Google for Developers, Brand Refresh

The largest and most complete body of work here: rebuilding how Google for Developers looks on social, because developers found it too corporate to engage with.

The move was from pattern to character. The original system was geometric and safe; the refresh takes the same building blocks into something organic and stylised, extends the core Google palette so it stops reading as a product UI, and adds an illustration system with actual personality: puzzle characters, and a set of animation categories sorted by what a post is doing rather than what it is about. Learn for explaining a new concept, Fun for building complicity with the audience, Not Fun for difficulty and outages. Sorting illustration by emotional job rather than topic is the idea worth leading with.

It was also rebuilt once mid-flight, as social shifted to Shorts and Reels and the brand had to work in vertical motion. Before-and-after comparisons of the old look against two refresh directions are in here.

108 images, no confidentiality markings, the most publishable section in the deck.