Art direction that holds across every surface
May 21, 20266 min read
Jonah Hale, Amelia Chen

Art direction is the decision about what the work should feel like before anyone opens a file. Without it, each channel invents its own brand.
We pick a small number of visual rules that can survive a homepage, a product screen, and a still. Light, crop, and type do more than a new illustration style every quarter.
Campaigns can be louder than the product. They should not be a different company. The same palette, the same crop, the same restraint.
When those rules are written down, other people can extend the work. Direction that lives only in one person’s head does not scale past the first launch.