Illustration, Design, and Motion Graphics for Flagship Report
Sonatype’s “State of the Software Supply Chain Report” is an annual publication that provides a comprehensive analysis of the open-source software landscape and the security of the software supply chain. Historically, the asset was a gated PDF used for lead gen. When I joined Sonatype in 2022, the brand was going through many shifts and we were gearing up to roll out a rebrand. The report planning committee saw an opportunity to modernize the 2022 report and build it in an interactive format that encouraged sharing and better aligned with how technical audiences would want to review this type of content. So instead of keeping it as a gated PDF, the report would become a digital calling card and a flagship for the brand.
The Head of Design and I, as Senior Designer, were tasked with branding the report. To complement this shift to a modern interactive format, we were inspired by many high-profile brands such as Spotify and Mailchimp*, who had begun to popularize the creation of mini-sub brands to design and market their flagship reports. What this strategy would do for Sonatype is redefine the report from a piece of content to a standalone product with its own identity.
We hypothesized that building a report with a strong visual identity would increase its authority, improve its visibility, and build a reputation such that people would begin to seek out the release of this report year after year. And we were right.
Overall the report was a big deal, and well-received by the industry. The campaign helped to boost awareness of Sonatype's data leadership with an estimated 20% increase in stakeholder engagement and visibility.
Check out the report here
A one-page promotional summary of the report, for distribution at events.
For our digital campaigns to market the report, I suggested creating video ads that featured animated illustrations, which seemed fitting for this new digital and interactive version of our report. Our "perception vs reality" theme was a juxtaposition of opposing view points. or rather, the "reality" is the difference you see in your perception when you take a closer look. We came up with an idea to present pairs of perceptions and realities that I would illustrate as 2 different illustrated scenes per video. The second scene being a slight variant on the first, demonstrating how reality changes when you take a closer look.
To give the feeling of moving through opposing perspectives, each first scene is oriented with illustrations on the right and copy on the left, and each second scene would flip that orientation so that illustrations moved to the left, and the copy to the right. Each video ends the same way, with our CTA taking center stage. This simple formula allowed us to create 5 distinct creative variants in a very short amount of time.
These videos ran on LinkedIn and other channels, and I was asked to create versions in other languages for an international audience. The ads performed better than those of previous years' reports, and as a result, I was asked to create new versions of the video ads for event screens through the rest of the year. The videos helped to drive interest and engagement at in person events in North America, Europe, and APAC.
Here is an example of digital event signage. I created a very simple looping animation, drawing from the interactive movements of the illustration in the report itself, but using this opportunity to introduce more subtle movement, which enhanced the ethereal feel and the concept of "altered perception" that I sought to infuse in the static illustrations.
T-shirt I designed for giveaways.