Strap Gets a Slack Makeover

What is Slack?

Slack is a messaging application designed to help teams be less busy, a goal that many of us in the startup community can get behind. Slack allows our team to segment into channels based on role or topic, send direct messages, and create private groups (think modern day instant messenger for the productive workplace). The bottom line: its interface is clean and simple to navigate, files are easily searchable and all of our communications are in one place.

Inspiration

I am constantly scrolling through dribbble and Behance for inspirational illustrators and designers. Some of my biggest design idols are and Aaron Draplin and Jonathan Dahl. For this project specifically I looked to Ryan Putnam’s illustration work for Dropbox. His character avatars are simple, cohesive, yet inexplicably unique to each team member’s persona. You can check out some of his illustrations here.

Icon Creation

The decision to make custom avatars for my co-workers was a no-brainer. The opportunity to reinterpret our flat vector illustration style for Slack was a fun challenge. Each person’s avatar was made in Illustrator and given a specific color to help differentiate from one another in Slack. Now our virtual presence is just as colorful as our personalities.