musiquest

Branded Illustration System

Brand visual identity system to be used for 300+ illustrations
Including story development, brand design, illustration, and animation.

I created a universe of characters and story telling for a kids’ educational music product.

When first approached, the ask was to create some 300-400 unique pieces of artwork. My theory was if I could instead create 10-20 key “golden templates” in addition to a system and set of guidelines, we could have a team of junior designers work on the bulk of things with my overlooking art direction.

The result was fantastic. We built a full way of communicating through this world building exercise. By focusing 80% of our effort on 10% of the work, it trickled down and allowed all art to be developed on budget.

CLIENT
Edify

ANIMATION
Latham Arnott

Cartoon character dressed as a cowboy riding a hobby horse, wearing a yellow hat and boots, with a cheerful expression and a nearby tumbleweed.

Final Execution

Full product/interface, website, marketing, and brand/story for MusiQuest. We created documentation to allow the brand to grow through junior level designers with high level guidance from BoneHaus.

Screenshot of MusiQuest website featuring "The Five Forces of Musi" section, offering melody, harmony, chords, bass, and drums with Conductor Mod. Includes options for Groove Center, Song Builder, and Quests. Displays recent songs and MyMelody emotions like Curious and Friendly.

An interactive world made for kids musical awakening.

A story and scalable design system for thousands of lessons featuring hundreds of assets, branding, and website.

Cartoon star figure with glasses, arms, and legs, wearing red shoes, smiling and waving.

STYLE DEVELOPMENT

Illustration of a small plant in a pot with two leaves on a green background.

Legacy Library

In order to create artwork for literally hundreds of lessons and quests, we needed a library of semi-modular characters. It was important to strike a balance between overly simple characters that you could swap parts out for (which would be too generic) and giving painstaking detail to every single character (which is not feasible or scalable).

Cartoon face with hat and beard in abstract style

Main Characters

The product has a main story line full of quests to help guide kids to learning about music. These are the main characters of that story.

A colorful abstract design of a smiling character with a yellow hat and body, a green face, and a large purple brim. A white circle is above the hat.

World Characters

Kids need to see themselves in simple characters with the ability to customize and lean into their musical and stylistic preferences.

Colorful doodle characters in various whimsical forms, such as animals, geometric shapes, and playful expressions, organized in rows against a white background.

Illustration of a cartoon yellow taxi with purple wheels and checkered pattern on doors.

Assets

Secondary assets are more structured in their form, but still playful in color in order to allow the main characters to shine.

Colorful whimsical illustrations featuring buildings, trees, camping scenes, animals, plants, balls, and playful elements.

Abstract design with musical notes, circles, and lines in blue, yellow, and pink colors.

Quests

Quests are at the core of learning for kids. Think Netflix seasons and episodes where a season is a quest, perhaps “Elements of Music” filled with multiple lessons such as, “Tempo”, “Beat”, and “Rhythm”. There are literally hundreds of quests which all need unique artwork, with the assistance of this entire illustration system.

Gold Quests

Gold Quests are the main story line that are required and carry a very unique and dedicated level of artwork. They tell a clear narrative both artistically and narratively.

Silver Quests

Silver Quests are created in an almost automated way, by choosing various assets from our library of resources and arranging them to a theme; be it water, school, science, etc. There are over 200 of these currently implemented into the site with hundreds more being created.

Illustration of a smiling atom character with a red circular body, eyes, and legs, surrounded by orbital paths and abstract shapes in bright colors.

User Interface

The core design influenced most of the products interface as well, from buttons and call to actions, to the voice and tone while educating kids.

We created interactive and animated interface elements that kids could tactically feel and hear stretch as they put notes into a beat.

Digital music composition interface with bass instrument icon and graphical notes on a purple gradient background, showing a night sky with stars and moon.

Illustration of various cartoon rectangles and icons with faces, each in different colors. Includes emotive expressions, technological device motifs, and four circular patterns below the icons. A red button with 'Call to Action' text is at the bottom.

Colorful cartoon faces expressing various emotions like curious, calm, friendly, sad, hurt, nervous, loving, hopeful, angry, anxious, skeptical, disappointed, silly, panicked, happy, and excited, displayed in a grid layout. Part of a music-themed app interface named MusiQuest on a purple background.

Cartoon rectangles with faces and various expressions and colors

MYMELODY

With so many children all over the spectrum of learning, we wanted children that have a difficult time communicating they emotions to be able to have a voice through making music.

From sad and somber music to exciting celebratory, kids are thrilled to have a way to express themselves and feel heard.