Reverb Empty States
The Story
After an illustration audit, I began to restrategize Reverb’s illustration style for consistency across its web and mobile platforms. I started with the brand’s iconography, and after establishing a working style for our marketing icons, I expanded that style to include empty states.
Empty states presented an interesting design challenge in that my goal was not to illustrate a thing, rather the lack of a thing. How was I to transition the icon set I had developed, which very much featured things, into empty states which did not?
Beginning with existing empty state designed by my teammate, Ryan Ford, I developed a solutions from there, keeping the same visual language from the iconography, but expanding it slightly for a more robust placement. I still used the bright, branded orange and orange tints, but the visuals were set against grayscale backgrounds for added context and housed that which was missing. No search results? While the search iconography was highlighted, the listings are missing. No article feed? While a user’s laptop was highlighted, the articles were missing.
Although these empty states ultimately went unused, they were a valuable topic of discussion for our Brand team as we discussed Reverb’s overall design strategy and our use of illustration through marketing and web materials.
The Team
Art Director: Lynette Sage
Design Team: Ryan Troy Ford
Client
Reverb
