When I came into Linode, I came to understand that illustration and translating complex and technical concepts into a visually-pleasing image would be very important. As a result, I have essentially working nonstop building new, original art (often featuring my original mascot character, Linny, the Official Linode Mascot.
Screen Recording 2022-09-08 at 9.04.19 PM.webm
This was an incredible project I worked on with Peter Tarka, a 3D illustrator and animator based out of London.
When selling cloud servers and cloud products, it becomes apparent very quickly that you’re selling a virtual ‘thing’ that has no reasonable physical equivalent. But, at the same time, what you buy is a very real cross-section of a very expensive and very impressive piece of hardware.
We wanted to create a style of product image that represents the cool ‘thing’ that a virtual machine is, without necessarily representing specific hardware.
The images are pretty big, so follow along for more:
2022 Linode Product Illustration Refresh
I have been a lifelong fan of Linux, but one thing I noticed was that there are dozens of stereotypes about who uses Linux. Usually it’s that they have long beards, untrimmed fingernails. and have the social skills of a bar of soap.
But as I got deeper into the Linux ecosystem, I learned how many people who use Linux don’t conform to this. So, I wanted to create an illustration system that really worked to show Linux users, as they are. I based every illustration on somebody I knew. This was in flight from 2019 until 2021. I sketched the references, and they were vectorized by illustrator Keith Bowman.
The orange skin tones were adjusted and replaced in 2020.
