Brainstorming iconic signifiers (balloons, cake, party hats) began with the question "what screams birthdays?" As the visual designer and art director, I defined the visual approach by exploring the essence of celebration through low-fi sketches of icons and backgrounds, leveraging Alexa's color palette and existing templates. As these explorations evolved into a suite of illustrations, they were also meticulously crafted to match our evolving 2D design style, ensuring a harmonious integration.

To prioritize clarity across multiple screen sizes during production, I advocated for simplicity, unifying the visual language with angled motion lines, simple colors and shapes, and using the rule of odds. Leading the team, I reduced complexity by incorporating primary colors in secondary elements (sprinkles, music notes, stars). To enhance visibility I adjusted our backgrounds against muted foreground colors for high contrast, while maintaining consistent foreground elements.

Shown in my Evolution visual, in the early stages, my cupcake illustration with layered frosting, sprinkles, and a single sparkler was explored further by the illustration team. They added more sparklers, experimented with the sprinkle colors, but used a yellow cupcake liner that faded into the yellow background. Through collaboration with the illustrators, we incorporated a candlestick for better context since the lone sparkler felt out of place. While the illustrators proposed a cupcake liner gradient, I raised concerns about its unpredictability across backgrounds. To ensure consistency, we opted for a solid liner and thicker outline to create a clear separation between the liner and the frosting. The final design reduced the number of sparklers, used a white candlestick, removed the gradient, and balanced the sparkler style and placement for visual continuity with varying line weights.