Senior Designer @ Booking.com, Design Language Team // 2020–2021
Opportunity
Illustration is an important element of product design and it should have a place in any design system. At that time, we didn’t have a consistent illustration style, and each one of the 100+ product teams had to create their own illustrations to suit their needs. The resulting inconsistency was impacting our brand perception, the user experience and the overall quality of our design.
Solution
To solve this problem, we had to come up with just one illustration style, use it consistently across our traveller products and support teams with their illustration requests.
My role
I was part of Booking.com’s Design Language team. Its mission was to create the definitions, tools and documentation teams need to design and build products at scale. I led the process of defining the illustration style and was the main illustrator on this project.
– Defined the illustration style and created the illustration guidelines.
– Created a set of illustrations to support key business areas: Flights, Genius program, Rewards.
– At the moment, the illustration style is being gradually implemented across various products at Booking.com
The process
In 2020, the Design Language team began a general transformation of our Design Language — the translation of our brand identity into a cohesive customer experience across our digital products. The goal was to establish common design foundations by defining all core ingredients of the Design Language: color, typography, iconography, layout, photography, voice and tone, and illustrations. I was responsible for defining the illustration component.
Main steps:
1. Looking into brand mission and personality
2. Moodboard exercise
3. Style exploration
4. Defining the style
5. Shaping the guidelines
The result
After rounds and rounds of drawings and critique sessions, this is how our style started to look – friendly, personal and full of energy. Think smiles and waves, or looking out over the big blue skies:
Application in the product
The guidelines
After the style was defined, I developed the illustration guidelines. These help explain what makes Booking.com's illustration style unique and how to apply illustrations in the product, and they can be used by other illustrators supporting guest-facing teams at Booking.com.
Bringing illustrations to our traveller products
I led a series of workshops with the teams from key business areas to learn more about their illustration needs, and created a set of illustrations for them:
– Illustrations for the Genius program
Thank you
Nothing great was ever accomplished alone. Working on the illustration style was a close collaboration with several designers and writers from our Design Community. I'd like to thank Cătălin Bridinel, Gustavo Contreras, Nick Thiel, Holly Lincoln, Steven Baguley, Fiorella Rizza and Jade Goldsmith for their help and support on this project.
