Claude: Illustrated Ads for a New Brand
Hand-drawn ads, illustrations, and motion that took Claude's new identity into the feed
Illustration
Motion design
The short version
Through Final Final, I designed Claude’s paid social ads from April through the October 2024 launch: illustrations, layouts, chat-bubble ads, and animations.
In 2024, Claude had a brand-new identity: warm clay orange, a serif wordmark, and a hand-drawn illustration style. It needed to show up in the feed, every few weeks, for every launch.
I drew most of the illustrations from scratch, and extended a small brand library into a much bigger visual vocabulary.
THE CHALLENGE
A handful of illustrations, a feed full of ads
Claude's guidelines came with a handful of spot illustrations: hands, heads, networks, starbursts, all drawn in the same loose black line.
Ads needed a lot more than a handful. Every batch brought new headlines, and each one needed its own picture.
I treated the library as a style guide, not a clip-art set. A few pieces I adapted, like the control panel that became "Simple settings for complex teams." Most I drew new, in the same hand: a treasure chest for "your compass for hidden travel treasures," a lighthouse for "a powerful AI assistant," an envelope for "That email could've been a bullet point," and a brain caught in a storm for "When your brainstorm needs to be a full-on hurricane."
THE PROCESS
Three or four ideas for every line
Each headline started as a sketch session in Illustrator.
For one line I'd try three or four ideas before landing on one: for "Claude is your new force multiplier," a seesaw, a starburst, and a bold "10x" all got a turn. The strongest went into Figma and into the template.
Three ideas for "force multiplier."
Two ideas for the brainstorm.
Three ways to balance speed, cost, and intelligence.
THE SYSTEM
One template, every size
Every ad followed one system: the Claude wordmark up top, a serif headline, one illustration in the middle, and a button.
It worked at square, portrait, and story sizes, and with or without a button, so a new batch could go from copy to finished files quickly.
Motion
Illustrations that think and type
I animated the illustrations for social: the Claude spark thinking and writing, prompts typing themselves out, and three-panel use-case stories for phone screens.
What I learned
A library is a starting point
A handful of brand illustrations taught me the hand; the job was to draw everything else in it.
Sketch the metaphor before the picture
The best ads came from trying several ideas for one line, not polishing the first.
Systems make speed possible
One flexible template meant every new headline only needed one new drawing.
