Design for 10 Million Designers

Founder
Website
Industry
Design Software
Work
Website Design, Design System
Vectornator
Introduction

Designing for designers — a match made in heaven. Vectornator is great illustration software used by Disney, Marvel, BBC and Apple, whose design language was not up to par with its ambitions.

The story of Vectornator starts in the room of a 17-year-old child in 2010. Vladimir, born in Romania and raised in Germany, encountered a problem that many designers have experienced before. He was struggling to find a suitable design tool for his illustrations. Most kids would probably have given up soon, turn to TV & loose interest.
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But Vladimir was not most kids. He decided to create his own solution to solve his own problem. With the help of Youtube tutorials and several forum posts, he began to write his first lines of code.
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What started out as a hobby turned into a product that is loved by millions of graphic designers but also has the support of prominent industry leaders, such as Disney, Marvel, BBC and Apple.
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We got involved when they found themselves having a rather good problem. They had a GREAT product with a bunch of loyal recurring users; but their website did not match the product experience and fell short when conveying the excitement & buzz that existed among its community. So they needed a team to help them turn their vision into a reality (That’s us!), which was both an honor and a challenge. Now we had to figure out the following:

  • How do you create a world-class website for a world-class product? specially one aimed at designers?
  • How do you tread the fine line of designing “too much” and leveraging all the artwork we have without sacrificing usability & performance?
  • How do we create a scalable system that their team can then work with?

We turned to Webflow for the development and out-of-the-box performance. We successfully planned, designed, developed and delivered a performing website and a robust design system to scale on (in style). What was originally a one-off engagement turned into us becoming an integrated component of their team, where we work elbow-to-elbow to continuously improve the experience of millions of creators.

We ❤️ Vectornator.

Vectornator
Design for 10 Million Designers

The story of Vectornator starts in the room of a 17-year-old child in 2010. Vladimir, born in Romania and raised in Germany, encountered a problem that many designers have experienced before. He was struggling to find a suitable design tool for his illustrations. Most kids would probably have given up soon, turn to TV & loose interest.
‍
But Vladimir was not most kids. He decided to create his own solution to solve his own problem. With the help of Youtube tutorials and several forum posts, he began to write his first lines of code.
‍
What started out as a hobby turned into a product that is loved by millions of graphic designers but also has the support of prominent industry leaders, such as Disney, Marvel, BBC and Apple.
‍
We got involved when they found themselves having a rather good problem. They had a GREAT product with a bunch of loyal recurring users; but their website did not match the product experience and fell short when conveying the excitement & buzz that existed among its community. So they needed a team to help them turn their vision into a reality (That’s us!), which was both an honor and a challenge. Now we had to figure out the following:

  • How do you create a world-class website for a world-class product? specially one aimed at designers?
  • How do you tread the fine line of designing “too much” and leveraging all the artwork we have without sacrificing usability & performance?
  • How do we create a scalable system that their team can then work with?

We turned to Webflow for the development and out-of-the-box performance. We successfully planned, designed, developed and delivered a performing website and a robust design system to scale on (in style). What was originally a one-off engagement turned into us becoming an integrated component of their team, where we work elbow-to-elbow to continuously improve the experience of millions of creators.

We ❤️ Vectornator.

Info
Company
Vectornator
Year
Industry
Design Software
Work
Website Design, Design System
Links
Problem
Strategy
The Cultural Layer
Branding
Web Design

A new home was needed.

We rolled up our sleeves we defined a design language specifically for their ambitions. Working in close collaboration with Vladimir’s team, we came up with a design that represented how we wanted their current and new users to perceive this awesome design tool.

In an industry with established dominance (ahem, Adobe), Vectornator comes out as an exciting contender that is hungry and ready to take on Goliath.

A new home was needed.

We rolled up our sleeves we defined a design language specifically for their ambitions. Working in close collaboration with Vladimir’s team, we came up with a design that represented how we wanted their current and new users to perceive this awesome design tool.

In an industry with established dominance (ahem, Adobe), Vectornator comes out as an exciting contender that is hungry and ready to take on Goliath.

{16} Vectornator website hero: The Best Illustration Software in the Galaxy
A punchy header for a punchy product.
{16} Vectornator community forum and art gallery
The support forum built with Discourse that fosters and builds community.

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{16} Vectornator tutorials and guides
Tutorials, tips & thorough guides to teach users how to get most of Vectornator.
{16} Vectornator careers page at Linearity
An engaging Career's page to attract top talent.
{16} Vectornator mobile website pages
Must look good on mobile too.
{16} Vectornator landing page components
Collection of several components that were used to create an array of landing pages.
Product Design
Design System

Scaling with a System.

We created a thorough, robust and detailed design system that structured and standardized the way we built on the site. This served as the foundational pillars that we then grew from.  Using Figma, we managed to create a single source of truth to maintain consistency and keep the design and development teams on their toes.

You should only invent the wheel once.

Scaling with a System.

We created a thorough, robust and detailed design system that structured and standardized the way we built on the site. This served as the foundational pillars that we then grew from.  Using Figma, we managed to create a single source of truth to maintain consistency and keep the design and development teams on their toes.

You should only invent the wheel once.

{16} Vectornator design system colors and buttons in dark theme
{16} Vectornator promo cards and inputs in dark theme
{16} Vectornator promo cards, typography and icons in light theme
{16} Vectornator design system typography, cards and buttons
One year later...
Result
Client
Vladimir Danila
Founder and CEO
Testimonials

Konpo for us is like our internal design team. Every single design they made for us is amazing. We're super happy to work with them and would not replace them with anyone else.  They simply go the extra mile.

FAQs

Questions? Some answers.

Anything else? Feel free to reach out to
hey@konpo.studio
Who designed Vectornator's website?

Konpo designed and built it in Webflow, along with the design system behind it. Vectornator is illustration software used by 10 million designers and by teams at Disney, Marvel, BBC and Apple, started by Vladimir Danila in his room at 17. What began as a one-off project turned into an ongoing partnership, and when Vectornator grew into Linearity we redesigned that site too.

How do you design a website for designers?

Show off the artwork without giving up usability or speed. We defined a design language for Vectornator's ambitions, positioning it as the hungry contender to Adobe, and a design system in Figma kept design and development on the same page. The site has Awwwards recognition and a Best Website Award from Design Rush. More on our website design.

What's included in Vectornator's website?

More than a homepage. The site includes a community forum built on Discourse, tutorials and guides, a careers page and a set of landing-page components the team reuses, all on a Figma design system that acts as the single source of truth for design and development. You should only invent the wheel once.

We also made our own emojis! The team's slack is filled with them and we kind of love it.
Design Systems
Website Design