House Rules

The illustration standard for a digital health app, reverse-engineered from an agency's look and written down so a team could draw to it

Company

Global biopharma company

Role

Art direction, illustration, motion

Timeline

2025 – present

Team

Solo, then a team of three

Scale

140+ Missions, 600+ illustrations

Overview

Leadership loved the agency's look… but it came with no style guide

Each designer who tried to extend it came back with notes, and illustration became the sticking point in reviews. Even images labeled as placeholders pulled leadership's attention away from the flows.

My role

I designed Missions, the most illustrated part of the app

Missions are small, doable activities, each a step toward a user's health goal, and every one carries a cover image. A Mission couldn't go to dev until it was fully illustrated. To draw them well, I first had to find the rules the agency never wrote down.

Dozens of Mission cards in colour-coded columns for Think, Sleep, Move, Eat and Health, each with its own illustrated cover: a tortoise, an hourglass, a tangle of yarn, a goose, a cloche, clouds and more

Process

I reverse-engineered the look from what leadership approved and what it sent back

I studied everything the agency delivered and every attempt other designers had made to work out what leadership was actually reaching for. Before I even sketched out the rules, I already had a feel for it.

There was a sense of play, humor, jauntiness. Leadership disliked anything too literal and loved a visual turn of phrase. Images were captured from above, lit straight on, in vibrant color that never looked fried. They didn't want hand drawn and they didn't want sterile.

What the agency handed over

How I extended it

Agency illustration for Say Thanks: a bouquet in a glass vase with sparkle doodles
My illustration for a myths mission: a real goose standing beside a wooden decoy
Agency illustration for Find Your Groove: headphones wrapped around a phone, with music-note doodles
My illustration for The Walking Experiment: a sneaker filled with test tubes and pencils, beside safety goggles
Agency illustration for Use Plate Method: two eggs on toast on a green plate
My illustration for Stone Soup: a bowl of vegetable soup ringed with carrot and celery slices

Solution

Then I wrote it down as a guide the team could draw to

The guide covers five things: the purpose of illustration, tone and mood, visual language, how to develop a concept, and do's and don'ts.

Tone

Tone was what kept getting picked apart in reviews, so the guide spells it out:

When possible:

  • Playful, not childish
  • Insightful, not academic
  • Warm, not saccharine
  • Conceptually clever, not punny for pun's sake
  • Grounded in realism, but with an imaginative twist

Method

And a method anyone on the team could repeat:

  1. Read the mission content to identify the emotional or conceptual core (e.g., rest, curiosity, energy, discovery).
  2. Brainstorm simple, symbolic objects that represent that theme.
  3. Introduce a small twist, pairing, or visual metaphor to make it engaging.
  4. Keep compositions minimal: 1–3 key objects with room to breathe.
The mission brief as three overlapping cards: why this mission, a note that not all information about your condition is true, and an invitation to sort through common beliefs without judgment Brainstorm notes over a crowd of ducks and geese: true or false activity, this mission shouldn't be intimidating to people new to this condition, duck duck goose? The shipped mission card for Chronic Condition Myths, with the goose and decoy illustration and a Start button

Chronic Condition Myths, from brief to shipped card

When to break the rules

Some mission screens carry a lot more text, so the guide leaves room for judgement:

"If the content for Mission Info seems longer or drier, rules can and should be broken (but use your discretion)"

Motion

The standard grew into motion

I set the easing and timing for the app's motion. Other designers copy those settings straight out of my files, so the whole app moves the same way. Motion is also what won over the head of the org, and I now present a working prototype in every design meeting.

Outcome

Illustration stopped being the problem in design reviews

A Mission couldn't reach dev without its illustration, and for eight months every one ran through me. Writing down what leadership couldn't name turned that into something a team could share: I scaled the standard to three designers, each starting with the guide and a single mission we reviewed together in Figma. Over 140 Missions have now been illustrated to the standard, and designers pull from a shared library of more than 600 illustrations and feel safe in reviews. Leadership recognizes my work without being told, and asks me to carry the same quality across the rest of the app.

Reflection

What I learned

Vague feedback is still feedback

Leadership could react to an image instantly but struggled to describe what they were after, and the words they reached for or pushed away carried baggage. “Quirky” and “not your average healthcare app” were considered distasteful even when they named the correct feeling. I stopped relying on the description and worked from what brought genuine smiles to leadership (and devs’) faces in hand-off, and what was sent back or critiqued, until the rules matched what they’d been picturing all along.

A written standard is great; a live layer empowers the designer

The guidelines gave new designers a starting point, but most of the learning happened in critique, a habit I brought from art school. Each new designer got the guide and one mission to illustrate, working live with me in Figma or bringing it back to review. Seeing their process let me give notes the guide couldn’t capture, and gave them room to ask the small questions they’d otherwise have kept to themselves.

Next case study

Impossible Intents