01
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Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Onboarding tools tend to look professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy!'s brand identity used a cast of five distinct characters and a logotype designed to make every new hire feel seen from the moment they opened the app.
Impact
The goal was for every new hire to see themselves in at least one character, making onboarding feel personal rather than generic. For Ahoy!, it meant a brand identity distinct enough to set the product apart from every other onboarding tool on the market.
Role
Visual Designer & Illustrator
Duration
2023 - 2024
Tags
Branding · Visual Design · Illustration
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Onboarding tools tend to look professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy!'s brand identity used a cast of five distinct characters and a logotype designed to make every new hire feel seen from the moment they opened the app.
Impact
The goal was for every new hire to see themselves in at least one character, making onboarding feel personal rather than generic. For Ahoy!, it meant a brand identity distinct enough to set the product apart from every other onboarding tool on the market.
Role
Visual Designer & Illustrator
Duration
2023 - 2024
Tags
Branding · Visual Design · Illustration
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Onboarding tools tend to look professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy!'s brand identity used a cast of five distinct characters and a logotype designed to make every new hire feel seen from the moment they opened the app.
Impact
The goal was for every new hire to see themselves in at least one character, making onboarding feel personal rather than generic. For Ahoy!, it meant a brand identity distinct enough to set the product apart from every other onboarding tool on the market.
Role
Visual Designer & Illustrator
Duration
2023 - 2024
Tags
Branding · Visual Design · Illustration
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Onboarding tools tend to look professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy!'s brand identity used a cast of five distinct characters and a logotype designed to make every new hire feel seen from the moment they opened the app.
Impact
The goal was for every new hire to see themselves in at least one character, making onboarding feel personal rather than generic. For Ahoy!, it meant a brand identity distinct enough to set the product apart from every other onboarding tool on the market.
Role
Visual Designer & Illustrator
Duration
2023 - 2024
Tags
Branding · Visual Design · Illustration
01
/
Background
Branding
Building a Brand That Everyone Can See Themselves In
Overview
Onboarding tools tend to look professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy!'s brand identity used a cast of five distinct characters and a logotype designed to make every new hire feel seen from the moment they opened the app.
Impact
The goal was for every new hire to see themselves in at least one character, making onboarding feel personal rather than generic. For Ahoy!, it meant a brand identity distinct enough to set the product apart from every other onboarding tool on the market.
Role
Visual Designer & Illustrator
Duration
2023 - 2024
Tags
Branding · Visual Design · Illustration
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same: professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human, but that created a design challenge: how do you make a brand feel fun and personal without alienating anyone?
The core question: how do you build an onboarding brand that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
Rather than a single mascot or a generic wordmark, we built a cast of five distinct characters, each with their own shape, name, and personality, so that almost any new hire could look at the lineup and find themselves in at least one.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same: professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human, but that created a design challenge: how do you make a brand feel fun and personal without alienating anyone?
The core question: how do you build an onboarding brand that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
Rather than a single mascot or a generic wordmark, we built a cast of five distinct characters, each with their own shape, name, and personality, so that almost any new hire could look at the lineup and find themselves in at least one.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same: professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human, but that created a design challenge: how do you make a brand feel fun and personal without alienating anyone?
The core question: how do you build an onboarding brand that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
Rather than a single mascot or a generic wordmark, we built a cast of five distinct characters, each with their own shape, name, and personality, so that almost any new hire could look at the lineup and find themselves in at least one.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same: professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human, but that created a design challenge: how do you make a brand feel fun and personal without alienating anyone?
The core question: how do you build an onboarding brand that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
Rather than a single mascot or a generic wordmark, we built a cast of five distinct characters, each with their own shape, name, and personality, so that almost any new hire could look at the lineup and find themselves in at least one.
Problem
Onboarding tools tend to look and feel the same: professional, neutral, and forgettable. Ahoy! was built on the premise that onboarding should feel human, but that created a design challenge: how do you make a brand feel fun and personal without alienating anyone?
The core question: how do you build an onboarding brand that allows users to feel seen without excluding anyone?
Solution
Rather than a single mascot or a generic wordmark, we built a cast of five distinct characters, each with their own shape, name, and personality, so that almost any new hire could look at the lineup and find themselves in at least one.
02
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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.
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 characters:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Each was built from a distinct base shape, a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star, so they were recognizable at a glance, even without color.
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
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 characters:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Each was built from a distinct base shape, a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star, so they were recognizable at a glance, even without color.
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
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 characters:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Each was built from a distinct base shape, a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star, so they were recognizable at a glance, even without color.
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
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 characters:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Each was built from a distinct base shape, a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star, so they were recognizable at a glance, even without color.
Finding the Characters
The core creative decision was that Ahoy! shouldn't have one mascot — it should have five.
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 characters:
Bud — derpy and silly
Scrunch — disinterested and unbothered
Strut — cool and charming
Kyle — happy and pleasant
Chirp — friendly and upbeat
Each was built from a distinct base shape, a speech bubble, a hand, a starburst, a blob, a star, so they were recognizable at a glance, even without color.
03
/
Design
refining the details
With the character directions established, the design work shifted to getting each one exactly right. The personalities had to read immediately. Not just in expression but in posture, shape, and the smallest details.
Scrunch became a turning point in the process. Getting the "genuinely unbothered" feeling right, rather than just grumpy, took four rejected versions and a lot of small adjustments: hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. But working through Scrunch revealed something bigger: each character needed its own distinct set of eye and mouth elements to really feel different from the others. That realization shaped how all five were built from that point forward.
03
/
Design
refining the details
With the character directions established, the design work shifted to getting each one exactly right. The personalities had to read immediately. Not just in expression but in posture, shape, and the smallest details.
Scrunch became a turning point in the process. Getting the "genuinely unbothered" feeling right, rather than just grumpy, took four rejected versions and a lot of small adjustments: hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. But working through Scrunch revealed something bigger: each character needed its own distinct set of eye and mouth elements to really feel different from the others. That realization shaped how all five were built from that point forward.
03
/
Design
refining the details
With the character directions established, the design work shifted to getting each one exactly right. The personalities had to read immediately. Not just in expression but in posture, shape, and the smallest details.
Scrunch became a turning point in the process. Getting the "genuinely unbothered" feeling right, rather than just grumpy, took four rejected versions and a lot of small adjustments: hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. But working through Scrunch revealed something bigger: each character needed its own distinct set of eye and mouth elements to really feel different from the others. That realization shaped how all five were built from that point forward.
03
/
Design
refining the details
With the character directions established, the design work shifted to getting each one exactly right. The personalities had to read immediately. Not just in expression but in posture, shape, and the smallest details.
Scrunch became a turning point in the process. Getting the "genuinely unbothered" feeling right, rather than just grumpy, took four rejected versions and a lot of small adjustments: hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. But working through Scrunch revealed something bigger: each character needed its own distinct set of eye and mouth elements to really feel different from the others. That realization shaped how all five were built from that point forward.
03
/
Design
refining the details
With the character directions established, the design work shifted to getting each one exactly right. The personalities had to read immediately. Not just in expression but in posture, shape, and the smallest details.
Scrunch became a turning point in the process. Getting the "genuinely unbothered" feeling right, rather than just grumpy, took four rejected versions and a lot of small adjustments: hat angle, eyebrow weight, finger positioning. But working through Scrunch revealed something bigger: each character needed its own distinct set of eye and mouth elements to really feel different from the others. That realization shaped how all five were built from that point forward.
The Logotype
The logotype went through four typeface explorations before landing on the right direction. The challenge was subtle — even small decisions like caps vs. lowercase, rounded vs. squared letterforms changed how the type sat alongside the characters. Too rigid and it competed. Too loose and it lost credibility.
The final direction was a rounded, bold face that matched the warmth of the characters without overpowering them, with enough flexibility for the characters to embed naturally into the wordmark itself.
The Logotype
The logotype went through four typeface explorations before landing on the right direction. The challenge was subtle — even small decisions like caps vs. lowercase, rounded vs. squared letterforms changed how the type sat alongside the characters. Too rigid and it competed. Too loose and it lost credibility.
The final direction was a rounded, bold face that matched the warmth of the characters without overpowering them, with enough flexibility for the characters to embed naturally into the wordmark itself.
The Logotype
The logotype went through four typeface explorations before landing on the right direction. The challenge was subtle — even small decisions like caps vs. lowercase, rounded vs. squared letterforms changed how the type sat alongside the characters. Too rigid and it competed. Too loose and it lost credibility.
The final direction was a rounded, bold face that matched the warmth of the characters without overpowering them, with enough flexibility for the characters to embed naturally into the wordmark itself.
The Logotype
The logotype went through four typeface explorations before landing on the right direction. The challenge was subtle — even small decisions like caps vs. lowercase, rounded vs. squared letterforms changed how the type sat alongside the characters. Too rigid and it competed. Too loose and it lost credibility.
The final direction was a rounded, bold face that matched the warmth of the characters without overpowering them, with enough flexibility for the characters to embed naturally into the wordmark itself.
The Logotype
The logotype went through four typeface explorations before landing on the right direction. The challenge was subtle — even small decisions like caps vs. lowercase, rounded vs. squared letterforms changed how the type sat alongside the characters. Too rigid and it competed. Too loose and it lost credibility.
The final direction was a rounded, bold face that matched the warmth of the characters without overpowering them, with enough flexibility for the characters to embed naturally into the wordmark itself.
Characters in Context
The characters weren't just brand assets. They were designed to be functional elements within the product itself.
I designed all the character illustrations and visual elements, including their appearances on loading and processing screens, where they gave an otherwise passive moment a personality.
Characters in Context
The characters weren't just brand assets. They were designed to be functional elements within the product itself.
I designed all the character illustrations and visual elements, including their appearances on loading and processing screens, where they gave an otherwise passive moment a personality.
Characters in Context
The characters weren't just brand assets. They were designed to be functional elements within the product itself.
I designed all the character illustrations and visual elements, including their appearances on loading and processing screens, where they gave an otherwise passive moment a personality.
Characters in Context
The characters weren't just brand assets. They were designed to be functional elements within the product itself.
I designed all the character illustrations and visual elements, including their appearances on loading and processing screens, where they gave an otherwise passive moment a personality.
Characters in Context
The characters weren't just brand assets. They were designed to be functional elements within the product itself.
I designed all the character illustrations and visual elements, including their appearances on loading and processing screens, where they gave an otherwise passive moment a personality.
04
/
results
design
The characters landed. Feedback from the team consistently noted how fun and relatable they felt — exactly the quality Ahoy! needed to differentiate itself from every other onboarding tool. They weren't decorative additions to the product; they were what made the product feel like itself.
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 distinct shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that.
The characters are deliberately goofy because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here. Getting that across without it feeling forced or exclusionary was the real design challenge, and the one I'm most proud of solving.
04
/
results
design
The characters landed. Feedback from the team consistently noted how fun and relatable they felt — exactly the quality Ahoy! needed to differentiate itself from every other onboarding tool. They weren't decorative additions to the product; they were what made the product feel like itself.
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 distinct shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that.
The characters are deliberately goofy because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here. Getting that across without it feeling forced or exclusionary was the real design challenge, and the one I'm most proud of solving.
04
/
results
design
The characters landed. Feedback from the team consistently noted how fun and relatable they felt — exactly the quality Ahoy! needed to differentiate itself from every other onboarding tool. They weren't decorative additions to the product; they were what made the product feel like itself.
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 distinct shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that.
The characters are deliberately goofy because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here. Getting that across without it feeling forced or exclusionary was the real design challenge, and the one I'm most proud of solving.
04
/
results
design
The characters landed. Feedback from the team consistently noted how fun and relatable they felt — exactly the quality Ahoy! needed to differentiate itself from every other onboarding tool. They weren't decorative additions to the product; they were what made the product feel like itself.
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 distinct shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that.
The characters are deliberately goofy because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here. Getting that across without it feeling forced or exclusionary was the real design challenge, and the one I'm most proud of solving.
04
/
results
design
The characters landed. Feedback from the team consistently noted how fun and relatable they felt — exactly the quality Ahoy! needed to differentiate itself from every other onboarding tool. They weren't decorative additions to the product; they were what made the product feel like itself.
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 distinct shapes, the rounded type, was in service of that.
The characters are deliberately goofy because goofiness signals safety. It says: you don't have to be anyone other than who you are here. Getting that across without it feeling forced or exclusionary was the real design challenge, and the one I'm most proud of solving.
