Celebrating unDraw’s second birthday

Year 2 of unDraw completed! A year of incredible growth for the project, the community and personally, so time to plan the next one.

2019: An awesome and unexpected year

The feeling I have as I write this review paragraph is gratitude. The incredible support and interest of all the creatives that use unDraw, has almost tripled the monthly users to reach 200k. We had the chance to start something really cool with Adobe, creating the XD plugin which has its own community, to run a Dribbble Playoff with them and to be used by organizations that one can dream of, like Microsoft, Harvard Business School, the French Ministry of Culture and many many others. For all these and for the incredible Twitter interactions and support, I can’t thank each one of you enough!

Time to come home

While the theme of 2019 was laying down the foundations and experimenting further with what unDraw is and can be, 2020 seems to be the year to return to its true identity. A return to its origins, as a design project, a more interactive community, a more stable partner network to operate with, a well-defined design system to improve effectiveness and continuous innovation, in all fronts.

The future in specifics

• We managed to keep all of our last year’s goals, and we’re reaching 1000 illustrations this week (more than 500 in 2019), without letting client and personal projects get in the way. This year, I intend to keep designing with the same dedication and pace, despite the even heavier schedule.
• With unDraw Creatives, we introduced a way to share the spotlight and we gained valuable experience. We intend to build on that, and create a place where creatives based on their value and skills can share with the community their thoughts and work, no matter their follower count.
• Last year, we committed to bringing unDraw directly to designers and we did it with the XD plugin. Now it’s time to bring it to more creatives, in ways that make it even more useful, not only in design but also presentations, coding, etc.
• Since unDraw is maturing, it’s time to redesign and rebuild it from scratch, making it even more faster, more opinionated as a project and increase the effectiveness of each illustration with a more well-defined design system, while allowing controlled experimentation to keep progressing its style.

The most wonderful time of the year, indeed

Every Christmas, it’s the birthday of a project that I started without much thought, but turned out a whole community and a life-changing experience. I always re-evaluate my stamina to go on and produce more quality illustrations for it, and to be honest, I feel so excited and grateful that continuing unDraw with all of you, is not a choice. So here’s to another great year and a huge thank you that cannot express how awesome you’ve been! Happy holidays!

PS: A huge thank you to a few special people too!

• To Aggelos Gesoulis for being the other part of unDraw and handling all the product development. Could not have been here without you!
• To Drew Endick for his support, patience and believing in unDraw and helping bring it to designers. It’s been truly a pleasure working with you.
• To Célien Boillat who has been there from the beginning and was always a believer of the 1000 illustrations goal! Thank you so much, my friend!