Building a Culture of Craft: Dotting the Journey

  • Dropbox's VP of Design, Alastair Simpson, needed compelling visuals for his "Design Matters" keynote in Copenhagen, focusing on the team's shift towards design, craft and quality.

  • Recognizing the potential to elevate the presentation beyond a basic request, I leveraged Alastair's personal affinity for bold visuals and a distinct "dot" motif (found in his favorite shirts and shoes), and saw an opportunity to create a deeply personal and visually evocative narrative. A simple dot or circle symbolizes unity, continuous improvement, and focused intention for a leader, perfect for the keynote's theme

  • We developed a visually striking keynote by weaving together Alastair's "dot" language with simple, evocative motion storytelling. This was seamlessly integrated with Dropbox's brand colors and typography. The resulting presentation was not only visually engaging but also thought-provoking, leading to significant recognition for its unique and impactful design.

    Credit:
    Sally Croom
    Alastair Simpson
    Ayush Sharma

  • Creative Director and Designer

This concept portrays the typical New Year's resolution cycle: a dropping ball evokes the anticipation of Times Square, transitioning to a radiating face symbolizing initial hope. This quickly fades, mirroring the common reality of abandoned intentions by February.

This segment visually and statistically depicts the high failure rate of New Year's resolutions. Numerous dots initially populate the entire screen, representing the widespread initial optimism, then quickly dwindle to just a few, illustrating how many abandon their goals within the first two weeks.

This concept visually represents the challenges modern designers face in today's landscape. Various colored dots crowd the screen, symbolizing the proliferation of tools and processes like Figma, AI, and rapid prototyping, all bumping and filling the space, creating a sense of overwhelming density.

This concept visually conveys intentional focus in refining every detail with a focused zoom on a graphic pixel, then transitioning to two interacting circles to represent interaction, ultimately building towards a complete experience.

This concept uses a Tetris animation to show how a design organization, as it grows and systems take over, can inadvertently slide into autopilot. This pursuit of efficiency can unfortunately lead to a decline in thoughtful creativity and craft, with the "game over" symbolizing this critical loss.

This concept visually represents the critique process as a journey of an idea, starting with a close examination with zoom in on the dot, then breaking down for feedback into multiple dots, and finally growing through collaborative iteration, much like a ping-pong game where ideas bounce and evolve.

This concept illustrates the instability and repeated attempts at finding balance during a reorganization, as various shapes stack, topple, and restack

This concept visually represents the power of intentional steps and repetition by showing individual oscillating circles gradually filling the screen, culminating in a unified, wave-like motion.