01
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Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Product: Rethinking onboarding from the ground up by designing an AI and video platform that makes new hires feel informed, seen, and set up to succeed from day one.
Branding: Designing five characters with distinct personalities so every new hire could find themselves in one.
Impact
Transformed a rigid onboarding experience into a personalized, culture-forward journey that made new users feel welcomed from day one.
Role
Lead Visual Designer & Illustrator
Responsibilities
Branding, Visual Design, Illustration
Duration
2023 - 2024
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Product: Rethinking onboarding from the ground up by designing an AI and video platform that makes new hires feel informed, seen, and set up to succeed from day one.
Branding: Designing five characters with distinct personalities so every new hire could find themselves in one.
Impact
Transformed a rigid onboarding experience into a personalized, culture-forward journey that made new users feel welcomed from day one.
Role
Lead Visual Designer & Illustrator
Responsibilities
Branding, Visual Design, Illustration
Duration
2023 - 2024
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Product: Rethinking onboarding from the ground up by designing an AI and video platform that makes new hires feel informed, seen, and set up to succeed from day one.
Branding: Designing five characters with distinct personalities so every new hire could find themselves in one.
Impact
Transformed a rigid onboarding experience into a personalized, culture-forward journey that made new users feel welcomed from day one.
Role
Lead Visual Designer & Illustrator
Responsibilities
Branding, Visual Design, Illustration
Duration
2023 - 2024
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Product: Rethinking onboarding from the ground up by designing an AI and video platform that makes new hires feel informed, seen, and set up to succeed from day one.
Branding: Designing five characters with distinct personalities so every new hire could find themselves in one.
Impact
Transformed a rigid onboarding experience into a personalized, culture-forward journey that made new users feel welcomed from day one.
Role
Lead Visual Designer & Illustrator
Responsibilities
Branding, Visual Design, Illustration
Duration
2023 - 2024
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Product: Rethinking onboarding from the ground up by designing an AI and video platform that makes new hires feel informed, seen, and set up to succeed from day one.
Branding: Designing five characters with distinct personalities so every new hire could find themselves in one.
Impact
Transformed a rigid onboarding experience into a personalized, culture-forward journey that made new users feel welcomed from day one.
Role
Lead Visual Designer & Illustrator
Responsibilities
Branding, Visual Design, Illustration
Duration
2023 - 2024
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same with a professional, neutral, and forgettable tone but Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human.
To solve this, we needed to ask: How do you make an onboarding branding experience that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
To make something that anyone could relate to, we built a cast of five distinct characters - each with their own shape, personality, and name users could see themselves in.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same with a professional, neutral, and forgettable tone but Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human.
To solve this, we needed to ask: How do you make an onboarding branding experience that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
To make something that anyone could relate to, we built a cast of five distinct characters - each with their own shape, personality, and name users could see themselves in.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same with a professional, neutral, and forgettable tone but Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human.
To solve this, we needed to ask: How do you make an onboarding branding experience that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
To make something that anyone could relate to, we built a cast of five distinct characters - each with their own shape, personality, and name users could see themselves in.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same with a professional, neutral, and forgettable tone but Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human.
To solve this, we needed to ask: How do you make an onboarding branding experience that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
To make something that anyone could relate to, we built a cast of five distinct characters - each with their own shape, personality, and name users could see themselves in.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same with a professional, neutral, and forgettable tone but Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human.
To solve this, we needed to ask: How do you make an onboarding branding experience that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
To make something that anyone could relate to, we built a cast of five distinct characters - each with their own shape, personality, and name users could see themselves in.
02
/
process
Sketching & Early Exploration
Everything started on paper. This stage was deliberately messy and open-ended, the goal being to exhaust the obvious ideas quickly and find something more unexpected underneath.
02
/
process
Sketching & Early Exploration
Everything started on paper. This stage was deliberately messy and open-ended, the goal being to exhaust the obvious ideas quickly and find something more unexpected underneath.
02
/
process
Sketching & Early Exploration
Everything started on paper. This stage was deliberately messy and open-ended, the goal being to exhaust the obvious ideas quickly and find something more unexpected underneath.
02
/
process
Sketching & Early Exploration
Everything started on paper. This stage was deliberately messy and open-ended, the goal being to exhaust the obvious ideas quickly and find something more unexpected underneath.
02
/
process
Sketching & Early Exploration
Everything started on paper. This stage was deliberately messy and open-ended, the goal being to exhaust the obvious ideas quickly and find something more unexpected underneath.
Digital Explorations
From there, explorations moved into digital — testing logotype lockups, characters, and color — starting to see what could actually work together as a system.
Digital Explorations
From there, explorations moved into digital — testing logotype lockups, characters, and color — starting to see what could actually work together as a system.
Digital Explorations
From there, explorations moved into digital — testing logotype lockups, characters, and color — starting to see what could actually work together as a system.
Digital Explorations
From there, explorations moved into digital — testing logotype lockups, characters, and color — starting to see what could actually work together as a system.
Digital Explorations
From there, explorations moved into digital — testing logotype lockups, characters, and color — starting to see what could actually work together as a system.
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
The reasoning was simple: one character represents one type of person. Five characters, with genuinely different personalities, meant almost any new hire could look at the lineup and feel seen.
The five we landed on were:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
The reasoning was simple: one character represents one type of person. Five characters, with genuinely different personalities, meant almost any new hire could look at the lineup and feel seen.
The five we landed on were:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
The reasoning was simple: one character represents one type of person. Five characters, with genuinely different personalities, meant almost any new hire could look at the lineup and feel seen.
The five we landed on were:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
The reasoning was simple: one character represents one type of person. Five characters, with genuinely different personalities, meant almost any new hire could look at the lineup and feel seen.
The five we landed on were:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
The reasoning was simple: one character represents one type of person. Five characters, with genuinely different personalities, meant almost any new hire could look at the lineup and feel seen.
The five we landed on were:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
03
/
Design
refining the details
Getting each character right took iteration.
Scrunch, for example, went through four rejected versions before landing on the one that felt genuinely unbothered rather than just grumpy. Small adjustments were made - hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. These small details changed the whole impression of the character.
In addition, in order for characters to be recognizable from a glance, each character was built from a distinct base shape — a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star.
03
/
Design
refining the details
Getting each character right took iteration.
Scrunch, for example, went through four rejected versions before landing on the one that felt genuinely unbothered rather than just grumpy. Small adjustments were made - hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. These small details changed the whole impression of the character.
In addition, in order for characters to be recognizable from a glance, each character was built from a distinct base shape — a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star.
03
/
Design
refining the details
Getting each character right took iteration.
Scrunch, for example, went through four rejected versions before landing on the one that felt genuinely unbothered rather than just grumpy. Small adjustments were made - hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. These small details changed the whole impression of the character.
In addition, in order for characters to be recognizable from a glance, each character was built from a distinct base shape — a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star.
03
/
Design
refining the details
Getting each character right took iteration.
Scrunch, for example, went through four rejected versions before landing on the one that felt genuinely unbothered rather than just grumpy. Small adjustments were made - hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. These small details changed the whole impression of the character.
In addition, in order for characters to be recognizable from a glance, each character was built from a distinct base shape — a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star.
03
/
Design
refining the details
Getting each character right took iteration.
Scrunch, for example, went through four rejected versions before landing on the one that felt genuinely unbothered rather than just grumpy. Small adjustments were made - hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. These small details changed the whole impression of the character.
In addition, in order for characters to be recognizable from a glance, each character was built from a distinct base shape — a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star.
The Logotype
The logotype went through multiple type explorations before settling on the final direction.
Tweaking the lettering to match the inviting feeling of the characters without competing resulted in a fun wordmark that could embed each character seamlessly into it.
The Logotype
The logotype went through multiple type explorations before settling on the final direction.
Tweaking the lettering to match the inviting feeling of the characters without competing resulted in a fun wordmark that could embed each character seamlessly into it.
The Logotype
The logotype went through multiple type explorations before settling on the final direction.
Tweaking the lettering to match the inviting feeling of the characters without competing resulted in a fun wordmark that could embed each character seamlessly into it.
The Logotype
The logotype went through multiple type explorations before settling on the final direction.
Tweaking the lettering to match the inviting feeling of the characters without competing resulted in a fun wordmark that could embed each character seamlessly into it.
The Logotype
The logotype went through multiple type explorations before settling on the final direction.
Tweaking the lettering to match the inviting feeling of the characters without competing resulted in a fun wordmark that could embed each character seamlessly into it.
Characters in Context
To break up the onboarding process, the characters were sprinkled in to add a little bit of fun. They became functional elements within the product itself in ways like loading/processing screens.
Characters in Context
To break up the onboarding process, the characters were sprinkled in to add a little bit of fun. They became functional elements within the product itself in ways like loading/processing screens.
Characters in Context
To break up the onboarding process, the characters were sprinkled in to add a little bit of fun. They became functional elements within the product itself in ways like loading/processing screens.
Characters in Context
To break up the onboarding process, the characters were sprinkled in to add a little bit of fun. They became functional elements within the product itself in ways like loading/processing screens.
Characters in Context
To break up the onboarding process, the characters were sprinkled in to add a little bit of fun. They became functional elements within the product itself in ways like loading/processing screens.
04
/
results
takeaways
What made this project creatively satisfying was the clarity of the brief underneath all the silliness: make people feel welcome. Every decision, the range of personalities, the quirky shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that. The characters are goofy on purpose, because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here.
04
/
results
takeaways
What made this project creatively satisfying was the clarity of the brief underneath all the silliness: make people feel welcome. Every decision, the range of personalities, the quirky shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that. The characters are goofy on purpose, because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here.
04
/
results
takeaways
What made this project creatively satisfying was the clarity of the brief underneath all the silliness: make people feel welcome. Every decision, the range of personalities, the quirky shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that. The characters are goofy on purpose, because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here.
04
/
results
takeaways
What made this project creatively satisfying was the clarity of the brief underneath all the silliness: make people feel welcome. Every decision, the range of personalities, the quirky shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that. The characters are goofy on purpose, because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here.
04
/
results
takeaways
What made this project creatively satisfying was the clarity of the brief underneath all the silliness: make people feel welcome. Every decision, the range of personalities, the quirky shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that. The characters are goofy on purpose, because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here.
