THE CLIENT: FACEBOOK

THE ROLE: SENIOR ART DIRECTOR

The CONCERN: there are no creative tools for the international fb audience.

THE QUESTION: CAN WE BUILD SOMETHING THAT WILL TRULY RESONATE?

THE SHORT ANSWER: yes, if you HIRE LOCAL ARTISTS TO HELP.

The Skill Set: Design strategy, global ux writing, artist curation/management, presentation design, Art Direction

It’s not often that you get a chance to make a real impact within a large international tech organization. In 2019 I had the opportunity to work with Facebook’s Feeds + Stories team on creative tools for the Next Billion Users, focusing specifically on the emerging markets of Brazil, India, Indonesia, the Arabic-speaking Middle East + North Africa and beyond.

Our team decided that the best way to do this was by finding illustrators in local markets that could speak to the everyday experience of creating posts and artwork in their respective cultures. My job was to source high-caliber artists in each market, break down and organize a complex cross-cultural international research and creation process into two 6-week content sprints, and collaborate with teams in Menlo Park to prepare all assets for deployment and use in-app. I collaborated directly with each artist to shape pixel-perfect designs from conception to launch while gathering enough information and visuals to present the project’s story to stakeholders at FB HQ. I worked closely with international stakeholders across Creative, Product, Language, Policy, Legal, Communications and Deployment teams to refine the artwork and find solutions at each stage of the project.

After guiding the artist sourcing and selection process, I wrote extremely thorough briefs outlining a simplified version of the design research process, prototyping requirements, technical specs, and aesthetic direction for the assets we needed to co-create, and customized each brief to be unique to each artist. We built a virtual workspace and invited the group to start the process with a deep-dive research project on their local cultures, focusing specifically on the ways that people in their country engage with social media, how they speak informally, and what they consider to be “critical culture,” This element of the collaboration built a space for trust where the artists became cultural experts and creative ambassadors to the core Facebook team.

I asked each artist to share what makes their home unique, and what they love the most about their culture. Things that only locals would know: slang, street style, art, music, food, hobbies, holidays, sports—even mealtime traditions. We decided together which words made the most sense to illustrate for UGC purposes, and from there selected our favorites to create stickers and frames for Stories—resulting in a thoughtful, hyperlocal collection of digital artwork that makes perfect sense to the people who are using it. We even geofenced city-specific assets so that you can only post about a place if you’re really there, and dropped seasonal and holiday assets to spark engagement in-app.

We launched 200+ unique illustrations across 10 markets, focused on everyday language, local cities, food, family, sports, holidays, and love, created by 6 talented international artists—in less than 6 months. I shared my international artist lists with other internal teams before my departure, confident in the knowledge that they would now have the resources to hire talented local artists for global FB projects in the future. I have seen many of those artists highlighted in projects for IG and FB since the inception of the Global Art Project.

“Larissa was super amazing to work with! and she made what was a very fast-paced project feel uncomplicated and streamlined.

Her art direction was just the guidance I needed to come up with illustration concepts, and despite not being from India, she was able to understand and appreciate cultural nuances in my illustrations.”

Chaaya Prabhat, GAP Artist

It’s my sincere hope that this work helps people around the world feel seen, cared for, and inspired to share their own stories in their own languages for many years to come.