Facebook Alegria

20172020

A new style guide, illustration and animation system for the entire Facebook ecosystem. There’s many imitators, but there’s only one Alegria.

Facebook approached us in 2017 to do a complete redesign of their entire illustration and animation ecosystem. We assembled a team of illustrators and a year later, Alegria was born. Alegria is Spanish for ‘joy’ which is apropos — that’s how we felt creating this fun, playful world.

Core Principles

We designed and built a scalable system rooted in flat, minimal, geometric shapes. The figures are abstracted — oversized limbs and non-representational skin colors help them instantly achieve a universal feel.

01. Styleguide ↓

02. Illustration ↓

Illustration

We built an extensive library for Facebook to build on the Alegria world over time. The library includes a dozen asset subcategories beyond just people (transportation, flora and fauna, buildings, hands, etc.) along with a toolkit to help them expand.

As the internet becomes more image and animation-oriented, tech and media spheres have grown increasingly reliant on illustration to fill white space and add character to their apps and web pages. The flat Alegria style has emerged as a simple, scalable, and image-softening tool for tech companies.

— AIGA, Eye on Design

03. In Situ ↓

Surfaces

Our Illustrations permeate their entire interface — across mobile, desktop, and print.

Cultural Moments

As a company with an international staff from far and wide, we loved creating this batch of animations that celebrate diversity and highlight global cultural events.

Credits

BUCK

Executive Creative Director

Ryan Honey

Managing Executive Producer

Maurie Enochson

Creative Director

Brian Won

Kevin Walker

Producer

Nick Terzich

Senior Art Director

Amelia Giller

Janice Ahn

Xoana Herrera

Design Lead

Xoana Herrera

Head of 2D Animation

Daniel Coutinho

2D Animation Lead

Esteban Esquivo

Development

Amelia Giller

Audrey Lee

Esteban Esquivo

Janice Ahn

Rafael Araujo

Xoana Herrera

Core Illustration

Ben Nichols

Camily Tsai

Esther Moon

Lauren Gaballo

Lina Yu

Maggie Chiang

Megan Pelto

Shannon Rollins

Sung Hyun Kim

Tuo Kan