How We Built a Scalable Brand Illustration System for 58: From Concept to Efficient Design Pipeline

Illustrations are becoming increasingly vital in visual design, yet a successful illustration requires a systematic approach rather than random creation.

FaceTeam's Birth

The idea originated from the desire to give design outputs a recurring protagonist that could tell the story of the real‑estate business line. A colleague suggested using a fixed landlord or tenant character to unify design, which was added as an OKR objective.

Research revealed that brand illustration effectively builds a visual brand, conveys company information, and connects with users by embedding narrative elements, even creating an idealized world separate from reality.

Integrating illustrations into a production system improves efficiency: shared assets act like a designer's personal library, allowing element reuse, reducing waste, and handling urgent requests without overtime or quality loss.

Building Brand Illustrations

The team first gathered inspiration from existing brand illustrations such as Airbnb, Uber, and Shopify, noting their emotional tones and styles. A three‑phase plan was set:

Define characters : create personas like landlords, tenants, agents, etc., with three‑view illustrations.

Apply characters : use them in UI scenes with minimal design, and in operations by swapping outfits for varied styles.

From flat to 3D : apply motion and 3D modeling to transform 2D components into three‑dimensional assets.

Four key principles guided character design: average style for broad acceptance, rounded and friendly shapes, extensibility for easy replication, and lightweight flat‑style graphics.

To achieve consistency across many business lines, the team identified age as a common denominator and created five age‑based skeletons, allowing each line to select appropriate characters and customize attire.

Integrating for an Efficient Illustration System

Components were categorized into background, generic business‑line components, and core character components. By assembling and recombining these parts, a geometric growth of illustration scenes was achieved, dramatically improving design efficiency.

A four‑step content co‑creation workflow was established: collect case studies, filter by brand guidelines, ingest into the system, and synchronize updates to a shared wiki and cloud storage.

Continuous refinement of guidelines addresses implementation challenges, ensuring the system remains practical and adaptable.

Future plans include expanding 3D usage of FaceTeam characters, creating interchangeable outfits and actions, and collaborating with external partners to enrich the UXD material library.

Images illustrating the process are included throughout the article.