Client
Speechify, Inc
Services
Illustration & Iconography
Art Direction
Industry
Tech & Retail
The leading text to speech app.
Speechify is an app that reads any text aloud using a computer generated text to speech voice. The app is notable for producing near-human quality voices, and for using optical character recognition technology to turn physical books or any printed text into audio.
I was approached by the folks at Speechify to help them define and create their illustration voice. This was the first time they were introducing illustration to their branding treatment so I was happy to be able to guid them trough the process.
Briefing stage
This project was pretty straight forward from a style direction point of view. The client had a pretty clear direction in mind. They wanted to represent their specific user demographic and they wanted to do it in a honest way.
They liked the idea of using hands or objects for more nuanced concepts and injecting a bit of whimsy while still maintaining a serious tone if the situation required it.
After all there’s a time to delight an amuse and there are cases when we need to button up and adopt a more serious tone. But the over-all voice we landed on was light hearted.
Sketching and concepts
With the voice and tone settled, I started sketching away our concepts for a few of the scenarios that needed some visual aid, or maybe just a little help to outline a message that’s perhaps a little harder to convey just with words.
This part is great because we get to try out things and see what works without a big commitment.
Spot illustration sketches sample
Bages illustration sketchs sample
Illustration library
Different sized illustrations were needed to acomodate for the app and distinct scenarios so I ended up creating badges, icons and spots for every occasion. The size would be the same every time depending on the type of illustration giving the dev team some much needed relief.
Big spots sample
In-app smaller spot illustrations
Icon samples