year-old daughter caught sight of the cute Gopher illustrations on my laptop and excitedly shared her ideas. Overall, the project was fulfilling and enjoyable, offering me the chance to engage with esteemed engineers and thought leaders. As a memento and for further research, they kindly sent me a Gopher plushie.
Working from home, my six-year-old daughter caught sight of the cute Gopher illustrations on my laptop and excitedly shared her ideas. Overall, the project was fulfilling and enjoyable, offering me the chance to engage with esteemed engineers and thought leaders. As a memento and for further research, they kindly sent me a Gopher plushie.
Objective
Developing diverse illustrative elements for swift and effortless production of social media posts
The assets generated will serve as resources for effortless production of upcoming social campaigns, events, and other graphics associated with the GO programming language. The objective is to design illustrations that can be employed independently or in conjunction with other elements to craft a comprehensive campaign.
Testimonial
"Hi Ramya, thank you so much for taking all our feedback so well. I love the final art! This is looking much better. Thanks for your hard work on this."
- Sameer Ajmani ( Director of Engineering, Go team)
- Sameer Ajmani ( Director of Engineering, Go team)
Challenge
The Gopher illustrations created previously were not approved by
the GO team
the GO team
The original design of the Go Gopher by Renee French possesses a distinctive style, tone, and personality.
Grasping this is crucial for ensuring that the assets align authentically with the character's persona.
Grasping this is crucial for ensuring that the assets align authentically with the character's persona.
Therefore, we conducted a detailed meeting with the GO team, compiling a list of character traits, guidelines
and features to understand the do's and dont's.
and features to understand the do's and dont's.
Solution
3 puzzle pieces of the library
Illustration Elements: After the kickoff, I organized Gopher's personality and traits into distinct categories. Subsequently, I jotted down illustration ideas for each category, exploring various creative representations for different personality traits.
Gopher poses and character turns: The most crucial step involved finalizing the fundamental poses of the Gopher. I utilized the pose sheet provided by the Go team and referenced the Gopher plushie to capture various character turns.
Backgrounds and other accents: While the color of the Gopher is predetermined, we had some flexibility in determining the color of elements and the background. I developed a color palette inspired by the Go brand guidelines, keeping it limited, quirky, and providing good contrast with the Gopher's color.
Final Deliverables
Putting the pieces together
After multiple rounds of iteration these final gophers were added to the approved folder.
Learn with Go twitter campaign
The next stage of the project entailed generating assets for the Twitter campaign. Thanks to the diverse range of illustrative elements available in the library, we could quickly craft the posts. The "Learn with Go" Twitter campaign comprised seven episodes that focused on educating developers about the Go learning materials. Here are few examples of the twitter posts.
View the campaign here
View the campaign here
Outcomes
1. The illustration library proved highly successful, enabling us to produce any social media asset within a two-day turnaround for events such as Google I/O, Valentine's Day, and DevFest. Below are the assets created by other designers in two days.
2. The stakeholders were very happy with the design and timely delivery of assets.
3. The " Learn with Go '' campaign was very successful with an average of 50k impressions per post.
Learning
Creating a character library from scratch is one thing but designing assets truthful to the personality and tone of the existing character is a great learning opportunity for me.
