illustrations for virgin america website by build

build’s illustrations for virgin america

work & co’s minimal new website for virgin america features a series of illustrations and icons by build. the highly original website has been almost a year in the making and includes a complete reinvention of the standard airline booking flow. a faster, step-by-step booking with an uncluttered, fresh look that allows users to select avatars to choose their seat, to personalized messages when selecting a destination.

‘the user experience on most airline websites today is still based mostly on decades-old design patterns and technologies. we decided to bring together a team of experts in both design and engineering to reinvent the entire category from the ground up.’ – felipe memoria, partner of product design at work & company

 
various avatars – the mini-world of characters that were used as individual avatars for seat booking, a feature on the new site.

‘we had been shooting names back and forth of designers and illustrators that we were inspired by, and at this time we all zeroed in on build. michael’s work at designer’s republic had been an inspiration to the whole team, and when we checked out the work his studio was doing, it felt like a perfect fit for our project. this amazing work that build created is what we like to think of as our ‘special sauce’ the little bit of wit and personality that is woven through all aspects of the new site from a set of unique avatars that guests can customize their profiles and even seat selections with, to a whole series of wild and fun visuals depicting every one of our destinations that we use to reinvent the way a typical route map of where we fly can be presented.’ – jesse mcmillin, creative director of virgin america

boston – build created an illustration for every one of VA’s destinations.

los cabos

fort lauderdale

los angeles

las vegas

new york city / newark

puerto vallarta

‘once we had established the style of illustration and characters we moved onto illustrating the cities the airline flies to. we collated as many references as we could for the destinations before starting each illustration. I’m not sure if it was intentional on the client side, but it quickly became apparent that the view of an american city by an english design studio threw up the funniest results.’ – michael place of build told creative review.

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read our interview with michael c. place (build) here »

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via creative review