Career Karma Enterprise

Career Karma began exploring enterprise offerings in mid-2022, necessitating the development of a brand voice and aesthetic. This initiative was led by the head of product Kari D’Elia and lead designer Irene Georgiou, who collaborated with a freelance visual designer. However, a major company restructure put the project on hold. I took over as the design lead and completed the first brand guideline for our Enterprise product. This was followed by the a pilot design system.

Meanwhile, I worked with visual artist Galina Bakinova to develop the first few illustrations for the Enterprise product. The usual request intake process involved someone at the company sending her an illustration request, such as "Please create an image with 2 people talking. Background includes some sort of technology devices". The illustration would then be delivered within a few days. This process was repeated, resulting in over 50 illustrations for the consumer product. (Fig 1).

The ad-hoc nature of our illustration request process led to several issues. Firstly, the lack of a cohesive and consistent brand voice across our visuals made it difficult to establish a strong and recognizable brand identity. The random nature of the illustrations created a fragmented visual experience for our users, diminishing the overall impact of our marketing and product visuals.

The absence of a standardized illustration system meant that our visuals did not effectively align with the evolving brand guidelines and enterprise offerings. This misalignment resulted in an inconsistent user experience. The need for a more streamlined and cohesive approach became evident as we prepared to pivot towards new enterprise offerings in May 2024.

The team agreed to develop an graphic asset system based on an agreed upon brand guideline. The illustrations will need to work across different offerings (with some alterations that can be done by designers on the fly). We began with simple line drawings as the initial set of illustrative elements to enable quick feature launches without waiting for the completion of all graphic assets. (Fig 4,5)

After launching the initial set of product features and starting to collect user feedback, Galina focused on sketching a set of illustrative elements for our marketing assets (Fig. 6). Leveraging the brand color palettes, we refined the illustration system’s identity by expanding the range of complementary colors, gradients, textures, and shades. (Fig. 7)

This systematic approach allowed us to create a more cohesive and flexible illustration system that could be easily adapted to various contexts and needs. The streamlined process of generating new illustrations ensured faster turnaround times, enabling us to support product launches more efficiently.

As Career Karma pivots to new enterprise offerings in May 2024, the process of generating new illustrations to better support the product has been streamlined, resulting in more cohesive visuals. Visit Careerkarma.com to see the newly updated brand