Team Spirit Animals
Summary
I created custom illustrations representing each team's spirit animal to foster a sense of community and belonging within our group.
Client: Moat Analytics
Role: Illustrator
Timeline: 2019
When I joined Moat in 2017, the organization was small, and that smallness was part of what made it work. As we grew, we risked losing the connectedness and camaraderie that had fueled our success. Quarterly sprint planning was one of the few times when all our teams came together to map out the next quarter. To mark one of these occasions, I wanted to do something special and memorable to preserve some of that small-team spirit.
Our Program Manager suggested we create team mascots, which we cleverly rebranded as team spirit animals. I volunteered to create custom illustrations for each team.
A few weeks prior to sprint planning, we asked each team to choose a spirit animal that reflected the qualities or aspirations of their team, keeping our intentions a secret.
On the day of sprint planning with everyone in attendance, we revealed each team's spirit animal and handed out custom laptop stickers. We also created custom avatars and emojis for the teams to use in Jira, Confluence and Slack.
The work was time consuming, but it was incredibly satisfying to watch hundreds of people roaming around with their spirit animals proudly emblazoned on their laptops, laughing and showing them off to each other.
