CLIENT – IBM
PROJECT – IBM Cloud Paks Ecosystem Relaunch
ROLE – Designer • Illustrator • Animation Director
ANIMATION – General Idea

CHALLENGE
The IBM Cloud Paks (customizable bundled software) product pages were relaunching in 2021 with an emphasis on automation. Since these were prominent products in the company’s portfolio, the landing pages required dynamic and engaging design, especially in the leadspaces. Each of the four Cloud Paks had many powerful capabilities to communicate, about the individual software products and about how they worked together as Paks.

CONSIDERATIONS
Existing animation guidance: The IBM Design Language (IDL) had established clear animation direction to adhere to.

Brand illustration styles: Again, the IDL provided guidance for three separate illustration styles – flat, line and isometric. Previous animation examples had incorporated multiple illustration styles within a single animation, which created interesting transitions and pacing.

Multi-channel assets: Since I was also working on the paid and social media campaigns for IBM Cloud Paks, I was familiar with the required specs and ensured the animated assets were delivered in multiple formats that we could use across multiple channels.

GOAL
Create a series of animation loops that simply and effectively differentiated each Cloud Pak’s technical features, adhered to brand guidelines, and provided consistent visuals for the user journey.

PROJECT BRIEF
The animation studio was new to IBM's extensive guidelines, so I built a thorough project brief outlining the technical features, brand requirements, and reference animations for each Cloud Pak.

STORYBOARDS
I built the storyboards as vector frames, which the animation studio used as the foundation for the animations. We also used these for static paid media assets.

APPROVAL PROCESS
Since animation is a time-consuming process, any changes at a late stage would be cost-prohibitive. At each step in the process, I shared the work with each Cloud Pak’s product team and digital strategists, as well as the brand design creative director, addressing concerns immediately. We prioritized communication and alignment with all of the teams, which proved to be an effective strategy.